Davis Memorial, Mount Hope Cemetery, Hiawatha, Kansas

The Davis Memorial at Mount Hope Cemetery in Hiawatha Kansas is an elaborate and unique memorial created by John Milburn Davis after his wife Sarah died in 1930.

The incredible (or “cluttered”) monument earned John the title of “the most hated man in town,” but it is now Hiawatha’s most visited attraction and is on the National Register of Historic Places. We visited the Davis Memorial in August 2023.

John and Sarah Davis

John Milburn Davis was born in Kentucky in 1855 and came to Kansas around 1879, where he met Sarah Elizabeth Hart, who was born in Kansas in 1860. 19-year-old Sarah and 25-year-old John were married in Brown County in 1880.

Source

Mr. Davis came to Hiawatha as an orphan in 1879 and worked for the Hart family as a farmhand. Although the family liked his work, they were outraged at the marriage of their daughter Sarah Elisabeth, to John, and thus disinherited her. They were even more incensed when, during the next 28 years, he purchased the best 2 quarters of land in the county, and became extremely wealthy. Source

The childless couple lived an ordinary, quiet life on their 260-acre farm in Hiawatha, subsisting on “a steady diet of work and frugality,” and amassing a small fortune.

John and Sarah Davis. Source

The couple celebrated their 50th anniversary in 1930. Sarah had a stroke and died later that year in the same county she was born in.

Hiawatha Daily World, April 3, 1930

“I am ready to go.”

When Sarah died December 3, 1930, John was devastated.

Hiawatha Daily World, Dec 8, 1930

Sarah’s grave was originally marked with a regular gravestone, but that wasn’t enough for John. After living a life of frugality and saving his wealth, John was ready to spend it all on a monument for Sarah.

John with marble dealer Horace G. England in front of the Davis Memorial. Source

A Shrine of Love

John commissioned ten life-size marble statues depicting him and Sarah Davis at various stages in life. The two statues seated at the head of the plot are John and Sarah when they were young, and were the first that John commissioned.

This is the only statue of John without a beard.

Young Sarah is wearing a locket around her neck, presumably an important piece of jewelry to her at the time.

A slightly older Sarah wearing an intricate dress is standing next to John’s headstone.

John is standing across from Sarah by her grave, and they are looking at one another.

John lost his hand after an infection led to amputation, and most of his statues are also missing the right hand. This statue is next to Sarah’s grave.

John and Sarah face each other holding hats in these aged versions of themselves.

Outside the canopy, John and Sarah are shown sitting in their porch chairs, an activity they both enjoyed during Sarah’s last year alive.

An eleventh piece in granite features John sitting alone in his chair. It was said that John chose granite for his final statue because “the harder stone still would suit a man’s rough features but … only marble was soft enough to do justice to the delicate features of a woman.”

An empty chair beside John with the inscription “The Vacant Chair” highlights his loneliness and Sarah’s absence.

There are also two kneeling and praying statues at the foot of each grave. Sarah, depicted as a guardian angle, is at the foot of John’s grave, while John is kneeling with a wreath at the foot of Sarah’s.

John’s statue had it’s head broken off and taken in the 1990’s. Some say it’s at the bottom of a nearby pond.

The statue with a head. The Wichita Beacon, May 28, 1952

The memorial was completed in 1934, four years after Sarah’s death. The three-foot-high granite wall was added in 1935 to keep people off the memorial and out of Sarah’s vacant chair.

“It’s my money and I spend it the way I please.”

The extravagant and expensive memorial was built during the height of the Great Depression, and the community resented John for spending his fortune on a shrine to his wife. Some accused him of building it to perpetuate his own memory.

In the 1930’s, Hiawatha needed help—a new hospital, a new swimming pool, and a park were all on the wish list—and they wanted John to provide it. But instead he poured all his resources into honoring the life he shared with Sarah.

What people wanted from him or thought about him didn’t matter to John. “It’s my money and I spend it the way I please,” he said.

Racine Journal Times Sunday Bulletin, Racine, WI, June 12, 1938

According to some reports, the townspeople never forgave him for spending every last cent of his money on the memorial, though they couldn’t have known that it would eventually contribute considerably to Hiawatha’s economy, as it is now one of the most popular tourist attractions in western Kansas.

John was said to hang out in the cemetery watching people visit the memorial, occasionally introducing himself and telling them about Sarah. He spent all his money on the memorial and died penniless at the Brown County poor farm in 1947.