Greenwood Cemetery Holds a Close Community

Greenwood Cemetery, previously called Cartwright Cemetery and Oatville Cemetery, has long been considered one of the prettiest country cemeteries in Sedgwick County. And if you look closely, you’ll find a tight-knit community of relatives and friends resting here.

When it was established in 1877, Greenwood Cemetery was located about seven miles southwest of Wichita. Today it sits just on the edge of Wichita’s city limits. The cemetery currently occupies just under 28 acres and has plenty of room for expansion.

The cemetery was developed on land owned by Valentine Cartwright in Waco Township, just south of the hamlet of Oatville (47th & Hoover, if you’re local). The earliest burials here were relatives or neighbors of the Cartwrights.

This photo was possibly taken at one of the Cartwright homes near Greenwood Cemetery. Image date unknown. Source: ancestry.com

The cemetery is currently owned and maintained by the Greenwood Cemetery District under the direction of the Greenwood Cemetery Association, which was established the same year as the cemetery and has remained in continuous operation for over 145 years.

The Cartwrights

Valentine Cook Cartwright was born in Kentucky in 1821 to circuit rider and Methodist revivalist Peter Cartwright Jr. aka “God’s Plowman,” who was credited with helping to start America’s Second Great Awakening. Peter was staunchly anti-slavery, and Valentine was just a boy when his family moved from the slave state of Kentucky to the free state of Illinois.

Peter Cartwright, Jr.

Valentine not only grew up with a religious father, but a political one. Peter was elected to the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly in 1828, and in 1832 he was elected again, beating his opponent Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe got Peter back by defeating him in1846 for a congressional seat.

Valentine’s dad was widely known and respected. After his political stint, he wrote the book Autobiography of Peter Cartwright: The Backwoods Preacher, which gained him nationwide recognition. Even before Valentine and his family moved to Kansas, the Wichita newspaper was calling for a monument honoring Peter Cartwright.

Valentine’s father, Peter Cartwright, as depicted in A Youth’s History of Kentucky for School and General Reading by Ed Porter Thompson (1897). Source: Wikipedia

Valentine didn’t follow in his father’s political footsteps. He remained a Methodist, but didn’t involve himself in preaching. He chose to become a farmer and marry Cinthelia Scott in 1841 when they were both 19 years old. Cinthelia was the daughter of Sarah Foster and Dallas Scott, early settlers in Sangamon County, Illinois, where she was born and raised and where Peter Cartwright would settle with his family in the 1820’s.

Cinthelia Scott Cartwright. Source: ancestry.com

Cinthelia’s family also relocated from Kentucky. The land they pre-empted in Cartwright Township, Illinois was “wild and unimproved, not a furrow having been turned upon it.” Her father worked to improve the land over his life, and when he died, he owned about 400 acres of highly valuable and heavily worked land. Her father died in 1841, four months after she married, and is buried in Pleasant Plains.

One of the first mentions of Pleasant Plains in Cartwright Township was in connection with a small Methodist church built in 1838 by Rev. Peter Cartwright. Image courtesy Dave Rumsey Map Collection.

Cinthelia and Valentine probably knew each other as children and grew up together, maybe even attended the same schools. After they married, they farmed together in Cartwright Township for over 30 years, and their ten known children together were born there.

Valentine and Cinthelia moved to Kansas in 1874 when they were in their 50’s. All ten of their children came with them, and a few other Cartwrights did too. The family settled in Waco Township on what is now 47th Street.

Cartwright Cemetery to Greenwood Cemetery

The earliest available Sedgwick County maps are from 1882, and it shows the cemetery at the corner of land owned by Mary E. Cartwright. Mary (nee Cloud) was the wife of Valentine’s son, Thomas. Before the land belonged to Mary, it belonged to Valentine, and he donated five acres of the land for a cemetery.

Original five-acre plat for Greenwood Cemetery filed with Sedgwick County in 1880. The survey and map drawing were done by W.P. Hobson, who had two children buried here at the time. Source: Sedgwick County Plat Maps

A plat for the cemetery was filed with Sedgwick County in 1880, giving the community burial ground the official name of Greenwood Cemetery (many locals still referred to it as Cartwright Cemetery or Oatville Cemetery for decades). There were at least seventeen burials here at the time the plat was filed.

The entrance to Greenwood Cemetery boasts an establishment date of 1877, but there are several burials here that pre-date that, including a gravestone for Cartwright’s own 15-year-old son, Newton, who died in 1876 when he was hunting prairie chickens and the shotgun he was holding accidentally discharged into his abdomen.

“Gone before.”

Valentine and Cinthelia both got sick from malaria in 1886, but Cinthelia recovered. Valentine did not. He died on October 30th and was buried next to his son Newton. Cinthelia died in 1907 and is buried here also.

“Our father at rest.”

Two children of Elizabeth Bowman and Jerome York are buried here. The Yorks were neighbors of the Cartwrights, and farmed 320 acres across the street from the cemetery. Anna York died in 1876, a few months before Newton. It was said she was sick for just a few hours before she died.

Anna shares a gravestone with her brother, Elmer, who died in 1878.

Anna York died on the same day that Charles Stearns did, and they had a joint funeral. Charles was also a neighbor of the Cartwrights. He was sick for a few days, but he wasn’t critically ill, and no one suspected that he was near death until it was too late. Charles may have been buried on his own farm and then later moved to Greenwood.

Charles Stearns and Anna York were also buried on the same day, a few dozen feet apart.

Birdie and Newtie Pallett were Valentine’s grandchildren, born to Carrie Cartwright and her husband Samuel Pallett. Birdie died in 1879, just days old. Newtie (who was probably named after his uncle Newton) died in 1883 from spinal meningitis a few days before his second birthday.

Greenwood Community

Greenwood isn’t just a cemetery, it’s a community. Many of the individuals buried here were neighbors, relatives, and friends. A fact about Greenwood that may not be unique to them, but certainly is touching, is that the Oatville community—not an employed gravedigger—dug the graves of each person buried here until at least the mid 1930’s.