Pierpont Cemetery was established in 1872 and is Wichita’s smallest cemetery. There are just two graves here (or maybe three, depending on who you ask).
Elmon Pierpont (sometimes spelled “Pierrepont”) and wife Caroline (Warner) obtained their 160-acre plot of land in Kansas in 1871. Elmon was a steam engineer, but turned to farming full-time, “among other experiments,” after settling in Kansas.
The couple already had three sons when they moved to Wichita: Elbert, Nathan, and Charles.
In the 1870’s, the Pierpont homestead was situated 7 miles east of the city limits of Wichita on east Central Avenue. Now, the city has grown around what used to be their farm.
Pierpont Cemetery is located on North Greenwich Road in Wichita, Kansas, between 13th and Central. It’s easy to miss. There are no prominent stones, and much of the paint on the metal cemetery sign has long worn away. The signs are also known to twist positions, making it more difficult to see what it is.
The cemetery’s current location used to be the northwest corner of the Pierpont family’s farm. It was not uncommon for early settlers to bury their loved ones on their property, especially those in more rural areas where a large cemetery had not yet been established.
Elmon Pierpont grew commodity crops like wheat, but he also grew fruit. As the local Grange Master for Minneha Township, he would have been well-known among other local farmers. But he wasn’t known only for his farm: his brother Munson Edwards Pierrepont was a US Presidential Cabinet Member. Munson was appointed to positions in government by both Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.
This 1876 article from the Kansas Farmer indicates that Elmon Pierpont had a well-established and bountiful farm.
Housing developments, churches, businesses, and car lots now sit where the Pierpont’s sprawling rural farm was established.
There is only one documented burial at this cemetery: 13-year-old Elbert Wallace Pierpont, the son of Elmon and Caroline, who suffered an untimely death in 1872 from typhoid fever.
As the oldest son, the loss of Elbert would have been enormous to the family.
The presence of other stones here indicate one, possibly two, additional burials at this site. It is assumed that Elbert’s parents, Elmon and Caroline Pierpont, were also buried here, although there are no publicly available records to support that.
News reports indicate that Elmon Pierpont experienced some difficulties near the end of his life. He was found insane by a probate judge in the spring of 1902. The reasons cited in the paper were his age, and that he “spends most of his time apparently thinking about something and pays no attention to his friends or relatives.”
Elmon was likely suffering from a disease that was not understood at the time, like dementia or Alzheimer’s. Additional reports indicate he was also lighting fires inside his home, where he lived with his two adult children. Shortly after being declared insane, Elmon was sent to an insane asylum in Osawatomie where he died a few days later of tuberculosis.
Caroline died the following year, in 1903, in Enid, Oklahoma. The circumstances surrounding her death, and why she was in Oklahoma at the time, are unclear. Based on the information we have available, it can be assumed that she had left the family home prior to Elmon’s death. She is not mentioned in Elmon’s death announcement. The article states Elmon lived at home “with two of his children,” but not his wife.
It is believed by some that Elmon and Caroline’s surviving sons chose to have both of their parents laid to rest on their property, alongside Elbert. But in a 1945 interview with Charles Pierrepont, son of Elmon and Caroline, there is no mention of his parents being buried here. only “Albert’s grave and others.”
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