Iowa residents say bodies remain in old cemetery, now someone's front yard

WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) - Phyllis Morgan has never met the latest owners of the nicely landscaped home along North Elk Run Road just north of Waterloo.

But she's certain her uncle, William, is buried in their front yard.

Evelyn Winder of Cedar Falls also believes bodies of some of her relatives still rest under the lawn and cedar trees of the homestead at 2137 N. Elk Run Road.

Historic records reveal anywhere from 25 to more than 50 people were interred from 1883 to 1912 in what had been known as the Mount Zion Union Cemetery.

"They're still there," said Michael Magee, a member of the State Association for the Preservation of Iowa Cemeteries. "Other than two bodies moved to Fairview Cemetery in Waterloo, there were never any disinterment permits to prove anybody else has been moved.

"If you step out of the front door," he added, "you're in a cemetery."

Despite lawsuits filed two decades ago by family members and others seeking restoration - at the very least, recognition - of the cemetery, there's nothing there today memorializing the dead.

"That makes me angry," said Morgan, whose collection of legal papers includes a 1905 obituary for William Russell Brooks, her mother's little brother, who was 16 months old when he died of whooping cough.

"His body is still there," she said. "It was never moved."

The story began in 1883, when original land owners Daniel and Mary Hewitt deeded a portion of their farm to start the Mount Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, which later became Mount Zion Methodist Episcopal Church, said local historian Orrin Miller.

Miller, Morgan and Bill Lemke, a former Waterloo City Council member with an interest in cemetery preservation, were parties in one of the lawsuits seeking to restore Mount Zion Union Cemetery.

"I remember this small plot of ground with the twisted cedar trees and the tilted stones as a small boy 50 years ago," Lemke, now dead, said in a letter included in Miller's research. "My father spoke of it as a children's cemetery because of the predominant number of children buried there."

The church building was moved in 1905 and still sits at 1731 N. Elk Run Road, serving as the Dewar Community Center. But the three-quarter-acre cemetery remained.

Land around the cemetery changed hands a number of times before it was sold to Kenneth and Kay Buehler in 1975.

Court records indicate the couple built their house next to the cemetery, removed the remaining grave markers and deeded the cemetery site to themselves for $1 in 1976, claiming it had been abandoned and that no bodies were still there.

During a July 1991 trial, Ken Buehler testified he removed no more than five small tombstones from the land. That was contradicted by at least a half dozen neighbors and county officials who testified that, despite being overgrown with weeds, the cemetery had many tombstones in distinct rows.

The legal system did not accept Buehler's assertion that graves had been moved.

"The bodies of the people interred there still rest under Mr. Buehler's front yard," states a 1992 Iowa Supreme Court ruling.

Relatives of people believed to be buried there filed a lawsuit in 1988 seeking to have the cemetery restored. They also sued the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors, claiming it was responsible under state law to care for the abandoned cemetery.

The supervisors and Buehlers settled the suit in 1990, agreeing to place a flat marker, 15-by-15 inches in county right-of-way south and east of the cemetery.

That wasn't satisfactory to Morgan, Miller and Lemke, who filed lawsuit in 1991 claiming the Buehlers had no right to deed land they didn't own to themselves. The suit asked for the grave markers they felt were buried on the land to be dug up and replaced.

District Court Judge George Stigler, in a July 31, 1991, ruling, granted title to the cemetery land to the Buehlers. But he also ordered them to restore it.

"Given that no care was taken or recordings made as to which grave marker goes with which grave, restore the cemetery to the condition where the public, upon casual observation, will immediately know that the property is, in fact, a cemetery," Stigler wrote.

Disappointed that the Buehlers were allowed to keep the land, Morgan appealed the decision. The state's high court upheld Stigler's decision.

"We fought like crazy to stop it but ran out of money for legal bills," said Morgan, 80, who has lived within two miles of Mount Zion Union Cemetery her whole life.

And despite the county settlement and Stigler's ruling, no markers were installed at the site.

The Buehlers sold the property not long after the court rulings. Reached in Wisconsin, Ken Buehler did not want to talk about the past.

"I have not comment, none," he said.

Messages left for the family who bought the site from the Buehlers were not returned. County records show the house was sold again in July 2007 to Robert Iverson and Kristine Cornelis, who also did not respond to a request for an interview.

Morgan holds no ill will toward those living at the home now, directing her ire at the Buehlers.

"How could anybody do something like that?" she asked. "That was our heritage. Everybody always respected it as a cemetery until the Buehlers came along."

Morgan doesn't believe the grave markers will ever be returned, but she would be satisfied if a monument recognizing those buried there were erected.

Magee, who has compiled a list of more than 50 names of those buried at Mount Zion, said the State Association for the Preservation of Iowa Cemeteries has grants to put a sign on the site. But when he inquired about enforcing the 1991 court order, he was told to "hire a lawyer."

He said the fate of Mount Zion Union Cemetery is shared by many pioneer cemeteries.

"This is the only one I know of in Black Hawk County," Magee said. "But in other counties there's been cemeteries in farm fields that have been plowed up, there's been cemeteries found back in the woods. It's a terrible thing for someone to do."

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Information from: Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, http://www.wcfcourier.com

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.