The Greene County Historical Society’s annual walk through the Jefferson Cemetery will include the graves of Jefferson men who served in the nation’s 19th Century wars.
The walk will take place Sunday, Sept. 21, at 2 pm at the Jefferson municipal cemetery on E. Lincoln Way, and will last about an hour-and-a-half. Rain date is Sept. 28, same time, same place.
Dianne Piepel, co-director of the Historical Society’s museum, will lead the stroll, pointing out headstones and providing information on who they commemorate.
“Since the nation is celebrating 250 years of independence next year, I was interested in soldiers buried in the Jefferson Cemetery who served in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War,” says Piepel.
Among those she’ll talk about are Rippey schoolmates G.S. Toliver and James W. Smith who enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War (1861-1865). Throughout their service they endured sickness and battle wounds. At the war’s end they returned to Greene County, married and reared families.
A young Jefferson man named Clarence Mason lost his life in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War (1898). A popular fellow who belonged to many social and musical groups, his loss was felt deeply by his fellow townspeople, according to Piepel.
Beautiful headstones in the cemetery (which has about 8,000 grave markers) include those for the resting places of the Harrington, McDuffie and Marquis families, who helped build the town of Jefferson.
“And their wives provided cultural events for Jefferson’s growing population,” adds Piepel. Another grave site includes a tender tribute to two little children, a boy and a girl, who died in 1898. They were the children of a local man and his wife. He was a marble mason, who mostly likely carved the tombstone
