Joseph Fowler Cemetery

Several years ago as I was working on gathering information for the Crittenden County Cemetery Books,  I would hear that there was a Fowler Cemetery out somewhere off the old Fords Ferry Road, the only thing I could find about it was that at one time the Pilot Knob Cemetery was known as the Fowler Cemetery.  And this was true as the land that the Pilot Knob Cemetery was located on was once the farm land owned by pioneer settler, Stephenson Fowler.  So I let it rest.

BUT, some years later more information came into view from the descendants of the Joseph S. Fowler descendants.

 Yes, there was a Joseph Fowler Family Cemetery, which is located on the Carl Fowler Rd. off of Fords Ferry Rd. about 3-4 miles from Marion on the original Fowler homestead land. 

In the picture above, you can see some of the stones that had been removed, but will soon be replaced, and in the back ground the newly placed flags to mark the old grave sites.

Carl and Tom Fowler worked in concrete and stone work, and Tom removed the old stones from the cemetery, took them to his workshop, not too far from the cemetery, and his plans were to re-carve the names and dates on the stones and do some repair on them, then re-place them on their location in the cemetery.  He died before getting this done and the stones lay around the shop and piled against a tree for many years.

Recently, brothers, Rudy (on left) and Lanny Fowler have become interested in re-locating the cemetery plot, and getting the stones reset, and also designating the original area once again as a cemetery.

With the help of grave dowsing rods we have located the grave sites in the old cemetery and they have marked them with flags, this way the area of the original cemetery can be marked.  There are not stones for all the located grave sites, but at least they know where the were once.  Lanny said he was going to reset the stones as best he could as to where they set originally.  There are several bases, he hopes to fit the stones to these bases.

Joseph S. Fowler was the oldest stone in the cemetery.  He died Jan. 17, 1840, age 63 years, so he would have been born 1797.  On his stone is the Weeping Willow, the symbol of sorrow and human sadness.

Preserving and caring for these old family cemeteries is wonderful.  So many have been destroyed and lost forever.  I'm grateful to Rudy and Lanny for their wanting to preserve their family heritage for future generations.