These cemeteries are now very close to Carlyle Lake and while there are no longer gates and the town of Carlyle has grown to the edge of the cemeteries, the cemeteries are still very much in use and are very well maintained.

This database contains our readings of all the stones found plus lots of extra information garnered from several other sources, which allowed us to include many more maiden names of the deceased as well as parents' names and even some maiden names of the deceased's mother. 

Foremost, we sincerely appreciate and thank the Clinton County Historical Society (CCHS) for their initial readings of these cemeteries years ago. A few of the stones that they read are no longer here so that information would have been lost forever without their earlier reading..

We can not thank Tina Weigman and Father George Mauck at St. Mary’s Church enough for giving us a copy of their computerized burial database from about 1858 through 2002. We were able to pick up about 1,050 new names with no stones or death certificates which would have otherwise never have been identified. We also supplemented stone data for about 2,150 other names with such treasures as maiden names and parent’s names including mother’s maiden names. We now have almost 4,200 names in this cemetery.

Equally we thank Bonnie Kohrmann of the Carlyle Cemetery Association for giving us a copy of their burial records from 1927 through 2002.  Unfortunately the records prior to 1927 burned in a shed fire.

We thank Tom Frerker of the Frerker’s Funeral Home, John Zieren and Andy Zieren of the Zieren-Day Funeral Home, and Joe Smothers of the Corps of Engineers for assistance in creating or verifying the plats we made, adding names of owners of those lots where no stones exist and in giving us copies of their old burial ledgers. Everyone gave us much history and support and great attitude.

The map portrays the relationship of the two cemeteries. We retained the section designations that the Clinton County Historical Society (CCHS) used in their initial readings and then added a few more for the additional sections. The sequence for the alphabetical designations for the different section is in the sequence of snaking around the cemeteries. We marked the starting points for our numbering of rows and graves in each section with black solid circles on the map.

1. Our readings of the stones where only a very few are truly illegible.

2. We added the owners of lots with no markers based on the plat maps at the two funeral homes.

3. We added names of people that were moved from other cemeteries during the construction of Carlyle Lake, including to other cemeteries, based on the Corps of Engineers’ records.

4. We added names of people from the death register from 1878 to 1903 as recorded in Clinton County Death Record Index that were identifiable as being buried in Carlyle.

5. Next were the names from St. Mary’s Catholic Church burial records, including those buried in other cemeteries.

6. Finally, we added names from the Carlyle Cemetery Association records from 1927 onward. Hopefully we have been able to mesh records for the same person into a single record, but could easily have missed some meshing if one record used the first given name and the second record used the middle name. We also could have combined two separate people whose clues were similar.

These things are not included yet but could be added if other volunteers submit the data:

1. Death or burial records from Carlyle Protestant churches.

2. Burial permits.

3. Death certificates from 1904 through 1916 available on Family History Center microfilm or at the County Clerk’s office and after that from the County Clerk’s office.

4. We added names of people from the death register from 1878 to 1903 as recorded in our Clinton County Death Record Index  that were identifiable as being buried in Carlyle and generally did not have stones.

5. Obituaries from microfilmed newspapers dating back to 1860’s.

6. Additional funeral home records.

7. Miscellaneous death records from other towns.

We made every effort to read each and every stone currently in these cemeteries. We ask the reader to consider the following points with respect to the data that we were able to get from these stones. Especially the old stones:

 

FACTORS AFFECTING THE READING OF THE STONES:

1. Condition of the stones. Broken and/or chipped: Time, animals and lawn mowers have taken their toll, often obliterating the pertinent data on the stones. Some stones have been preserved by the construction of small concrete pads in which the old stones were set. Some of these stones had pertinent information buried in concrete when these preservation attempts were made. Thanks to these efforts, at least some of the data was saved from total destruction. After nearly 150 years, the wind and rain have worn some stones almost smooth. In some places erosion has almost completely buried some stones. Often these stones had their lettering preserved by being covered with dirt.

2. Language used for stone inscriptions. Most stones were in English but there were also many in German and a rare one written in Latin. When the stone was written in German we made a loose translation into English and have placed an asterisk * in the comments field to indicate this.

3. Placement of stones with no surnames. In some instances there were small stones or footstones with a given name with or without dates but no surname. We used the plat information and death registers to make an educated guess as to the surname and then indicated this in the comments field.

4.  Erroneous presumed connections between families due to the placement of stones.  When the preservation technique of placing the stones in concrete was used, sometimes stones not connected to each other were now placed together on a single concrete pad. Sometimes a family would release an empty grave for burial of someone with no family.

5.  Light: Sunshine or cloudy days, morning, noon or evening could sometimes help us to read a stone.

All of these factors contributed to the deciphering of these stones. We often would make three or more guesses before coming to a final "best guess" decision.

If you have knowledge (documentation) of a firmer spelling or date on any of these stones, please contact one of the readers at the top of this page. Many times family members buried side by side spelled their names differently. We will retain the stone spelling when we can and make a comment on alternate spellings..

If you know of someone who is buried in either of these cemeteries with no stone, again tell one of the readers at the top of this page about it. Give us name, dates, etc. and tell us what section you think they are buried in, or we’ll add them to our Unknown section. We’ll add a comment that you furnished the information.

Any stones that are in need of repair should be brought to the attention of the appropriate cemetery's caretakers. It is our understanding that stone repairs are made in May of each year.

It is generally estimated that only about 60% of the dead/graves/burials have markers in old cemeteries. Although we don’t have a lot of the exact locations pinpointed, we will certainly far exceed that average based on names.

FACTORS AFFECTING ROW AND GRAVE DESIGNATION

1. Alignment of stones: Often footstones from one row would be in line with the headstones of the previous row. It took patience to separate them. We understand that sometimes the father or neighbor would go out to the cemetery to bury someone, especially children, and say yep, this looks about the right spot and they would just dig there. The rows wave, divide and almost merge with the next row, especially in City Sections A & F.

2. Plat information: We were very fortunate to have had access to many of the old plats for both the Catholic and City cemeteries. As we tried to make the stones in any given lot "fit" the allotted space for the usual lot of 8 graves, we discovered that often space in an aisle was used as well. We were also fortunate to have access to an old funeral home ledger, which actually stated that so-and-so had bought such-and-such lot and the adjoining "ile". An added factor told to us by a seasoned funeral home director was that in the "olden days" people would buy a cemetery lot and then go out and put their own markers on it to define its perimeter. We also discovered that as some early wide pathways were no longer required for wagons and such, they were platted and sold as grave spaces. Some original platted lots are actually in wooded areas now and we do not know if there are graves there or not. We have included all visible markers that we could find.

3.  Duplicate stones:  In general we found that when the first person from a family died there might be a small stone placed on that person's grave. Then later, after more members of the family passed away, a larger monument might be placed on the family lot with many family members' names and dates. Often the first person, perhaps a child, was then included on the family monument. In some places people actually had three stones due to the inclusion of a military stone. There is also the possibility that a family put a new stone in place after the first one became worn for that individual. We have tried to include each person only one time and made a notation of the other stone or stones.

• GHS means Government Military Head Stone for the Illinois Veterans’ Commission use. These stones may actually be in a footstone or side stone position.
• PHS means Private Military Head Stone. This information differentiates the government head stone from the privately purchased head stone.
• S/w means the deceased "shares the stone with"
• * Means the stone is engraved in German and we translated it into English.
• ** Means that there is no stone, we got the name from the plat map as the owner of the lots.
• + Means we added information from the St. Mary’s Church burial records and translated the given names from Latin. A + after the person’s name means the whole line came from the church records.
• # Means we added information from the Carlyle Cemetery Association’s burial records.

   St. Mary's & Carlyle City Cemetery Map 

Partial information has been received from the Carlyle City Cemetery Association, which we have added to the records. Their records through 1926 were burned in a shed fire at the Cemetery.

Plat Maps -  In an effort to help you find possible other relatives or friends/neighbors of your ancestors (due to the practice of people who lived together burying together) we have created plat maps of most of the sections.  Each section that is underlined has a plat map.  Be sure to allow time for them to load, some of them are mighty wide.

Section AA  Probably the very oldest part of the City Cemetery. This section now has only 15 scattered worn stones, a couple won’t make it too many more years. Everyone we talked to assumes that this section is completely filled, and that the wooden and shale crosses have disintegrated. Carlyle was founded in 1818 but there are only a couple of stones in the two whole cemeteries that date back to the 1830’s, 1840’s and 1850’s, so it’s possible this Section is indeed filled. The sexton's house was on this section and now only a block sexton's shed remains. It sounds logical that this is the same spot where the earlier sexton’s shed was that burned with all of the city cemetery records. We received an estimate of where the house stood and just made the plat for an estimated number of graves to give a feel for how many people might be buried here. We based it on the same number of rows as are in Section F across Main Road, so this is all conjecture. There is a small natural drainage ravine that divides Section AA from A.

Section A  -  The third oldest portion of the City Cemetery. No plat records exist on this portion either, so we built our own. Again it is certainly not perfect. The rows curve and wave and are a challenge to decide which stones are in which row. Some stones are very worn and difficult to read, of course. Some older funeral home ledgers do exist and they provide a real opportunity to try to piece together this puzzle, but at least we have names of the buried.

Section E  - This Section is shared diagonally with St. Mary Cemetery. A partial plat map of the city section was made available to us. This section has some old stones and wavy rows but for the most part, the stones are all readable.

Section F  – The second oldest section for City burials, it faces Lake Road. Stones are primarily in English. Earlier cemetery records for this section were also burned so that information is lost. We were very fortunate to find the plat map for this section which shows all the lot numbers. The funeral home’s ledger books had many names of people buried here without stones. This is another example of where wooden crosses and shale markers were probably used to mark graves.

Section H  – The area within the Circle Drive. The grave numbers are counted as though there is no contour of the circle road.

Section L – Four burials are made here. No plat was created for these four.

Section M –  Some, not all, earlier African-American burials were made here. The northern portion has now been platted for current burials.

Section N –  East of Lake Road. Active section, burials still being made.  The flag pole and the Veterans’ Memorial are in this Section.

Section O  - East of Lake Road. Newest City Cemetery section, burials still being made.

Section P  - East of Lake Road. All are graves that were either moved to Carlyle during the construction phase of Carlyle Lake in the 1960’s or people that had previously owned lots in the moved cemetery but died after the move.

Section Y – These are people that are buried in cemeteries other than the Carlyle cemeteries. These names came from those stones transferred during the construction of Carlyle Lake and from the City Association ledger sheets.

Section Z – The people that the death registers say are buried in Carlyle but no match has appeared in other records – so these are the Unknowns for the City Cemetery. It is possible that a couple of these could be in St. Mary’s. More will probably appear here when more death registers and other church records are transcribed.

  Carlyle City Cemetery Alphabetical Listings 

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St. Mary’s Cemetery

Plat Maps - In an effort to help you find possible other relatives or friends/neighbors of your ancestors (due to the practice of people who lived together burying together) we have created plat maps of most of the sections.  Each section that is underlined has a plat map.  Be sure to allow time for them to load, some of them are mighty wide.

Some additional family information might be available from the Catholic Church microfilms on births, baptisms, first communions, marriages and deaths, for the Southern Illinois Diocese. A copy of these are only at the Belleville Public Library and at the St. Louis County Library. We are very proud that there are currently almost 4,200 names listed here.

Section B – No burials at this time.

Section C – No burials at this time.

Section D  - Active section, burials still being made.

Section E  - The western diagonal portion of the Section that is shared with the City.

Section G  – The oldest Catholic graves. The rows are in straight lines and the stones are in typical condition for old cemeteries. Many of the stones are in German.

Section I  - Second oldest of the St. Mary Sections. Some stones are in German.

Section J  - Active section, burials still being made here.

Section K  - Newest section at this time, burials still being made here.

Section L – Only 4 people are buried here, no plat map was created.

Section U – These are the people that the Death Registers and the Church records say have been buried in St. Mary’s, but the exact location of the burial is Unknown. Some of the locations could be assumed to be in the lot with some one with the same surname, but that will be up to the researcher to make that decision. Naturally no plat could be made.

Section Other – These are the people that are buried in cemeteries other than in St. Mary’s or in Carlyle City but were included in the St. Mary’s burial records and the Corps of Engineers’ records. We chose to include these here since we didn’t want to lose the data.

St. Mary's Alphabetical Cemetery Listings

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Happy Hunting from Carol, Gloria and Dorothy

Clinton County Cemetery Index

Clinton County ILGenWeb Page

This file last modified 22 July 2008