On the northwestern side of Charleston is the final resting place for over 15,000 of its former residents.
Mound and Roselawn Cemeteries, once separate entities, are now under one organization and act as the largest cemetery in town.
The first sections of Mound, founded in 1863, were built on land donated by John Berry Hill, according to Cemetery Office Manager Donna Stewart.
“Charleston was getting bigger at that point,” Stewart said. “It had been around for a little over 30 years.”
According to Stewart, Hill was a business owner in Charleston and gave the land due to the other cemeteries in the area filling up.
Stewart said that Charleston residents built a wooden sidewalk to access the cemetery because the area was very swampy.
Hill died in 1917 at the age of 89 and is buried on top of the hill he donated 54 years earlier.
“He has the best view,” Stewart said.
His resting place is marked with a headstone reading “John B. Hill Founded Mound Cemetery 1863.”
Stewart said that Hill was a member of the committee for the Lincoln-Douglas Debate in Charleston in September 1858.
Buried around Hill are other key figures from that debate, like Col. Thomas Alexander Marshall Jr.
Marshall Jr. was an Illinois state senator at the time of the debate and owned a house on Jackson Ave. that was used by Lincoln before the debate.
Marshall Jr. served as a delegate in the 1860 Republican National Convention, where Lincoln received the party’s nomination for the presidency.
During the Civil War, Marshall Jr. was a colonel in the calvary and briefly served as the lieutenant governor from 1860-1861.
Marshall Jr. died in 1873 at 56 years old and is buried next to his wife, Ellen Marshall, who died in 1907 at 88 years old.
Mound also contains the graves of two members of prominent families in the history of Charleston.
The Frost family, who arrived in Coles County in 1829, has a line of graves at the bottom of the original hill, where there are several grave markers that are older than Mound itself.
These markers include Henry Frost, who died in 1837; John Frost, who died in 1850; and Sarah Frost, who died in 1855.
Stewart said that there is no exact known reason as to why the graves are there, but she speculates that they may have been moved after the cemetery was founded or that there could have been a neighborhood cemetery in the location before Mound was founded.
On top of the hill, there is a section of graves that has been fenced in by short iron gates — the only part of the cemetery that is like that, according to Stewart.
This is the site of the graves of the Van Deren family. Joseph Van Deren was a businessman in Charleston. He was very successful in life, but he died penniless, according to Stewart.
“He had spent all his money,” Stewart said. “He had lent out a lot of his money. He had a lot of friends that I think took advantage of him.”
Mound Cemetery is also the final resting place for several victims of the Charleston/Mattoon tornado that went through Coles County on May 26, 1917.
According to the National Weather Service, over 200 homes were destroyed and 34 people were killed.
One of those victims was Randolph Barnes, who served in the Civil War with the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment.
After the war, he came to Coles County, where he would stay for the rest of his life.
Roselawn Cemetery was founded in 1913 as an addition to Mound Cemetery, but the two operated separately until the 1990s.
Stewart said that the two merged under the not-for-profit Charleston Cemeteries Inc. due to Roselawn struggling financially and not having as many plots.
Jason Coulombe can be reached at 581-2812 or at jmcoulombe@eiu.edu.
