Springville City Cemetery - Established 1851

Rather than an update of an update on the last post, I will lay the latest discovery here. It isn't much, but it's a solid, contemporaneous source for the establishment of the Springville Cemetery in June, 1851.

The Church History Library has a great diary on-line of Luke W. Gallup (1822-1891) MS_8472. Among the first settlers of Springville Utah, he was a clerk to Bishop Aaron Johnson. He appears to have had some surveying skills. There is a great copy of  the first plat of Springville City itself in his diary.

1851 Plat of Springville, Utah. Note Charles Hulet's name at No. 5 on Block 3.

And Gallup certainly had good writing skills in penmanship as well as expression. He is very self-reflective in a modern sense and very "main-stream," in the context of his day, with his religious beliefs and practices. He judges others in a charitably soft way. And those were interesting days in Springville with constant new settlers, pioneering, apostasy, reformation, bishop's courts, murder(!), visiting church authorities, visiting Indians, polygamy, and the Utah War.

Of particular note and the purpose for this post, are the following:

1851 - June

2d An eve. meeting in the Fort Square, relative to surveying a burial place.

5^th Assisted Stewart in Bish. Johnsons house making a plat of cemetery &c.

Margaret Noah Hulet died on 15 April May 1851. If not the first she certainly was among the first of the pioneer burials in Springville.* It was just a few two weeks later that Luke Gallup helped survey and lay out the cemetery. I think this confirms my theory that the cemetery was established from the grave of Margaret. She was in the middle section of the north half of the east side in the old, presumably original, section.

If only Gallup had included a plat of that cemetery as well . . . .

Still, I think we don't give our pioneer ancestors enough credit. They knew that cemetery. They laid it out. I really think they knew who was there and where they were.

It does appear that the original city plat and the cemetery do connect. If you wanted to find the cemetery from that old plat, continue straight south along the street at the far left, Second West, and you will eventually arrive right at Margaret's grave.

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*Another look at the Springville Ward records indicate that there was an earlier burial with a death of Sarah Ann Ford on 8 May 1851. Two others of the Ford family followed her and Margaret in death from the disease that Margaret Hulet was treating as the town's "nurse" who likely died from the same disease. The Ford Family grave is in the Old Cemetery, Block 63, Lot 3, specific grave plots unknown - according to the cemetery records. However, this only helps confirm my other theories as Block 63 is right in line between the Kirkman plot and the Frampton plot. [Additions & corrections of September 3, 2013]