photo by: By Elvyn Jones

Those attending the Vinland Cemetery's 100th annual Memorial Day Ceremony Sunday, May 29, 2022, gather in front of the newly renovated shelterhouse. The event marked the 100th anniversary of the building of the shelterhouse and the cemetery's gateway arch.

A visitor can discover an outsized amount of history in Vinland, but Stan Lawson says the people behind the history are resting in a 4-acre plot just northeast of the southern Douglas County hamlet.

“There is a lot of interesting little things here,” he said, pointing to the gravesite of John K. Elwell, who was an associate of famed 19th century military health champion and reformer Clara Barton. “He’s buried there by the big sign. His is the little marker. His parents have the big marker.”

Lawson, a Vinland Cemetery Association board member, made his observations Sunday at the Vinland Cemetery’s 100th annual Memorial Day observation. The day was enhanced with the added 100-year observation of the cemetery’s distinctive gateway arch, which Frank Varnum had erected in his parent’s memory, and the recently renovated shelter house, also dating from 1922.

Resting in the Vinland Cemetery are the men and women behind those distinctive and historic Vinland buildings, Lawson said. Those early settlers built the 122-year-old brick Coal Creek Library, the oldest continuously used library in the state, listened to the sermons of basketball rules author James Naismith at the former Presbyterian Church (now a residence), discussed agricultural issues and socialized at the town’s Grange Hall and annually celebrated the Vinland Valley’s bounty at the Vinland Fair with its historic exhibition hall.

The event, jointly organized by the cemetery association and the Vinland Family and Community Education Club, also honored two local veterans buried in the cemetery, Vietnam War veteran Jack Wiseman and Spanish-American War veteran Sherman A. Harvey.

photo by: Elvyn Jones/Journal-World

Kasi Wiseman Brizuela rings a bell in memory of her father, Vietnam War veteran Jack Wiseman, at the 100th annual Memorial Day Ceremony on Sunday, May 29, 2022, at the Vinland Cemetery

Ken Kern, the event’s master of ceremonies, said Wiseman, who died in 2004, was a lifelong Vinland Valley resident who owned a grain and dairy farm. Sherman Harvey was the son of Exoduster settlers David and Rebecca Harvey. The successful Blue Mound farming couple buried in the Vinland Cemetery sent both their sons to the University of Kansas. Sherman Harvey received a law degree in 1889 and was clerk of the Douglas County District Court before joining the Army. He later practiced law in the Philippines.

Others buried in the cemetery include members of the “Coal Creek Boys,” early anti-slavery settlers who fought with the militia of John Brown in the nearby June 1856 Battle of Black Jack, and settlers whose homes were stops on the Underground Railroad, Lawson said. In addition to Wiseman and Sherman, there are about 90 U.S. military veterans, at least 16 of whom fought in the Civil War, Lawson said.

The stories of many of the Vinland Valley community members buried in the cemetery were recounted on the video “Vinland Cemetery: Stones & Stories,” which played in the shelter house after Sunday’s ceremony.

Ken Kern, the master of ceremonies at the Vinland Cemetery’s Memorial Day observations, plays taps at the conclusion of the ceremony Sunday, May 29, 2022.