photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A trio of old tombstones stand at the Franklin Cemetery on the east edge of Lawrence. In the background is the MCM concrete plant that sits on the other side of Kansas Highway 10 from the cemetery.

I know some people who likely wouldn’t object to their final resting place being next door to a Hershey’s plant.

Indeed, there is a cemetery just down the road from the Hershey’s manufacturing plant in Lawrence Venture Park on the east edge of the city. If you didn’t know of the cemetery, don’t feel bad. It likely hasn’t hosted a burial for more than 100 years.

That soon may change.

Plans have been filed at Lawrence City Hall for a new private drive to be built at Franklin Cemetery so that funeral services once again can occur at the 10-acre site along Kansas Highway 10.

“The newest burial we have found is 1917,” Danny Fox, a member of the Knights of Columbus organization with St. John’s Catholic Church, told me.

Since 2016, a group of men with the Knights of Columbus have adopted care of the nearly forgotten cemetery that sits atop a hill north of K-10 but is barely visible to motorists on the highway.

The location is east of the 23rd and O’Connell intersection in eastern Lawrence. If you are familiar with the Hershey’s Salty Snacks plant (yes, let’s disclose now that the plant makes pretzels, not chocolate, so as to avoid any eternal disappointment) it is straight east of that plant, albeit several hundred yards to the east.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

The Franklin Cemetery is pictured in February 2025. The large white building in the background is the Hershey’s Salty Snacks plant in Lawrence Venture Park.

“In 2016, it was totally overgrown,” Fox said. “It seemed like nobody had been out there for 25 years.”

The Knights of Columbus group began holding work days three to four days per year at the site. They also began researching the history of the cemetery, and thus far have discovered that it contains burials that are older than Douglas County, which became a county in 1855.

After a few years of cleaning, the site now looks much more like an old hilltop country cemetery, even if it is near a bustling highway and industrial park.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

The Franklin Cemetery is pictured in February 2025.

“It is very pretty,” Fox said of the view from among the shade trees near the handful of graves that have tombstones. “It will be a nice cemetery when we get things going again.”

The hope is that will be soon, if for no other reason than necessity. Lawrence currently only has one cemetery, Mount Calvary, that caters to the Catholic faith. That three-acre cemetery, just east of the city-owned Oak Hill Cemetery, is nearly full.

In fact, there was a time that cemetery director Al Mauler was worried that the cemetery was full. But the Catholic Church undertook some investigation to determine there is a small parcel of land in the cemetery that doesn’t include graves. That was an interesting process itself. Mauler said it involved researching historical records of burials at Mount Calvary, and then having two crews do soundings to see if their equipment could pick up any signs of coffins buried in the soil. Finally, a grave digger created shallow trenches on the portion of the property to see if there were any signs that the earth had been previously disturbed.

After those rounds of due diligence turned up no signs of graves, Mauler determined there was space for more burials at Mount Calvary.

How much more space? On that, Mauler is hesitant to put a firm number.

“We should be good for another year, or two, maybe more,” Mauler said.

Fox and his group of volunteers are hopeful Franklin Cemetery will be available for burials much sooner than that. Given that the site has long been a cemetery, there isn’t any new zoning needed for the property. Rather, what it really needs is a driveway. There is an unimproved driveway — it looks like the opening to a pasture — off of K-10. However, that won’t work well for the cemetery because the city doesn’t want funeral processions turning off and onto the busy highway.

The site plan filed at City Hall would create a new driveway on the north side of the property. The Catholic Church recently purchased a small piece of land from Douglas County to make the driveway feasible, Fox said. Now, the project is awaiting site plan approval from City Hall.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A tombstone is pictured at the Franklin Cemetery in February 2025.

When the project wins its approvals, Fox said the group likely will install some new markers at the site to help document the history of the old cemetery. That may be a chance for modern-day Douglas County residents to learn about the town of Franklin, which once was a major rival to Lawrence.

Students of the Bleeding Kansas period before the Civil War may already be familiar with Franklin. It was a town that was between Lawrence and Eudora. The townsite included a post office, a hotel and other structures. It was located near where the South Lawrence Trafficway and 23rd Street converge today.

One of the other structures in the town of Franklin was a stone fort. It was built largely to protect the city from … Lawrence. Franklin was established as a pro-slavery town, while Lawrence — of course — was known as the Free State Capital of Kansas. Tensions between the two towns were high. History books note at least two battles that happened at Franklin between pro-slavery and Free State factions. The second battled resulted in the Lawrence militia capturing a cannon named “Old Sacramento,” which was reviled in Lawrence because it was used in the sacking of the city in 1856.

Some history books say Lawrence’s darkest day — Quantrill’s Raid in 1863 — indirectly played a big role in the demise of Franklin as a town, even though the pro-slavery raiders didn’t sack Franklin. Instead, in the months to follow the raid, many of the homes in Franklin were dismantled and moved to Lawrence because the city was in such desperate need of housing.

So, while the cemetery may not have any chocolate, it does have an interesting history. Fox said he expects it also will have plenty of room for burials for many years. The 10-acre site will accommodate several hundred gravesites, he said.

photo by: City of Lawrence/Grob Engineering Services

A site plan rendering shows plans for a new driveway and how the site could accommodate several hundred new grave sites.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A tombstone is pictured at the Franklin Cemetery in February 2025.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A tombstone is pictured at the Franklin Cemetery in February 2025.