JOURNEY CEMETERY.. A Cemetery Lost In Time Pike County Illinois -- Journey is a beautiful and serene cemetery atop a bluff near the Mississippi River that was once owned by Joseph Journey who owned at least two other properties nearby. Mr. Journey is buried at the cemetery as well as some of his family members. Men and their families who worked for Mr. Journey are also buried there. Many people in the Kinderhook Township area were buried at Journey throughout the 1800s. There are also several from southern Adams County who eternally rest there. It is unknown what the cemetery was originally called. There are many graves with headstones with markings that can no longer be read easily. Many of these stones were chiseled from the edge of the nearby bluff. There are also four Indian burial mounds at Journey. Malinda Hull Stratton (1810-1831) is the earliest known burial. Malinda was married to Jonas Stratton whose brother Charles purchased the land in 1830. The oldest found headstone is that of Harriet Stratton who died in 1843. She was the wife of Charles Stratton. B. F. Webb who passed away in 1841 has a modern headstone which is the only modern stone in the cemetery. This stone had been hit by a fallen tree and was set back up in 2017. One of the last known burials was the unidentified floater who had drown in the Mississippi River in 1902. He was later identified as Johnny Moore. His grave is unmarked. -- Kevin Dunker, who now owns Journey Cemetery, said as a child he lived nearby and remembers exploring the cemetery. He said he seen few stones other than rock stones that had been used as grave markers. When Kevin later bought the property which includes Journey he said it was overgrown with trees and brush, and that in prior years had been overran with cattle causing stones to be knocked over with some being damaged. In Autumn 2017, Kevin started clearing brush and trees from Journey and in the process discovering more headstones. Journey Cemetery has two separate areas.. the second area was not known until Kevin started working on the cemetery. The newly discovered part is where Joseph Journey, two of his daughters and a few others are buried. A local lady, who does stone restoration, has done restoration work on some of the headstones at Journey. When I first visited Journey in January 2018 Kevin had already done a tremendous amount of work on the cemetery in just three months time. Journey is like no other cemetery I've been too. It has a beautiful, peaceful surrounding. A sense of wonder and mystery. There is the small rock foundation with a few headstones and an old Burl tree. There are many crude, jagged stones sticking out of the ground.. some with initials but all unknown. Then there are the known ones.. Journeys, Gudgels, Wassons, Strattons. Kevin's hard work and determination of preserving Journey shows everywhere one looks and the Journey continues.. -- In 1817 the area of the land that is now Journey Cemetery was a Military Tract and was given to Eddy Solomon who lived in the eastern part of the United States. Charles Stratton (1792-1846) purchased the land (80 acres) at $1.25 per acre in 1830. Joseph Journey bought the property in July 1854 from the Reverend William J. Rutledge who was married to Charles Stratton's daughter Lois. With this purchase Journey begins. -- Joseph W. Journey was born May 8th 1813 to Peter and Sarah Harrison Journey in Palmyra (Marion County Missouri). Peter was a Major in the War of 1812. He was one of three first judges of the Ralls County Court in 1821 and was elected to the Missouri legislature in 1822 and served until 1824. Peter Journey moved his family to Adams County Illinois around 1824-1825. Journey was associated with John Wood and helped lay out Adams County in 1825. Peter Journey was elected a member of the first Board of County Commissioners in July of that year. He performed the first marriage in Adams County of which there is any record. The license was written on brown paper, and solemnized July 26th 1825 the marriage of Daniel Ray and Rachel Thomas. An old Quincy newspaper mentions the Journey family originally lived in the upper gorge when Indians and wild animals roamed the country. Later the family resided ten miles south of Quincy at the lower end of a bluff in what is now Fall Creek Township (Adams County). Joseph's mother passed away and his father remarried to Phebe Harrison in 1818. To this union was born a daughter, Sarah Harrison Journey who would later marry Elihu Seehorn. Peter Journey passed away when his son was around fourteen. Joseph Journey was a Pike County farmer who owned close to three hundred acres of Pike County land in 1860. He married Caroline Young on January 1st 1839 who was the daughter of Austin and Margaret Young. Caroline was born in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri on October 14th 1823. Joseph and Caroline had at least ten children: George, Peter, James, Joseph, Andrew, Hellen Lorett, Dora, Perrie, Mary and Rhoda. Joseph died on January 21st 1863. Caroline moved to Payson after his death but continued to own the Journey property until she passed away. She died at the Quincy home of her daughter, Dora Journey Jellison, on October 8th 1898. In 1912, the Journey's daughter, Mary Journey Edwards, owned the property. In 1930, Mary owned the property next to the cemetery property that in 1930 was owned by Dan Slater. Hellen and Rhoda, who died young, are buried at Journey as is their father. Their mother, Caroline passed away in 1898 and is interred at the Payson New Cemetery (Adams County Illinois). The stone on the grave memorializes both Caroline and her husband Joseph Journey. Two of the Journeys children are buried at the Thompson-Seehorn Cemetery where Caroline's parents, Austin and Margaret, are also interred. Although Peter Journey, who died in 1827 (year is from the date of probate record), has a Find-a-Grave Memorial for Journey Cemetery, he is most likely not buried there. Possibly he is interred at the same cemetery, Thompson-Seehorn Cemetery, as his two young grandsons which is located in Fall Creek Township, Adams County Illinois. His son Joseph, who later owned Journey Cemetery, was around fourteen when his father passed away and did not buy the Journey Cemetery property until 1854. Sources: Kevin Dunker, From the Past and Present of Adams County Illinois, Quincy Daily Whig 1854, Quincy Daily Herald (1893 and 1925), Ralls County, Missouri History and Adams County Courthouse (Quincy), Pike County Illinois Plat Maps (1860, 1872 and 1895). -- In 2001, Monty Lee Robertson, gave the description of the state of Journey Cemetery at that time when his cousin and her husband first went to Journey.. They were taken to the area by the current owner of the property on which the cemetery is located and said it was very difficult to get to, due to the fact that the old road to the cemetery is now overgrown with trees and weeds, requiring them to take a very steep path up the side of the bluff. She took pictures of the area of the cemetery but informed me that all but a few of the grave markers had been removed and those that remained were all weathered so badly that she was unable to decipher or recognized any names. She further explained that the area of the original cemetery was so over-grown that it could hardly be recognized as a burial ground. In 2017, Kevin told the Quincy Herald Whig newspaper during an interview about Journey.. "I'm kind of hooked on it now," he said. "It's never-ending." This remains true for Kevin who continues to take care of Journey and works in other cemeteries as time allows. Maintaining Journey takes Kevin fourteen to fifteen hours each time he does it. This includes mowing, trimming, weed eating, removing fallen trees.. and in the process Kevin sometimes makes a new headstone discovery. Kevin maintains Journey on his own with a few private donations given for maintenance. Lisa Ruble March 15th 2021