Whitney Cemetery, Union Township, Section 26

Pioneer Cemetery

Abandoned, last burial in 1903.

Located 4 miles east and south on blacktop from Union, north 1/4 mile in field near Speas Lake. This cemetery is located 4 miles east and south of Union on the blacktop from Union to Y Ave. turn north 1/4 mile, in the field one the west side of the road near Speas Lake, or southwest of the Floyd Speas home. This site is west of and above the old 1865 Stage Road.
On a scenic knoll in the midst of large oak trees is the Whitney Cemetery. In recent years the county board of supervisors have had the fence re-erected. Prior to that the last fence was erected around these gravestones shortly after World War I.
According to history, in the year of 1856, George B. Whitney, with his wife, Mariah Rowe Whitney and their family, arrived in Hardin County and settled on the east side of the Iowa River in Union township. It was on this farm that their little daughter, Susan, died on Christmas Day in 1860 and was laid to rest among the oak trees, Probably this was the beginning of this small cemetery from which 52 gravestone inscriptions have been copied. The last burial was by horsedrawn hearse in 1903, with the death of Joab Haggin, son of Greenberry Haggin, the first white settler to remain for a winter in Hardin County. Joab's wife, Elizabeth, and three of his sons had been buried here prior to his death.

Records in the Hardin County Courthouse show that on August 21, 1866, George Whitney and his wife Mariah, gave this land to the public, for the purpose of a burial ground.

Today only a few of the stones are standing if any. But the future may brighten as a Pioneer Cemetery Board has been established and is looking into what might be done with Whitney Cemetery to preserve the rich past that resides there.

NW1/4 NE1/4 26-86-21

Copied by Jesse and Julia Lundy Braga, 1974.
Updated by Char Mazurik, 1999.