Old cemeteries can tell a huge amount of history and are becoming more popular all the time to find out just who lived in what age and in many cases how they died as well.
The cemetery at Hungry Hollow just east of Clear Creek is choked with lilacs and among those lilacs are names of children who died of influenza, and old timers who died after one might think they should.
The cemeteries in Zortman and Landusky, one choked out with iris, the other in an old growth forest tell many stories.
At the Zortman cemetery are buried many members of the Whitcomb family. They partially owned the Ruby Gulch Mining Company for many years. They have huge boulders marking where they are resting today and just one look at those massive boulders and one can tell that this is the resting place of a well known and beloved family. The cemetery is in a forest and a trek through the cemetery is a trek through this beautiful wooded bower. It is really something.
The cemetery at Landusky is not as elaborate but contains the graves of Tavie and Jim Kipp. Now there is a Montana pioneer family if there ever was one. Seeing that cemetery and the names of countless miners through the ages is to experience what the Little Rockies used to be like.
Just a couple of miles south of the Landusky cemetery is boot hill where Pike Landusky and two other bad men are buried. There is a huge pile of rocks on the top of Pike Landusky's grave. The old story goes that Landusky was so mean that they buried him four feet deeper than usual and piled that pile of rocks on top of his grave so he could not get out.
It might be said that when Kid Curry killed Pike Landusky he did a public service to the Little Rockies. Landusky's boot hill is on his old ranch. Old timers of that time were not going to waste any more land than they had to on a boot hill.
Lots of stories about cemeteries.
Thanks to Vicki Kulbeck, we have a honored cemetery in our midst. Called the Kenilworth cemetery is holds 42 graves and a lot of stories, some new and most old. Vicki's husband was buried there a couple of years ago and Vicki says she is going to be buried there as well.
The cemetery is west of Big Sandy on the Kenilworth road.
Here are some facts that Vicki has researched about that garden of good and evil as cemeteries are referred to by some authors.
Three acres were donated for a Bethany Evangelical Church in 1917 by Olaf and Clara Karlgodt. A church was going to be built there but never was. Instead the three acres has served as a cemetery since 1917.
There are 42 people buried there at present including three unknown children.
Vicki says there are housewives, children, farmers, military men and one military woman, teachers, students, a doctor, a mail carrier, immigrants and one indentured servant buried in the cemetery.
Some of the deaths that took these people to their final resting place were cancer, drowning, German Flu, stillborns, pneumonia, septic, lagrippe, heart failure, car accident, renal failure, appendicitis and just plain old age.
First to be buried in the cemetery was Mike J. Weiss.
Christian and Thea Odegard donated some land for the cemetery as well. They came from Norway to Minnesota in 1905 and ended up in Montana in 1910.
They had 12 children, one died at one year old.
Thera, the eleventh child, married a neighbor Otto Finke.
Finke's came to Montana from Germany.they arrived in Big Sandy in 1910 and had four children. Otto was the last child and he married neighbor Thera.
See Page 3: Cemetery
Vicki notes that great, great grandson Fred Finke and family ranch the family land yet.
And one fun fact. Clara Odegard and her sister married brothers and homesteaded together.
Vicki Kulbeck had put together a well researched book about the Kenilworth Cemetery. She would like to share it with neighbors and maybe get some questions answered that have never been answered.
Specifically, Vicki needs information on
Kristine Kviltlang
Arthur Christofferson
Baby girl Christofferson
Audrey Irene Kulbeck
Mike J. Weiss.
Cemeteries tell us so much and "The Mountainer" have not even scratched the surface from the research that Vicki Kulbeck has done on her beloved Kenilworth cemetery.
