Cemetery transcription by members of the Jacksonville Area Genealogical and Historical Society



On Jan. 9, 1856, William Wilkinson deeded a plot of ground 104 feet square to be used as a family burial ground. Mr. Wilkinson deeded the land to John B. Duncan, James Berdan and Isaac R. Bennet as members of the county court, to be held in trust forever for the use of Mary Fearneyhough, Ann Elliott, Ellen Sharpe, William Wilkinson, James Wilkinson and Francis Wilkinson and their descendants. Recorded at the Morgan County Court House on Jan. 28, 1856 there is good reason to believe the deed mistakenly refers to the burial ground as being in the northwest quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 3 in Township 14 N and Range 11 W. Close reading of the deed and description of the measurements leads to the conclusion that William Wilkinson actually intended the deed to read 1/4 acre in a square form in the northwest quarter of the southeast (not southwest) quarter of Section 3. When Mrs. Sanford (Florence) Hutchison and Miss Elizabeth Hardy visited the site on June 17, 1976 they found the area is now under cultivation, with no trace of the cemetery remaining. The site is exactly two miles directly east of Lynnville, in western Morgan County. In earlier times another family cemetery was located 1/2 mile south of Wilkinson Cemetery. Believed to have been Middleton Cemetery, it was located at the southwest corner of two rural roads. The bodies formerly interred in Middletown Cemetery were long ago moved to Jacksonville's Diamond Grove Cemetery. Legal description of Middleton Cemetery was in the northwest quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 10 in Township 14 N and Range 11 W.

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