The forgotten Mormon cemetery

Just outside of Amboy, past the Catholic cemetery is a turnoff to the Left called appropriately enough Mormon road. Take that and go down a mile or two and off to the right side and nearly invisible from the road is a forgotten and abandoned Mormon cemetery.

The Mormons arrived in the Amboy area around the 1830's and settled down to an uneasy existence which was only made worse by the death of  Joseph Smith in 1844. The church split off into several splinter groups one of which was the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ. This was the group in Lee county.

The cemetery was organized in the middle of the 19th century with the first burial in 1854. All told there are only about twenty one graves there that have been found. The day that we visited we only found two headstones, both in severe disrepair. It's clear that in another couple of years there will be nothing left that's legible.

If there's any genealogists out there that want to go take some tracings of these headstones my advice is go soon. To find it drive down Mormon road and look for a modern house on the left sides of the road. The cemetery is on the opposite side of the road. There's a short drive up a hill to get to it but it was easily navigable. ( Once we found it ).