HOME IN TAZEWELL COUNTY

Three years ago, I made a trip to Tazewell County, Illinois. My goal was to visit William Ritterhouse's grave. He's buried in the Miars Cemetery which is about five miles outside the small town of Pekin. We were lucky to have some of the members of the Tazewell County Genealogical Society assist us. They had already prepared some information for us and had it waiting at their wonderful library. This included a couple of maps of the county which showed not only where Miars Cemetery was located, but also where William's farm was located. One of the members even drove us to the cemetery. She even stopped by the Pekin Cemetery to show us the grave of Pekin's most famous son -- Senator Everett Dirksen.


The Miars Cemetery is a very small country cemetery located in the Elm Grove Township. Our local guide had arranged for the caretaker of the cemetery, Keith Keller, to meet us out there. Actually, Mr. Keller arranged to be plowing right by the cemetery and parked his tractor and walked over to the cemetery when he saw us. Unfortunately, our ancestor's grave is not marked. There is a record of his grave in row 4, grave number 28. Mr. Keller unfortunately did not know where row 4, grave 28 was located. We did locate approximately where he was buried. (Note: We may try to raise funds to buy a marker for William's grave. If you happen to read this blog and would be interested in contributing to such an effort, let me know in a comment. I'm sure Mr. Keller would help us accomplish that if we decided to do it.)

While we were at the cemetery, Mr. Keller showed us where William's farm was located. You can see it from the cemetery. His farm bordered the Miars' property which holds the cemetery. It is due west of the cemetery, maybe a quarter of a mile.

After we were finished at the cemetery, our wonderful guide took us to the farm where we met the current owner, Wilda Keller. (Wilda is Keith's mother.) She grew up on the old Ritterhouse farm, in the house she believes was built by William. The house is a two-story frame house in the salt box style.. Wilda told us that when she was little, in the early thirties, an older gentleman, whom she believes was one of the Ritterhouse boys, visited the farm and said he was born in the house. She described the farm and some of the changes that had taken place there -- like when the various barns and out buildings had been added. Wilda even sent me pictures of the farm from 1919 after I got home. We were not able to enter the house because of the condition it was in, but Wilda has plans to restore the home and Keith may be moving into it eventually.

It is difficult to describe the thrill of walking around the old farm knowing that the American roots of our Ritterhouse clan began there. I felt a connection to the site and to our history.