Wyuka Cemetery
This cemetery is located at the intersection of 19th & Industrial Road in Nebraska City, with the main entrance on the east side of the cemetery on 19th street.
The cemetery is maintained by the:
Wyuka Cemetery Association
Nebraska City, NE 68410
(402) 873-6552
The cemetery was founded in 1855 and is still in use today. A.T. Andreas, in the his writings in the book, History of the State of Nebraska, best describes the origin of the cemetery, along with some of the gravestones that can be found on location there:
"Prior to the year 1855, the remains of the few, in the new settlement, who had died, were buried in the square bounded by Laramie and Main, and Eleventh and Twelfth streets. In the year mentioned a cemetery was laid out by the town company, named Wyuka Cemetery in 1856, the name signifying in the Indian vernacular, 'resting place.' The first interment was that of the body of John Clement. The cemetery is situated southwest of the city, and immediately adjacent to it, occupying a low knoll. It is well fenced, abundantly shaded by forest trees of various kinds, and in it are to be found very many appropriate and tasteful memorials, noticeable among which are the monuments erected to the memory of Mrs. J. Sterling Morton, and to that of Judge Daniel Gantt.
The former of these stands near the middle of the cemetery. The enclosed ground is about nine yards square, though the square is not regular. The bounding wall is stone--hard and durable, with qualities for resisting weather--truthfully carved in the similitude of logs cut from the timber. The design shows the walls of a log cabin, on the west side of which, facing Arbor Lodge, the home Mrs. Morton helped to establish, are the threshold steps, and part of the lintel posts. The stone of the steps roughly squared as wood under the pioneer's ax. In the center is the main feature of the monument. It is in the shape of a trunk of a mighty elm, the top torn off, one fragment of a limb broken, but still adhering to the trunk--a dead tree, erect in death, and twined about by the clasping ivy which, though gray stone, is instinct with the suggestion of green life in the strength with which every detail is cut.
At the base of the decaying trunk, stones are piled as a heap of rock; and through a space in the stones, spring a cluster of truthfully carved fern fronds, in seeming growing as the natural ferns grow among the rocks in a wood. On the base also is an overturned flower vase, in which is a calla lily--the plant broken, and the flower fading, and the other vegetable forms chosen, being those which Mrs. Morton most loved. On the west side of the tree trunk, resting on the stonework is a sheet of music--"Rock of Ages," with every note of the music cut deeply in the stone. There is also a palette, with the word "mother" carved thereon, the brushes, which have passed their use, and tubes of oil paint laid beside it--mementoes of the art spirit in Mrs. Morton; and besides these, and holding equal place with them, the "mother s knitting," without which and that which the knitting expresses the art work, at its best, could make but half a life.
On the highest point of the blasted tree sits a mother bird. Under one wing is a young bird whose attitude suggests shrinking from the void around. The mother peers anxiously into a little hollow in the trunk below her, made by the breaking off of a bough. The eye follows the bird's wistful look, and becomes aware, in the hollow, of three other young birds who have been trying their wings, as young birds must, and who now seem as doubtfully anxious as the mother, though their anxiety is about the space they propose, yet fear to try, while the mother bird's anxiety is for them. This is an exquisite touch of nature in art that needs no words to draw the moral--a touch of nature at a point where the whole intelligent creation is bound in one.
At several points on the tree trunk, which is about twenty feet in height and weighs eight tons, being three feet in diameter at the base, and twenty inches in diameter at the top, the thick bark is peeled off, leaving spaces on the under surface of the tree. On one of these surfaces is cut "Cynthia E. French, wife of David, foster-mother of Mrs. J. Sterling Morton, died at Arbor Lodge November 18, 1857, aged seventy years. On another surface is the inscription, "Caroline, wife of J. Sterling Morton, died at Arbor Lodge, June 29, 1881, aged forty-seven years. She was the mother of Joy, Paul, Mark and Carl Morton"--paucity of words, good when the story is otherwise told, as it is in this monument, for words are not sole media of ideas, and there are songs without words.
The cemetery, which has heretofore been under the charge of the City Council, is now, in 1882, under the controlling administration of Hon. J. Sterling Morton, who has devoted, and is giving sufficient attention to its improvement to justify a prediction that it will very soon he one of the finest places of burial in the West." (1)
Burial Listing: A complete listing of burials can be found at: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~neotoe/wyuka/index.htm
Gravestone Photographs: http://nebraskagravestones.org/
Point of Contact: Contact the Wyuka Cemetery Association at (402) 873-6552 for any questions you might have in regards to the cemetery.
Cemetery Photographs:
Works Cited:
(1) A.T. Andreas (1882). History of the State of Nebraska, The Western Historical Company, Chicago, IL.
