Will Bower Cemetery Have To Be Abandoned?

By Gordon HopkinsAfter several years of neglect, a group of concerned citizens is looking for a way to “reactivate” the Bower Cemetery Association.The Bower Cemetery is a two acre site and was sold to the Bower Cemetery Association on August 16 1817. Roger Shinn and Phyllis McCown addressed the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners at a meeting on Tuesday, January 23, 2024. Both said they were upset at the current condition of the cemetery. McGowan told commissioners, “The last time it was taken care of, it was I paid out of my own pocket for my grandson to come from Oakdale and come and mow and then I did some weeding.”Traditionally, cemeteries have an association that raises money for maintenance. However, the Bower Cemetery Association is no longer active.Commissioner Michael Dux asked, “So does the Cemetery Association, do they hold some money?”McGowen said there was no more money in the association’s bank account. County Attorney Joseph Casson explained the difficulty, “The thing that’s kind of peculiar about cemetery associations is that they are to take care of the dead, that there has to be somebody living to do that. And so, in the beginning, this cemetery association was formed by people who were alive to place people who were going to die. And the people who are living at the time that administer the cemetery. So normally, if you intern somebody in the cemetery, there’s a charge.” Casson explained the money made from selling cemetery plots was used to maintain the cemetery, “That’s how it started 150 years ago. And over time, the problem is that the interest in burying somebody out there in the middle of no place, kind of diminished. Bower stopped being a town and all there is an old gas station sign. So, over time, they stopped putting people in the cemetery. Well, when you stop putting people in the cemetery, no more money’s coming in.”Dux asked, “So the question then is, do you want the county to take it over?”If the cemetery is legally abandoned, then the county can take over maintenance of the cemetery. In order to do that, Casson said, “You’re going to have to accumulate 35 signatures, submit that to the board. However, Casson also pointed out that if the cemetery is abandoned, no one else can be buried in it, “Once you abandon this, that stops. No more people go in there.”Shinn said he did not want to see that happen. He told commissioners that he was aware of some people who have family buried in the Bower cemetery and would quite likely want to be buried with them.The alternative is to create a new cemetery association. Casson said, “I don’t know what efforts that have been made to identify the next of kin of the people buried in that cemetery. And if you could identify 20 or 30, you send a notice to them, saying we’re having a cemetery board meeting, where we’re going to recognize that we we don’t have any active members, we’re going to elect a board and decide as a cemetery board what we’re going to do with the cemetery, because one thing you could do, is keeping a Cemetery Association, and you collect money from people to keep it running.”No action was taken at the meeting. Anyone who may be interested in serving on the cemetery association can contact Roger Shinn at (402) 520-2499 or Phyllis McCown at (402) 729-5805.

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