Cemetery Clean-Up Day is Saturday, March 14, 9:00am-Noon—Be sure to mark your calendars and join us, the Jacksonville Boosters and other community organizations for a few hours of work cleaning-up the cemetery grounds. Bring gloves to wear, leaf rakes, gas-operated blowers, pruning shears, brooms, eye and ear protection, and help us clean-up winter debris. We meet at the Sexton’s Tool House, at the top of Cemetery Road at 9:00am where volunteers will find freshly-brewed coffee and morning refreshments along with our sincere appreciation for helping maintain our Pioneer Cemetery.

A New Look for Our Website—Our website has a new and fresh look which we hope you will appreciate and enjoy using. It has been totally updated including a complete listing of all planned events and activities for 2015 in the Events Page section. Take a look at www.friendsjvillecemetery.org.

Meet the Pioneers Players Make a Donation and a Difference—Last year, Meet the Pioneers Players, Seth Weintraub and Lynn Ransford took-on the roles of George and Sarah Trefren and told the sad story of the death of their daughter Sadie. It was a very emotional undertaking for both Seth and Lynn who were quite touched with the story and the terrible loss these parents felt. Sadie, who was born in 1874, married Albert Perry in Jacksonville on Sunday, April 21, 1895. On Monday, the bride and groom made their way out to the Applegate to the Neuber Farm where Albert worked. On Tuesday morning April 23, while taking out some hot ash from the stove, Sadie’s clothes caught fire—she died later that day. The young bridegroom purchased a plot for his bride for $5 in the City Section of the Jacksonville Cemetery and her wedding bouquet was placed on the gravesite. For all these years, Sadie has rested in an unmarked grave… but now, thanks to the generosity and caring of Seth and Lynn, the grave will soon have a headstone. Seth and Lynn made a donation to the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery to purchase and place a headstone on this final resting place of Sadie Trefren Perry. We so appreciate their thoughtfulness and donation which now allows us to mark one more of the many unmarked graves in the cemetery.