All the same cemetery, just a different name, Montana, Rubens, Tibbett's

"It's old,"  said Arden Russell. Russell, with Doug Paige as sexton, plus John Price Sr, Ed VanMeter and Brett Behrends are the five board members who care for Montana Cemetery located along the northern edge of Lovewell Lake. Or officially, Jewell County Cemetery District No. 12.  The cemetery is located on Jewell County's Y Road ("the Lake Road') just a half mile east of Highway 14. 

Montana Cemetery is the most commonly used name but the cemetery has also been referred to as the Tibbetts Cemetery and the Rubens Cemetery. 

Rubens Cemetery is appropriate as the cemetery is near the old town of Rubens. The foundations of Rubens lie a couple of miles to the south under Lovewell Lake. Several buried in Montana Cemetery were part of the history of the Rubens community.

At other times it was called Tibbetts Cemetery. Likely because John C. Tibbetts lived just over the hill to the west and sold the first acre of land in the cemetery to George Lough.  Lough's wife, Joanna was buried there in April of 1880.

But as Russell said, the cemetery is "old" and it was being used before Joanna Lough was buried. The earliest existing stone is that of seven-month-old Charles Wescott. He died on Oct. 6, 1876. His stone is still legible.

There are 10 other graves, with stones, from the 1870s. But with records from that time are scanty to non-existent, there is a distinct possibility there are more unmarked burials from those early days. One newspaper clipping tells of four children being buried in the cemetery in one week in December of 1880. The newspaper clipping is the only record of their burials. (Jewell County Monitor Dec. 2, 1880)

Montana Township was organized on Feb. 12, 1874. The first settlers had arrived in 1870 but the "rush" of settlers came in 1871. The first township officers were W. D. Ross, trustee; A. G. Nunnally, clerk; John Lane, treasurer; S. M. Wright, justice of the peace; John Gatewood and John Blair, constables. The cemetery came soon after the township was organized. (The History of Jewell County by Windsor and Scarbrough, 1878)

To learn about the cemetery, newspaper items, Find A Grave records, and Vol. 3 "Jewell Cemetery Records" compiled by the North Central Kansas Genealogical Society and Library, Inc. have been used. Plus, there is an old hand written plot map of the cemetery. The map is undated but perhaps one of the oldest pieces of historical information dealing with the cemetery.

Tibbets, Nunally, VanOrnam, Gandy, Ritterbush, Wescott, Bowles and Collins are all names on the map and names found on stones in the cemetery. But several names are found in the cemetery but not on the map.  Names such as Headrick, Sill, Sharp, Sandlin, Vader and Wilde are found on stones in the cemetery but not on the map.

The names are important but it seems to this author, the ages of the deceased are also important and tell a story. Using all the various sources, there are approximately 67 burials in the cemetery. Twenty-nine, or 43 percent are those of children under the age of 12. 

In addition to the 29 known children's graves, clippings from 1902 tell of the remains of three children of W. J. Ross being removed from Montana Cemetery and being buried in Webber Cemetery. Also, the remains of two of William Kirkpatrick's children were reinterred in Superior. (March 14, 1902, Western Advocate and April 25, 1902, Western Advocate)

This high percentage of children's graves is a sad sign of an old cemetery. A cemetery from a time when infant deaths were much to be feared. 

The vast majority of the burials in Montana Cemetery occurred before 1900. There are only six individuals of the 67 who were buried after 1900. More than half of the burials, 34, were in the 1880s. Yes, Montana is an old cemetery.

In its history, there have been multiple attempts to clean and restore the cemetery grounds.  An article from the May 8, 1913, Jewell County Monitor tells of the invitation to meet on "Tuesday afternoon" to "decide what could be done towards repairing the fence and cleaning up the cemetery."

Again in 1960, a group met at the home of Charles Crispin and elected officers for the Montana Cemetery Association. Those officers were Charles Russell, chairman; Wilbur Blair, secretary and Wayne Headrick, treasurer.  The group announced April 18 was the "clean-up" day at the cemetery.  (April 14, 1960, Superior Express)

A photo in the Dec. 25, 2003, Jewell County Record shows a stone being repaired in the cemetery and notes that some 52 stones were repaired and reset with many on new pads. The work continues as the Desire Tobey Sears Chapter NSDAR met at the cemetery in October of 2023 to learn about the history of the cemetery and to begin the process of cleaning some of the old stones. Members of the group will continue cleaning stones this summer.

Among those buried in the cemetery is Belle Gandy. Gandy was an early settler of Jewell County. She was counted as one of the 205 settlers enumerated in the 1870 U. S. Census. Her husband, Felix, was the first representative elected to the Kansas State House of Representatives. They lived for a time in Jewell and some believe Jewell's Belle Street is named for her.

The couple moved to Rubens where Felix ran Gandy Hardware for several years. Belle died in 1883 and was buried in Montana Cemetery. Felix left the area and later settled in Sherman County in western Kansas. 

In 1923, forty years after her death, an ad appeared in the Oct. 25, 1923, Western Advocate. It asked for information about exactly where Belle Gandy was buried as her friends wished to place a stone in the cemetery to honor her. Today there is a stone in the cemetery honoring Belle Gandy.

There are also three veterans buried in the cemetery, W. A. Sandlin, Oliver Sharp and Samuel J. Sill. All three veterans of the Civil War. Sandlin fought with Company E of the 4th Regular Wisconsin Infantry, while Sharp and Sill were from Ohio. They served with the Company D of the 46th Ohio National Guard and Company E of the 62nd Ohio Infantry. They were members of the multitudes of Civil War veterans who settled in Jewell County.

Among the many children buried in the cemetery, is Una Nunnally. She was six years, three months and three days old when she died on May 3, 1879. Her mother, M. E. Nunnally, ran the millinery store in Rubens. She, like many of the others buried in cemetery, have no other family members buried nearby. Most burials are singleton whose families left the area or chose other burial locations.

The only family group in the cemetery is the Tibbitts family.  Their family farm adjoined the cemetery on the west and north. Martha Snodgrass Tibbetts buried two daughters, Minnie (1879) and Pearl (1890), and her husband, John (1887), in Montana Cemetery before she died in 1905. Theirs is the only family unit buried in the cemetery.

Montana Cemetery was actively used from 1876 to 1947. As was stated, the oldest known burial in the cemetery is the 1876 burial of seven-month-old Charles Westcott. The last burial was of another child, Mary E. Burns. Mary Elizabeth Burns, less than two weeks old, died on Aug. 31, 1947, and is the last burial in Montana Cemetery.