Forgotten 1800s cemetery near Chicago finds new life thanks to local volunteers

KANGLEY, Ill. - A pioneer cemetery nearly 200 years old is slowly coming back to life not far from Chicago.

What we know:

After nearly a century of neglect, the Naramor Cemetery in LaSalle County, about 90 miles southwest of Chicago, is re-emerging from the weeds, thanks to some dedicated volunteers and an amateur historian.

FOX 32's Dane Placko reports the old cemetery is providing a treasure trove of new information.

"You're looking at a cemetery that was completely forgotten and destroyed," said John Kettman, caretaker of the cemetery.

On an appropriately dark and cloudy day, we took a walk with Kettman to visit the tiny pioneer cemetery that has been his life’s work for the past 15 years.

"It dates back to 1834, but I believe it goes back further," Kettman said.

The people buried at the site are some of the first non-Native American people to live in the area.

"Yes. Some of my family are here and that’s what caught my eye," Kettman said.

The backstory:

Back in 2011, Kettman was researching his family’s history when he learned that a distant relative had been buried in the long-forgotten cemetery in the tiny town of Kangley, surrounded on all four sides by farm fields with no public access.

"I walked the perimeter of the cornfield because there was no access to anything. It was like a jungle," Kettman said. "Completely overgrown. Trees. Poison ivy. Snakes. You name it, it was in here."

But Kettman was able to see a couple grave markers jutting out of the ground, and others scattered in pieces.

"I can’t believe what I’m seeing here. There’s a bunch of people buried here and it’s totally destroyed. Somebody’s gotta do something," Kettman said.

Since then, Kettman and a group of volunteers have slowly cleared the cemetery of the overgrowth and erected a new entrance.

"The gate, it’s a day bed," he said. "It’s a day bed and it’s welded."

It was named "Naramor" after an early property owner whose family is buried at the site.

Most of the graves are from the mid-1800s, and some of its underground residents were born in the 1700s. The earliest markers are simply stones dragged up from the nearby Vermillion River.

"This is a very early one. It’s shaped like a heart. The guy went down, or the family went down to the river. They got a rock and chipped it," Kettman said. "That’s a grave marker, yes."

He added, "The indentations in the ground are decomposed bodies and caskets that have collapsed over the years. So each one of these pits are actual burials."

Indeed, most of the headstones you see today were buried underground — victims of time and farm tractors.

Kettman plunges a metal rod into the soil to find the stones.

"I call this like a random poke. You’re just walking and poking," he said.

Dig deeper:

Over the years, he has found and dug up dozens of headstones — many of them just fragments.

FOX 32 spotted one headstone, but couldn’t tell who it belonged to.

"Yeah and it drives you crazy because you want to know who it is," Kettman said.

With a permit from the state, Kettman takes the fragments home and reassembles them like jigsaw puzzles, revealing names and stories.

"Here they would carve into the stone little poems, epitaphs. About the person. About their life," he said. "And then the symbolism that would go on the stones, it tells a story about each one of these people."

After recovering a buried stone, Kettman conducts hours of research, digging through historical land records, censuses and death notices, often finding pictures of those buried at the site that he places next to the graves.

Stan Czyzon of Joliet was stunned when he got a call from Kettman saying he had found the grave of James McReady, his great-great-great-grandfather who served in the Civil War.

"I think it’s very important. It teaches younger people that this is something that you should preserve. And something that makes you remember and learn from the past," Czyzon said.

There could be scores, even hundreds of these stones still underground, which is why they’ve established a nonprofit, so they can keep discovering at the site and keep the cemetery alive.

"I hope it doesn’t go back to where it was. I hope that now with it having a name and people knowing about it a little more around here, that it’s taken care of. Whether it’s me, John, whoever," said Curtis Martin, a cemetery volunteer.

It is a once-secret cemetery hidden no more.

FOX 32 asked if Kettman feels a little bit at home here.

"I do. I do. It’s very peaceful out here. And it has its own way, its own way of, how do you say it? Sucking you in," he said.

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