Tombstone Tuesday: Derinda Methodist Cemetery

Dick and I first visited Jo Daviess County, Illinois, in June of 1999. It was still early in our discoveries about the family, but we did know some of the cemeteries where family members were buried. We followed a map south from Derinda Center around and up the hill and almost missed the little cemetery on a windy hilltop in Section 16. It was once associated with a church, but the building is long gone. It is the origin of the name of Derinda Methodist Cemetery given in a book of transcriptions that is available online. The USGS name given now is the Morrison Cemetery and it has been known as the Wurster Cemetery. Apparently it is on the Wurster farm and maintained, very well, by that family.

We easily located the gravestone of Henry Hoffman (1828-1897) with its GAR marker. Next to it is one for his son Fred and then one shared by his sons Henry and William. In the row facing them is the older gravestone of Henry's mother. It is inscribed in German and reads

HIER RUHT IN FRIEDEN
ELISABETH
HOFFMAN
GEBORNE [Geboren] HOMBERGER
GEB. IN OETWEIL
CT. ZURICH, SCHWEIZ
DEN 17 SEP. 1797
GEST. [Gestorben] DEN
9 JULI 1870
SANFT RUHE IHRE ASCHE.



It states that her maiden name was Homberger and she was born in Oetweil (Oetwil am See) in Canton Zurich, Switzerland on 17 September 1797. (The date is in the month following the one in her Swiss baptismal record.) She died on 9 July 1870. I was so startled to see her birthplace on the stone! We had found the information in a biographical sketch of her youngest son, but if the transcription of this cemetery had included that part of the inscription we would have known so much sooner.



Her second son Henry and three of his sons are buried opposite her in this quiet pastoral setting.