Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

My recent column, “Gaines And Losses,” got some attention. Written in response to someone asking me about the Gaines Cemetery in Keating, it seems to have had a positive impact on some people. I got a couple of e-mails about it, and a letter all the way from Wisconsin. The letter was very complimentary about my column, which is nice but also feels weird. I get fan mail. I mean, who the hell am I?

The letter writer took a moment to ask about another cemetery, this one in Chapman Township. You can see it from the Hyner Bridge, if you turn and look down. Of course, nobody ever does this, because they’re all too busy looking up at Hyner. Even the hang gliders probably aren’t paying much attention, because the landing field is very nearby it, and they want to focus on that so they don’t wind up in this cemetery, or one very much like it. So the cemetery often goes unnoticed.

Once you cross the bridge, if you took the first left onto Hyner River Road, you could drive almost the direction you’d come a few hundred yards. You’d wind up beside the railroad tracks, close to under the bridge, and you’d be there: The Hyner Old Methodist Cemetery.

There’s a whole lot we don’t know about the Hyner Cemetery. What we do know if largely thanks to the Clinton County Genealogical Society, which compiled records on every known cemetery in the county. The Hyner Cemetery is, obviously, in Hyner, which was founded at Hyner’s Run around 1800. Missionaries came in about 1845, and worked to begin a church. The cemetery was begun around that time, though whether it was founded before or after the church is unclear. There’s a lot we don’t know here, and a lot of the dates are a little bit fuzzy. There are a lot of stones, but many unmarked graves—Plenty of unknown people are buried there.

The cemetery was placed on land belonging to James A. McCloskey. His house still stands just up the road; if you followed my directions, you passed it on the way in. James was a prominent farmer, one of twelve children, who moved to Hyner from Colebrook Township in 1859 and bought a hundred acres from Benjamin Baird. He built the house about 1860, moving into it with his family. This consisted of his wife Jane Baird, who was the daughter of the man he’d bought the land from, and nine children.

In addition to farming, James McCloskey was the postmaster at Hyner, and served a term as County Commissioner and Justice of the Peace. James died in 1908.

Interestingly, there’s no record of where James A. McCloskey was buried. He’s probably one of the unmarked graves, though there may be a bit of confusion with the middle initials. There’s a James C. McCloskey in the cemetery, who died on April 10, 1867. Interestingly, James C. McCloskey has two gravestones in two different spots—Another stone indicates James C. McCloskey is in the McCloskey Family Cemetery, very near the township line, on land once owned by Felix McCloskey. So James C. has two stones, maybe to make up for James A. having none.

I suspect this is more of an answer than the Wisconsin guy wanted, but having sent in a letter questioning the cemetery, he deserved an explanation. For all of us locals, the next time you’re headed up to Hyner View, instead of looking up….Take a moment and look down. You might actually spot some history there.