. *PLAQUE

First burials;
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The first residents on Petit Jean Mountain, John Walker and his family, are only documented in local histories and oral histories.John Walker is thought to have brought his family from Tennessee and started a small farmstead near the center of the mountain sometime before 1850.[8]He and his family built a log cabin north of what is now Lake Bailey and in c. 1854 two of his young daughters died and were buried on the mountain.These two burials would become the first burials in the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery.In an interview in 1983, Pat Hamilton (1890-1983), who grew up on Petit Jean Mountain and learned many of the stories of the early settlers from his mother and maternal grandmother, discussed the surviving settler cabin:

Yes, it was occupied by Owen West and his family and it stood down there right somewhere about where the middle of where the lake is now.And was built, it was built about 1851 or 1852… Built by a man by the name of Walker. And he built the cabin and floored it with punchings… And he was there in the house two or three or maybe four years and typhoid fever got into the family.Back then they called it slow fever.And two of his children died and when they died, one and then the other one in a few days, he took them up on the hill where the cemetery is now.He buried one and in a few days buried the other one, and he got disgusted and moved away and Owen West and his family moved in the house.

Contributed on 4/19/18 by hawkinsdonna48
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Record #: 1218668

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