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Submitted: 2/25/12 • Approved: 2/25/12 • Last Updated: 9/14/12 • R654999-G0-S3
Calico Rock Mennonite Cemetery
The Calico Rock Mennonite Cemetery is located on the south side of West First Street in Calico Rock which is above Bluff Street.
In the later part of the Nineteenth Century, a cemetery was started on the site. Then in 1903, the Calico Rock Baptist congregation was organized and a church was built at the site. There are eleven marked graves from the time the cemetery started through the time the Baptist Church was located there even though it is highly probable that there are more unmarked graves or graves marked only by rocks that contain no identity. The earliest marked grave is that of S. S. Calloway. Squire S. Calloway died December 19, 1883. The last marked grave from the era when the Baptist Church was located there was that of three-month old James E. Lock who died February 23, 1905.
When the Baptist Church constructed a new church building in the northeast part of Calico Rock, the property on West First Street was sold to Eugene and Lillian Lockwood. For six years, the building was used as a print shop for the Calico Rock Progress and residence of the owners. In April 1964, John Landis Grasse and Dr. A. Meryl Grasse purchased the property. The building became the home of the Calico Rock Mennonite Fellowship until a new building for the Calico Rock Mennonite Fellowship was constructed in eastern Calico Rock in the mid-1960's.
At the time the Grasses purchased the property on West First Street, the building was in a very poor state of repair, and the cemetery was totally overgrown with brush and weeds. Repairs were made to the building and the cemetery grounds were totally cleaned.
On March 20, 1980, Darwin Dale Miller died in a mobile home fire in Harrisburg, Arkansas. His remains were interred in the cemetery that had once been the Old Baptist Cemetery, and thus began the new era for the cemetery that is now known as the Calico Rock Mennonite Cemetery. There have been several burials in the cemetery since that date.
After the Fellowship moved to the new facility, the old building was torn down and most of the material moved to Dr. Meryl Grasse's home and then his youngest daughter Chloe and her husband moved some of the material to Pennsylvania where it was used in the construction of a new straw house.
Today, the Calico Rock Mennonite Cemetery is a well maintained cemetery for the use of the members of the Calico Rock Mennonite Fellowship.
[Note: The information for the history of the Calico Rock Mennonite Cemetery came from the files of Mrs. Mary Margaret Grasse, and from an article in the Izard County Historian Quarterly Volume 13--July 1982.]
(Photo courtesy of Vera Reeves)
Contributed on 2/25/12 by maxparnell
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Record #: 654999