Union Cemetery

Union Cemetery, founded November 9, 1857, is the oldest surviving public cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri — established as a shared burial ground for the towns of Westport and Kansas (the future Kansas City) and today the resting place of an estimated 55,000 people on roughly 49 acres at the north edge of Union Hill.¹²³ The name marks the union of the two communities, not the Union Army.⁴ Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016 (ref 16000183), the cemetery is maintained by Kansas City Parks & Recreation with historical stewardship by the Union Cemetery Historical Society (organized 1984).¹²⁵

Location and setting

The cemetery sits at 227 E. 28th Terrace, just south of Crown Center and southeast of the National World War I Museum and Memorial, with Union Station and downtown on the near skyline.¹² Original bounds described in period accounts ran between Main and Oak and 27th and 30th streets on farmland deeded by James M. Hunter.²

History

Founding (1857)

After the 1849 cholera epidemic filled the local graveyards of the two boomtowns, civic leaders sought a new shared cemetery between them.² On November 9, 1857, a special act of the Missouri General Assembly chartered the Union Cemetery Assembly as a for-profit corporation while the newly incorporated City of Kansas had roughly 4,000 residents.² Founding owners included Milton J. Payne — landowner, civic developer, and multi-term mayor of early Kansas City — and Westport merchant-farmer James M. Hunter, who deeded the acreage.²

Landscape and decline

By 1873 the Kansas City Times described an elaborately improved “City of the Dead” with springs, cascades, a public receiving vault, and continuous reinvestment of burial-plot income into grounds — then still less than a mile south of the expanding city.² In August 1889 the sexton’s cottage burned and all burial records were lost, leaving many weathered markers unidentifiable.²¹

Through the early twentieth century the cemetery’s private corporation neglected maintenance. Contemporary reporting and later Kansas City Star reconstruction describe mass and shallow graves, a potter’s field of unmarked burials, toppled stones, and the sale of northwest acreage for road and industrial development (Warwick Trafficway / White Motor Truck Co. area).² In 1936–1937 the association deeded the ground to the city, which made it a public park.²

Stewardship since 1984

The Union Cemetery Historical Society organized in 1984 under Parks guidance to collect burial and biographical records, publish inscription and obituary compilations, restore stones, and run tours; Parks remains groundskeeper.¹² Gravestone restoration work has continued into the 2020s.²

Notable burials

Among those interred (or reinterred) here:²¹⁴

• George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879) — painter of the Missouri frontier and politics
• John Calvin McCoy (1811–1889) — founder of Westport
• Alexander Majors (1814–1900) — freighting partner and Pony Express co-founder
• Johnston Lykins (1800–1876) — missionary, civic booster, first legal mayor of the Town of Kansas
• Milton J. Payne (1829–1900) — early mayor and cemetery co-founder

Veterans of conflicts from the Revolutionary War through Vietnam are buried here, including soldiers from both sides of the Civil War.¹ A granite Union Confederate Monument on the grounds commemorates Confederate prisoners of war who died in Kansas City (individual grave locations unknown).⁴

Name

The cemetery was not named for the Union Army. It was named for the union of Westport and the Town of Kansas as a shared burial ground between the two communities.⁴

Sources

See also

• union-hill
• westport
• forest-hill-cemetery
• liberty-memorial
• john-calvin-mccoy
• alexander-majors
• Wiki

Footnotes

1. Union Cemetery Historical Society — “History.” — asserts: founded 1857; oldest public cemetery in KCMO; ~55,000 burials; NRHP listing; shared cemetery for Westport and Town of Kansas; UCHS founded 1984; Parks + Society maintenance; veterans from Revolutionary War through Vietnam. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. Wikipedia — “Union Cemetery (Kansas City, Missouri).” — asserts: founded Nov 9, 1857 as Union Cemetery Assembly; 49 acres; ~55,000; NRHP 16000183 (2016); cholera context; Payne and Hunter founders; 1889 record fire; early-20th-c neglect and land sales; 1936–37 city park transfer; notable burials including Bingham, McCoy, Majors, Lykins, Payne; address and coordinates. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

3. Kansas City Parks & Recreation — “Union Cemetery.” — asserts: city park stewardship of the historic cemetery. ↩

4. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — “Union Confederate Monument Site.” — asserts: 1857 between Westport and Kansas; name for union of communities not Union Army; 49 acres; Majors and Bingham among notable interments; Confederate POW monument (15 POWs). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Union Hill neighborhood site — “Kansas City’s oldest public cemetery… National Register” (June 14, 2016) — asserts: NRHP listing announcement; Criterion A (Exploration and Settlement); north border of Union Hill. ↩