Edwardsville's Lusk Cemetery-- Part 3

Reuben Hopkins, Benjamin Stephenson and Thomas Tamil have new grave markers.

Hopkins died at age 75 in 1822.  He was a lawyer known as "The General."  Every 4th of July he read the Declaration of Independence at the annual celebration.  He enrolled in the American Army early in the Revolutionary War and was at Bunker Hill at age 28, rising through the ranks eventually to brigadier general.

Benjamin Stephenson signed the Kickapoo Indian Treaty and his home is a historical attraction at 409 South Buchanan.  He was a close personal friend of Ninian Edwards, Territorial Governor and for whom the town is named.

By the 1900s, Lusk Cemetery had fallen into disrepair and the city took it over in 1914.  The headstones were removed in the 1920s.  In the 1930s part of the cemetery was bulldozed for a Works Progress Administration road project.  More headstones were removed.

In 1961, the Lusk Cemetery Association was formed to keep it from becoming a park after the city announced plans to do that.  Their license expired in 1981 and the city took it over and it became a park.

--Brock-Perry