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Published September 02, 2008 09:55 pm - A local woman’s generosity and the work of a Joplin couple will give one of Jasper County’s oldest cemeteries a new chance to last a few more generations. Old cemetery gets face-lift By Debby Woodin
dwoodin@joplinglobe.com A local woman’s generosity and the work of a Joplin couple will give one of Jasper County’s oldest cemeteries a new chance to last a few more generations. Workers on Tuesday started renovating gravestones at Harmony Grove Cemetery, a one-acre plot on East Seventh Street that contains about 300 graves of some of the county’s earliest residents. The cemetery was plotted in 1877, and contains the graves of many settlers who lived along Turkey Creek in the late 1800s and early 1900s, according to research conducted by the late Jean Jones, of Joplin. Jones was devoted to preserving the cemetery for 35 years until she died two years ago at the age of 95, said Fred Zentner, president of Harmony Grove Cemetery Corp., a not-for-profit group formed to oversee maintenance and preservation of the cemetery. Using levers and brute strength, workers from a Parsons, Kan., monument company started the renovation project managed by Zentner to correct damage done by time and some four-legged intruders. The workers will reset toppled or crooked gravestones, mend broken ones and build foundations for those that have sunk into the dirt. Money for the project was left by Jones for the purpose. Zentner retired after a career as quality director for EaglePicher Industries. His wife, Sandra, asked him to manage the cemetery because Jones trusted him and Sandra Zentner has relatives buried there. Her family name is Kirk. In addition to the Kirks, some of the Webb family who were relatives or descendants of the namesake for Webb City are buried there. Jane Chinn, a prominent Webb City woman who gave the town its now-closed hospital, donated the money in 1907 for an iron fence around the cemetery. That fence would one day create problems, Fred Zentner said. About 40 years ago, a cattle truck wrecked next to the cemetery, and authorities who investigated and cleaned up the wreckage put the surviving cattle into the cemetery because the fence was sturdy. The cattle damaged many of the headstones, Zentner said. The last burials were in the mid- to late 1950s, he said, perhaps 1956 or 1957. The Zentners have seen to keeping the site mowed, but there wasn’t money to fix the stones until Jones’ bequest. “If it wasn’t for her, this couldn’t be done,” Fred Zentner said. 
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