Lot No. 52 is marked "Public" on the 1930s plat of Salem Cemetery, implying that it was intended for those in the neighborhood who could not afford a burial place. It contains three marked graves of Hatfield family members and, probably, three or more unmarked graves of the related Tull family. So William Hatfield, whose family this was, may or may not have purchased the lot from the Salem trustees. Three small tombstones at the north end of the lot mark the graves of the following, from north to south:
Daughter Of
WM. & L. HATFIELD
DIED
April 1, 1875
LIZZIE
WIFE OF
Wm. HATFIELD
DIED
April 1, 1875
AGED
28 Yrs. & 3 Mo.
JESSE F.
SON OF
W. & S.F. HATFIELD
DIED
Sept. 3, 1878
AGED
1 Yr., 2 Mo., 23 Ds.
William Hatfield, born ca. 1836 in Pennsylvania, married Rachel Zimmerman ca. 1860 in Washington County, Pennsylvania. By the time the 1870 census of Amwell Township, Washington County, was taken on 14 June of that year, William (a farm laborer) and Rachel had become the parents of four children, Sarah, age 9; Hiram, age 8; Nathan, age 5; and George, age 3.
Rachel apparently died not long after 1870, but whether her death occurred in Pennsylvania, in Lucas County, Iowa, or elsewhere isn't known. Soon thereafter, William married as his second wife Lizzie, whose grave is at Salem along with that of their infant daughter, Martha, deaths apparently attributable to childbirth. There is no record of their deaths in Chariton newspapers, however.
By the time the 1880 federal census was taken, William had married as his third wife Sarah F., and Jesse Hatfield, who died 3 September 1878, age 1, was their only child. William, Sarah F., and the four Hatfield children produced by Rachel Zimmerman were living in Washington Township, Lucas County, in that census year.
Neither William's second or third marriage was recorded in Lucas County. While the marriage to Lizzie may have occurred in Pennsylvania, his marriage to Sarah F. most likely occurred in Iowa.
At some point after 1880 but before 1900, William and Sarah F. returned to Amwell Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania, to live. The were enumerated there on 11 June of that year: William, age 63, who owned his farm; Sarah F., age 60; and Charles H., age 9, identified as an adopted son. Sarah and William stated that they had been married for 25 years; and Sarah reported that she had given birth to one child who had died, the Jesse F. Hatfield left behind in Salem Cemetery.
Some years after William and Sarah F. Hatfield moved from Lucas County to William's native Pennsylvania, a great calamity struck his eldest daughter, Sarah E., then living in Chariton with her second husband, William M. Tull. Three of their children died of spinal meningitis during a two-month span of 1899.
Lucas County marriage records show that Sarah E. married first Frederick W. Kigel, 29, on 1 March 1877, when she was 16. This marriage did not endure, apparently ended by divorce. When the 1880 census was taken, Sarah E. Kigel was living with her father and stepmother in Washington Township and there was no sign of Fred Kigel in Lucas County. On the 31st of May 1881, Sarah E. Hatfield, then 20, married William M. Tull, 26.
Within the next 18 years, the Tulls had nine children as they lived in or near Chariton, William working as a laborer or as a farmer.
In the spring of 1899, when the family was living in west Chariton and as an epidemic of spinal meningitis swept the city, three of those children died. All were buried at Salem Cemetery, most likely on Lot No. 52 where Sarah's stepmother and two infant siblings already had been interred. These graves were not marked, so there is no way to prove they are here. Nonetheless, this is the only logical place at Salem for their burial.
Here are the brief obituaries for those three children, Maudie, George and Lee, as published in The Chariton Patriot:
The Chariton Patriot, 23 March 1899
Died, Wednesday, March 22, 1899, between 9 and 10 o'clock a.m. at the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. M. Tull, in this city, Maudie Pearl Tull, age 11 years. Funeral services will be held from the home this afternoon at 2 o'clock, conducted by Rev. Green of the Christian church at Russell, and the remains interred in the Salem cemetery.
She was born in Chariton Aug. 16, 1888, and had lived here all her life. She was sick only thirty six hours with brain fever.
Note: Lucas County death records show that Amanda Pearl Tull, age 11 years, 7 months and 7 days, died March 22, 1899, at Chariton and was buried in Salem Cemetery.
The Chariton Patriot, 30 March 1899
Died, Tuesday morning, March 28, 1899, between two and three o'clock, at the home of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. M. Tull, George Tull, aged about 7 years. Funeral services were held from the home yesterday afternoon at 1 o'clock, and the remains taken to Salem cemetery for burial.
This is the second child which has died in this family within the past week of spinal meningitis. He attended school Monday until noon.
The Chariton Patriot, 4 May 1899
On last Thursday evening, April 27, 1899, occurred the death of Lee Tull, the thirteen months old son of Mr. and Mrs. W.M. Tull at their home in the west part of town. Funeral services were conducted from the home Friday at 1 o'clock p.m. and the remains buried in the Salem cemetery. He had been sick about four weeks with spinal meningitis, and is the third child in the family which has died with this disease since the middle of March.
When the 1900 census was taken, William M. and Sarah E. Tull, ages 50 and 39 respectively, were living in Liberty Township, northwest of Chariton, with three surviving children, Hiram, age 16; Mary, age 14; and William M., age 7. Mothers in that census year were asked how many children they had given birth to and how many had survived. Sarah replied, nine children of whom four survived. So it seems that somewhere, perhaps on the Hatfield lot at Salem, two additional youngsters are buried and that one child, perhaps older, was not living at home in 1900.
Two years later, apparently, Sarah E. Tull died. I say apparently because the only record of her death is a brief news item in The Chariton Herald of 4 December 1902 that reads as follows:
Mrs. Wm. Tull died, Sunday night, at her home in East Chariton, after a brief illness from heart disease, her condition not alarming the family until a short time before her death. Funeral services were conducted Tuesday forenoon from the home, conducted by Rev. Palmer. Interment followed, in the Russell cemetery.
Because her given name is not mentioned and there is no official death record I suppose that it is impossible to say for sure that this is Sarah, but surely it must be. Although the news report says she was buried at Russell, there is no marked grave for her there --- nor for William M. Tull, who vanishes from the Lucas County record after 1900. Why Russell? I think it likely the lot at Salem was full now, or the fact that the south end of the lot always seems damp may have discouraged its use. And there may have been family connections at Russell that I am not familiar with. But for the moment at least, I can say no more about the ends of William M. and Sarah E. (Hatfield) Tulls' lives.
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