NE¼ SW¼ of Sec. 26, Mallory twp. Address is 38485 Skip Level Road, Colesburg.  The cemetery coordinates are 43.6679’ N, 91.1664’ W as determined using topozone and placing the cursory at the house on Skip Level Road. -location description provided by Steve Kuehn

The gravestone inscriptions were recorded by Sandy Emerick during a visit to the cemetery in April 2001; at the time of her visit, the homeowner Mr. Kickbush, stated that the stones had been there as long as he had lived at the property (approximately 50 years), and that he knew of no other gravestones in the vicinity. ~contributed to Clayton co. IAGenWeb by Steve Kuehn, Oct. 2005

The Mystery of the Four Little Gravestones
by Charlene Barnhart

Guttenberg Press, June 2, 2004

~photographer Arlan Kickbush

Since this is the time of the year when everyone is honoring the dead and placing flowers on the graves of their loved ones, we have a story to tell about four little graves. These four stones were hidden by overgrown grass in the corner of the yard on the Arlan Kickbush farm on Skip Level. These four little stones do not have anyone placing flowers on their graves.

Along with the four small stones, is one big stone, with names, their date of death and their ages. Not much is known about these stones, except for the inscriptions and the intitials of their parents, J & S Noggle. So where are their parents buried and what are their names? Another mystery to solve, which I love doing!

This prompted me to start doing research to see if I could tell when this family arrived in Mallory Township and the names of the parents. First place I looked was on the 1870 census for Mallory Township, as three of the babies died in the 1870's. There we found the parents' names and two more children. We now know that the parents' names were Jacob and Sarah Noggle, and they had two living sons, Milton and Thomas.

At this point I started checking cemetery records and found that one of the sons, Milton, is buried at Mt. Harmony cemetery near Garber. I found an obituary on him with a lot of information telling he was born in Bourbon, Kansas and his mother's maiden name was Dark. It also said they came to Clayton County, Mallory Township when Milton was only 8 months old. From this information it puts this family here in about 1862, just missing the 1860 census. Now where are the parents of these four little ones buried? Did they stay in the area or move on? After 1880 I could not find them in the census in Mallory Township, and with 22 townships in Clayton County, we might not ever find them.

It was a bit of luck, but in the 1895 census I found Jacob and Sarah living in Elk Township in Clayton County. So more records were searched including death records, and sure enough, they were listed. Jacob dying on Dec. 9, 1902 at the age of 69 years and his wife Sarah dying on March 5, 1908 at age 65. The death records stated they were buried in Elk Township in the Brookshire Cemetery, or as some call it today, Elk Valley.

So part of the mystery is solved. We know the parents' names, when they came here, but we don't know what these little ones died from and probably never will. It could have been any one of the many illnesses that took so many of our pioneer families.

We hope you liked the mystery. Now we will tell you the rest of the story. The names and dates on the four little stones, who all died within seven years, are: Freda - died Aug. 6, 1869, age 14 months; Eliza - died Nov. 6, 1871, age 9 months; Ada - died Feb. 22, 1873, age 10 months; and Philip - died July 22, 1876, age 2 years 3 months.

On the bottom of this tombstone is a little poem

Sweet Little buds of earth so fair
Have gone to heaven to blossom there.

~transcribed by S. Ferrall (5/26/2016)