Middle River Cemetery History

MIDDLE RIVER CEMETERY is in the southeast quarter of the southeast quarter of Section 14 of Palmyra Township. It is located one and one-half miles west and two and one-quarter miles north of Palmyra, Iowa.

The first to purchase land in Palmyra Township was John D. Parmalee who bought in Section 12 on August 1, 1848.

Members of the Society of Friends began meeting around Middle River as early as 1849. Some of these early pioneers were Thomas Rees and family, Robert Rees and family, Solomon Wright and family, A. Johnson and family, Charles Hinshaw and family and Elias and Rodema Newlin. A log cabin building was erected by members of the neighborhood and it was used for the school and the church.

Robert Linksly and Benjamin Seebohm, two Society of Friends Ministers, were headed west in a two-horse carriage, going to a Salem Friends meeting in southeast Iowa. On February 1, 1851, they headed on west to Three Rivers, This was the western-most edge of the Society of Friends on the continent.

The Middle River Society of Friends was organized in 1851. Original members were Charles Hinshaw and wife, Benjamin SMith and wife, John Hits and wife, Elias and Rodema Newlin, Jacob Moon and wife, Solomon and Susanna Wright, Rith Stanton and Hannah Horsman. The land for the first meeting house came from the farm of Solomon Wright.

The Meeting house was built in 1853. A parsonage was built in 1906 and the organ was installed in 1907. A new church building was dedicated on October 15, 1911.

Solomon and Susannah Wright of Warren County, for the sum of $40.00, conveyed to Benjamin Hinshaw, Samuel Owens and Elias Newlin, Trustees of the Friends Church and their successors, land thirty-six rods by twenty rods containing four acres more or less. This is recorded in Deed Book P on page 278. One of the oldest legible stones in the Middle River Cemetery marks the grave of one of Wright's family.

Cemetery and Death Records of Warren County, Iowa, Warren County Genealogical Society, Walsworth Publishing Company, Marceline, Missouri: 1980.

View records submitted to the Iowa Gravestone Photo Project for Middle River Cemetery.