Yates Cemetery in Jefferson County, Missouri
These graves have been sitting on this little hill for over 120 years. (Photo: me, taken 10/11/2025)
I’ve been a history buff for a while now, but I started digging into my own family’s history in earnest about a year ago. (It may have something to do with the fact that looking back feels a little better to me than looking forward at this particular moment in time…) I signed up for accounts with Ancestry and online newspaper repositories, figured out Family Search, and brushed up on my research skills. I’ve dug up some fascinating tidbits— and in some ways I have just as many questions as I did when I first started. (But that’s what makes genealogy fun, right?)
My mother’s maiden name is Yates. When I stumbled upon the FindaGrave entry for Yates Cemetery in Jefferson County, Missouri and saw a few grainy images of my ancestors’ headstones, my interest was piqued. I took a little road trip last October with my husband to see the cemetery for myself.
Jonas Yates (1799-1868) was my 4th great-grandfather. He was born in Illinois but came to eastern Missouri in the early 1820s, around the time it became a state. He married Martha “Mattie” Foster (1808-1899) on September 6, 1827, and they settled on Rock Creek about twenty miles southwest of St. Louis.
Back then, this area was still a wilderness. The Fosters, Mattie’s family, came to Missouri as early as 1776 and ran a saltworks at Ste. Genevieve, before later receiving a Spanish land grant for 640 acres near present-day Herculaneum in Jefferson County. Mattie’s brother, James Foster, Jr., later said that he had never seen a real wagon until he was ten years old, as the local settlers used sleds or keelboats to get around. When Jonas and Mattie first came to Rock Creek in the late 1820s or early 1830s, they broke ground on forested, hilly terrain, land that was completely undeveloped.
Today this area is a thirty minute drive from the arch and feels somewhere between suburban and rural. (My husband, who lived in St. Louis for many years, jokingly refers to the county as “Meth Co.” instead of “Jeff. Co.”) On this trip we had spent the weekend in St. Louis and planned to visit Yates Cemetery on our way out of town. We took Highway 21 south, otherwise known as “Blood Alley,” apparently one of Missouri’s deadliest stretches of road. The eerie feeling grew stronger as we turned onto Country Club Drive, entering one of those ticky-tacky neighborhoods that probably looked nice about thirty years ago. If I hadn’t known the cemetery was there, I might have turned around.
Half a mile up the road we pulled up beside the only seemingly vacant lot in the neighborhood. A grassy area sloped up from the street towards the woods. Feeling a little like an intruder, I hopped out of the car and had my husband circle the block (since there was nowhere to park) so I could check it out and take a few photos.
View of the plot looking southwest from the street. (Photo: me)
Jonas Yates’s headstone on the left, dated 1868; his daughter and son-in-law’s headstones on the far right from the early 1900s. You can tell how close the cemetery is to the houses. (Photo: me)
The top of the little hill where the graves are was overgrown and covered in spiky yucca plants. Immediately I found Jonas’s grave. Considering that he died on November 19, 1868, I felt beyond fortunate to be able to see his intact headstone in person. (Some kind person did reattach the obelisk to the plinth after it toppled over.) The engraving had almost completely weathered away.
Headstone of Jonas Yates (1799-1868). (Photo: me)
The only other legible graves in the Yates Cemetery during my October 2025 visit were Sarah Jane Yates (1832-1900) and her husband Frank Baldwin (1826-1902), Jonas’s daughter and son-in-law, and Charles T. Yates (1880-1912), Jonas’s grandson. Mattie Yates is also buried there, but sadly, her headstone had disappeared by the time I visited. Mattie lived to be 90 years old and was known as “Grandma Yates” in her later life. Her obituary in the Jefferson Democrat is rather charming:
Martha Foster Yates’s obituary in the Jefferson Democrat, dated February 9, 1899 (Source: Newspapers.com)
Walking through the Yates Cemetery was a special, melancholy experience. Jonas and Mattie were real people who tended their farm and raised eight children here 150 years ago. I felt a connection with them despite the years between our existences. They had fears and desires and faults. They dealt with the pain and joy and mundanity of life just like I do. Their children mourned them when they died. And now all that’s left is the scrubby, overgrown hill where their remains lie, sandwiched between cookie-cutter houses in a dilapidated suburb. Someday that will be gone, too, and everyone will have forgotten Jonas and Mattie Yates. I’m glad I made it to their cemetery while something of them still remains, and can keep their memory alive, at least for now.
