Present for the April 26 unveiling of the pioneer monument at Salem’s John and Anna Stagner Cemetery were, from left, Eugene Anderson, Judi (Stagner) Anderson, Ronald Stagner, Randall Stagner, Deborah Stagner and Irene Gnemi.
Present for the April 26 unveiling of the pioneer monument at Salem’s John and Anna Stagner Cemetery were, from left, Eugene Anderson, Judi (Stagner) Anderson, Ronald Stagner, Randall Stagner, Deborah Stagner and Irene Gnemi.
Present for the April 26 unveiling of the pioneer monument at Salem’s John and Anna Stagner Cemetery were, from left, Eugene Anderson, Judi (Stagner) Anderson, Ronald Stagner, Randall Stagner, Deborah Stagner and Irene Gnemi.
Photo by Andrew Sheeley
Present for the April 26 unveiling of the pioneer monument at Salem’s John and Anna Stagner Cemetery were, from left, Eugene Anderson, Judi (Stagner) Anderson, Ronald Stagner, Randall Stagner, Deborah Stagner and Irene Gnemi.
Descendants gathered in Salem on April 26 for the unveiling of a monument honoring the lives of some of the Ozarks's earliest pioneers. Pulling back the canvas concealing the granite edifice at the John and Anna Stagner Cemetery were Randall Stagner and Ronald Stagner. Both are part of a lineage connecting directly to the namesake of the graveyard.
Descendants gathered in Salem on April 26 for the unveiling of a monument honoring the lives of some of the Ozarks’ earliest pioneers. Pulling back the canvas concealing the granite edifice at the John and Anna Stagner Cemetery were Randall Stagner and his brother Ronald Stagner. Both are part of a lineage connecting directly to the namesakes of the graveyard.
“The county, the city and all the local officials here could not have been better about helping us in this process,” Randall Stagner said. “Everybody was very helpful along the way.”
Randall especially thanked former Presiding Commissioner Darrell Skiles for his support.
“My father Willis, Ron and I started the process for recovering this cemetery about 10 years ago,” Randall said. “The property that you're standing on is county property, but the county commissioners have given us permission to clean the place up and to make improvements, but nobody else is allowed to be buried here.”
Randall said there are three of his ancestors known to be buried in the cemetery, which is located at the end of Lough Lane in Salem. When they were interred, the graveyard would have been an open patch of ground at the edge of a frontier settlement.
“Anna was buried here first in 1856, then son John Henry, who died of typhoid fever in 1860,” Randall said. “In 1866, John dies, and then he's buried here. Those are the only three people I know that are buried here. There might be others, but they’re the only ones I can confirm.”
Randall said the first Stagners arrived in America at the port of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from what is now Germany in 1738. They immigrated as a part of an effort by Queen Anne of England to provide an escape for protestant refugees from war and famine in Europe. In 1753, his ancestors moved to North Carolina, where John Stagner and Anna Hendricks were born in 1794 and 1791, respectively. John and Anna moved west with their families to Kentucky, where they married in 1818 and had six children, before then making their way to what became Salem in 1841.
“Up until recently, all of the Stagners in Dent County were farmers,” Randall said. “They also served in every national war from the Civil War to Iraq. I'm an Iraq War veteran.”
Decades after the Stagners were interred, the cemetery’s land was acquired by a local bank and sold to Dent County for $1 in 1901. Improvements completed onsite by the Stagner family since 2014 have included a professional survey, clearing debris, building a border fence, planting evergreens and placing the stone monument.
“My father and mother are in Cedar Grove Cemetery,” Randall said. “He passed almost exactly a year ago on the 28th of April. Mom passed a year and a half before him. I wanted to let him know, and I don't know if it's ever mission accomplished, but it is certainly mission progressed, and so I put a rose on their headstone.”
Going forward, Randall said he hopes the last resting place of other Ozark pioneers are rediscovered and revitalized.
“I would like to see encouragement at the state level for a program to restore these old cemeteries,” Randall said. “Funding is always an issue, but I would like to at least see some encouragement and to make it easier to do by sharing what it is that people can and can’t do.”
Beyond being a community service, Randall said it’s spiritually fulfilling to honor lives of past generations.
“It’s important to remember where you come from and it’s important to remember what those who came before you did,” Randall said. “It's a little hard to understand where you are in a moment if you don't know where you came from. As I investigated their lives, I've learned a great deal more about myself in the process. There's a tenacity in people who come to America, a wild place in 1738, who then go on the Great Wagon Road, which was not a road, it was a trail through the woods down to North Carolina, and then continue to move to Kentucky, and then what would have been the wilds of the Ozarks.
“There was no Salem when they arrived here. It didn’t exist. There was no Dent County when they came here, it was all Crawford County. It gives you an appreciation as you go through your day, and you kind of make assumptions on life in general, of what it really took to get you here. None of us are here on our own. I'm not just talking about being born, I'm talking about being in a position to eventually, someday, graduate from high school, go to college, join the army, and do something for others. If you don't understand what they did you can't figure out, quite frankly, who you are.”
John Hewkin has been a sports fan since he was a kid. He’s played, coached and been a fan of sports. I was a sports writer for 15 years before moving back to Missouri, but to this day you will still find me in my man cave a lot of nights and weekends watching something that requires a ball.
