Badger Boneyards: The Eternal Rest of the Story -- Classic Wisconsin

Travel, History, and Badger Boneyards by Dennis McCann in America's Dairyland

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Dennis McCann is a Wisconsin native and longtime explorer of the state’s nooks,crannies, and, yes, its burial grounds. A University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism graduate, he joined the Milwaukee Journal (later the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) in 1983 as farm writer and state rover. His previous books include The Wisconsin Story: 150 Stories/150 Years, Dennis McCann Takes You for a Ride, and Rough Stuff, a collection of his columns from Wisconsin Golfer magazine. Now a freelance writer,he spends most of his time with his wife, Barb, a retired teacher, at their home on Lake Superior in Bayfield. The following is an excerpt from his latest book "Badger Boneyards: The Eternal Rest of the Story."

Even in the Grave, He’s Free
Rewey

The dead can’t tell their stories, so their stones are left to speak for them.

In little Carmel Cemetery, which slopes away from the handsome white Carmel Church that stands amid tall oaks, the names on the markers are Williams and Jones and Evans—names that inform the visitor that this was part of the once-vibrant Pecatonica Welsh settlement. Unlike other groups who came to America, the Welsh brought only a few surnames, Williams and Jones foremost among them.

One marker, an obelisk that stands at the grave of one James D. Williams who died at the age of sixty on August 2, 1903, tells a story all its own:

“Born a slave in Virginia, Made Free by President Lincoln’s Proclamation.”

Now these are stones with a pretty good story.

The Welsh began arriving in this part of Iowa County in the 1930s, when lead was the magnet pulling settlers to southwestern Wisconsin. The first Welsh settler was thought to be William Owens, but families named Davies and Jones, Williams and Hughes soon joined him. The settlement was spread over an area that measured about seven miles by ten miles, its residents primarily occupied in mining and farming but united above all by faith.

At first, settlers held singing and prayer services in various cabins. Eventually, residents formed the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church, establishing a permanent place for worship. One of their own number, John Davies, would go on to preach the gospel for forty years, until his death at age sixty-three. Even as the Welsh immigrants adopted English as their official language, they kept their native tongue alive in worship, singing hymns in Welsh and praying their familiar prayers. Many of the oldest graves in the settlement’s cemeteries carry Welsh inscriptions.

But James D. Williams, born a slave, of course did not come from Wales. The man known in the blunt style of the time as Negro Jim had come north to Wisconsin with members of the Pecatonica Welsh community who had fought in the Civil War. He made his home with Edward Williams and adopted his friend’s name.

A history of the community, In the Shadow of the Mines, noted that James Williams no doubt suffered some resentment and discrimination because of the color of his skin, but also said the majority of the community apparently welcomed him. Williams, who like his new neighbors loved to sing, learned the traditional Welsh hymns and gladly raised his voice with the choir. He had a music box he played for children, raised vegetables in a large garden, and jokingly referred to himself as the only Welsh Negro in history.

But more than that, he was perhaps the only Wisconsin black man to own his own lead mine. Williams’s mine was about three miles south of Rewey, and he would travel to it with his mule to dig for lead. Not until forty-five years after his death, according to In the Shadow of the Mines, was the mine discovered to contain measurable, if hardly profitable, traces of gold.

When James Williams died, an overflow crowd attended his funeral at Carmel Church.

Today both Carmel and its sister congregation, Carmel-Peniel Presbyterian Church, are still used for services, though Carmel, which has only woodstoves for heat, holds services solely in summer months. Services are no longer in Welsh, but occasional Welsh hymn singing, or gymanfa ganu, keeps the old traditions alive. And when that happens, it is tempting to wonder if the spirit of old Jim Williams, still a free man, hums along.

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