Nestled on a hill in Lyle Township is the picturesque Woodbury Cemetery which holds a multitude of joyful and painful memories of many Mower County residents.

Thursday, March 07, 2002

Nestled on a hill in Lyle Township is the picturesque Woodbury Cemetery which holds a multitude of joyful and painful memories of many Mower County residents.

According to the ornate, cast-iron entrance gate, the cemetery was started in 1855, but Eloise Kvale-Foss, treasurer of the cemetery speculates it "may be even longer when there were no records."

Foss also says the non-denominational cemetery was started by J.B. Woodbury, one of the early settlers of Lyle Township.

"We believe Margory Bean was the first person buried there, but we can find no marker of her," Foss says.

The cemetery has a long tradition of volunteer work. "That’s how maintenance was done in the early days-by volunteers. They mowed and kept it up for a long, long time, and there’s still a lot of volunteer work done here," Foss says.

That volunteer work includes the activities of the Willing Workers, a group of women from the Ladies Aid Association who have family at the cemetery. "Every Memorial Day, a different group of Willing Workers volunteers to buy flowers and plant flowers in the flower urns," Foss explains. "Generally, they plant geraniums and petunias and things like that."

"The flowers are always planted by Memorial Day so they look fresh for the Memorial Day service," Georgia Williams, secretary of the cemetery says.

The Memorial Day service is always an important celebration for the cemetery since veterans of wars as early as the Civil War are buried there. "Every year, the American Legion from Lyle goes out there to do the Memorial Day service," Foss says. "People come from quite aways to attend the service here. A lot of families get together and I bet that’s one of the few times during the year when some people see each other."