Shiloh Cemetery, Coles County, Illinois

A couple of miles away from the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site is the Shiloh Cemetery, also known as the Tom Lincoln Cemetery. It's a pleasant place, if you like cemeteries -- Yuriko and the kids stayed in the car -- rural and quiet, ringed by a brace of pines and other trees but otherwise surrounded by farmland. Tom and Sarah Lincoln repose there, behind an small iron fence. A largish stone says LINCOLN, while they each have smaller stones that also say that a local Kiwanis Club provided the stores in 1922.

To judge by the number of headstones, a few hundred souls repose along with the Lincolns, some in a 19th-century section, others in a 20th-century one. Most of the stones are upright, but I noticed a handful flush with the ground, a position I don't usually associate with older headstones. A closer look revealed that some well-worn small stones, formerly upright, had been set horizontally in newer cement, presumably as a way of preserving them.

I walked around only for a few minutes, and neglected to take notes (or take photos), so the names of a few obscure people and their lifespans will have to stay down here in Coles County. But I did notice a marker for a mass grave for 30-odd "Asiatic cholera" victims in the 1830s and '40s. Also, some of the individual stones had carved in them a hand in relief, index finger pointing up, along with the words GO HOME.