The “Witch’s Grave” of St. Omer Cemetery

St. Omer Cemetery in Coles County, Illinois.

The entire village of St. Omer in Coles County, Illinois is dead. Established in 1852, by the mid-1880s, the tiny town was gone, its residents either interred for eternity at St. Omer Cemetery or relocated in pursuit of better economic opportunities.

The Barnes family monument at St. Omer Cemetery.

And if not for one grave, St. Omer Cemetery would be relatively unknown. One corner of the cemetery is home to an unusual monument depicting a large sphere resting atop stacked logs and kindle. Here, beneath this monument and the ground it sits on, eroded by decades of curious visitors, lay four members of the Barnes family: Granville Barnes, his wife Sarah Ann (Welch) Barnes, their son Marcus Barnes, and Marcus’s wife, Caroline (Prather) Barnes. Sarah Ann died July 20, 1877. Marcus died in a sawmill accident December 6, 1881, at age 24. Caroline, aged 23, suffered complications from pneumonia and died at the end of February 1882, and patriarch Granville died days later, on March 2, 1882.

A closer look at the unusual date of death on the Barnes family monument at St. Omer Cemetery.

Although she died either February 26 or 28, the cemetery monument notes Caroline’s…