Near the end of our day trip to Monroe and La Crosse Counties tracing the Jenkins family history, we made a stop at the old Welsh Presbyterian Cemetery. The cemetery is located at the corner of County Road J and Langrehr Road in the Town of Bangor, La Crosse County, WI. Fish Creek, a tributary of the La Crosse River, flows nearby. The valley in which the cemetery is located has been known for the past century as Jenkins Valley (not to be confused with Jenkins Valley near Cataract, WI, settled by a different Jenkins family).
While we were visiting the cemetery, Craig (shown in photo above) happened to stop by to talk with us. Craig lives in nearby Rockland and owns the 1.5 acres that surround the cemetery. The cemetery itself is 0.5 acres and is owned by the Town of Bangor. In our discussions Craig indicated that the township has not historically done a good job of maintaining the cemetery, so he mows it on a regular basis. He said his mother and uncle come by to clean the stones occasionally; the small cemetery is very well maintained. According to county records, there are 8 souls buried here; 4 from an Evans family and 4 from our Jenkins family: Evan Sr. (1813-1898), our great-great-grandfather, and his wife Margaret (1813-1879) plus two infant children.
An interesting story: At one time both a schoolhouse and a church stood nearby; the Welsh Presbyterian Church of Fish Creek to the east and the schoolhouse to the west. They are now both long gone. The merry-go-round still stands today near where the school stood. Looking at the left-hand photo above (date unknown), the old church is shown with 2 Jenkins monuments and many gravestones in the foreground. The left-hand monument looks to be the same as the one today marking Evan Sr and Margaret’s graves (photo above). The right-hand monument is also labeled with the Jenkins name and is now found at the Leon Cemetery (right photo above). When I inherited records from my grandfather Lyel (Thomas’ son and Evan Sr’s grandson), I came across the receipt (shown above) dated 5/8/1953 and Lyel’s note about transfers of Jenkins from the old Welsh cemetery to Leon Cemetery. I contacted Susan Fox, president of the Leon Cemetery Association in November 2019 and she thinks that caskets were not moved, only the headstones. The monument also was moved to provide for a complete Jenkins family plot at Leon Cemetery. This was all done one year before my great grandmother, Laura Rathbun Jenkins, passed away. Perhaps it was she who requested it. The six transfers in the receipt above would correspond to the six who are now marked at Leon Cemetery (of course excluding Laura who was still alive).
