While the O’Fallon Cemetery Detectives began as a genealogical and historical society focused on St. Clair County, the group has found itself in Monroe County more often in the past few years due to the counties’ shared history before and after Illinois officially joined the Union in 1818.

On Saturday morning, a grave marking and dedication ceremony was held at Moore Cemetery in Waterloo to honor a local War of 1812 veteran and the first sheriff of Monroe County. 

The ceremony followed a restoration project which began after the Cemetery Detectives discovered General James Biggs Moore’s broken gravestone while clearing out tall vegetation and debris from the cemetery located between South Library Street and Route 3 just south of Greystone Crematory.

On Tuesday, Cemetery Detective founding member Tim Ogle told the Republic-Times about the discovery. 

“When we found General James Biggs Moore’s buried gravestone it made all of us very proud, not to mention extremely excited,” Ogle began. “Finding a lost buried grave stone is exciting. Finding a soldier’s gravestone is even more exciting, so imagine how we felt when we flipped over the old sandstone grave stone and the first thing we saw after cleaning it was the word ‘General!’ I still get goosebumps when I talk about it.” 

The gravestone was found face down, which likely helped preserve the stone engraving.

The marker was also cracked near its center, with repairs being made by the Cemetery Detectives prior to Saturday’s ceremony. 

Ogle – a descendant of Revolutionary War veteran and local pioneer Capt. Joseph Ogle – was the featured speaker.

He began by thanking Bellefontaine House President Pat Vaseska for being “instrumental” in getting the Cemetery Detectives to come to Waterloo and restore the Moore Family Cemetery.

Ogle also thanked Morrison-Talbott Library Adult Services Coordinator Sherri Tjemmes for her hours of research and photography of various projects at Moore Cemetery.

Tjemmes’ research also identified three additional War of 1812 veterans buried in the cemetery, although the grave markers have not yet been unearthed as well as a soldier who served in the Black Hawk Indian Wars of the 1830s.

Tjemmes herself became a detective, Ogle reported. 

He explained there were a number of legible gravestones discovered in Moore Cemetery that were not on the original roster. 

One such monument belonged to Dr. Ferdinand Ganter, a German emigrant who came to America in the 1840s following an attempt to overthrow the German monarchy. 

Through Tjemmes’ research, it was learned that Ganter and others were originally laid to rest in Waterloo’s Wetzler Cemetery just east of the Monroe County Courthouse and were moved to Moore Cemetery in the 1970s to make way for a residential development.   

“Finding out the history of so many of the monuments is almost as much fun and as exciting as finding a buried lost grave stone,” Ogle remarked.

He also reported former Waterloo Mayor Tom Smith and the Daughters of 1812 are working to secure three new Veterans Administration gravestones for the soldiers whose markers are missing or unreadable.

The focus of Saturday’s ceremony was General Moore, son of one of Waterloo’s founders and a prominent Monroe County figure in his own right. 

General Moore served as a captain in the War of 1812, earning his commission as general immediately following the war, becoming the leader of the state militia and commanding a company of Rangers of the Illinois frontier.

Born in 1780 in Virginia, he was the son of Revolutionary War Capt. James Moore, who in 1782 struck out for what became Illinois, becoming one of the founders of Bellefontaine in what is now Waterloo.

General Moore was a was businessman, mostly a river-based trader who operated a keel boat along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers from New Orleans to Pittsburgh, Pa. 

He abandoned life on the river trading and established a tanning venture three miles northeast of present-day Waterloo known as the “tanyards farm.” He later established a mill on Prairie du Long Creek and a factory near his homestead.

General Moore also represented Monroe County as a state legislator.

He died in 1841 on the family farm.

The Cemetery Detectives’ work in Monroe County is far from over, though. 

Ogle said one of their latest projects involves training the trustees of Miles Cemetery to repair grave stones after the group spent several months cleaning the grave stones.

Ogle said he and others plan to return to Miles Cemetery in the near future to continue the project

The late Delaney Doerr was a trustee at Miles Cemetery and had assisted the Cemetery Detectives with projects, including the discovery of the oldest, intact, legible grave marker in the state. 

The gravestone was found in 2022 in a cemetery near the James Lemen Sr. monument just south of Waterloo.

Ogle said the recent work at Miles Cemetery serves to maintain the gravestones as well as train the latest group of trustees in continuing the work of Doerr and others. 

Search “O’Fallon Cemetery Detectives” on Facebook to stay up-to-date on recent projects in Monroe County and elsewhere in Southern Illinois.