Sexton’s Book

Walnut Hill burials 1855, Belleville

The transcription below was derived from the burial entries in the sexton’s original book now at city hall.

• [ Square brackets ] signal other words we added, usually for clarification.
• Ditto marks were replaced with the word above it, however, and in a few cases a string of words appears to have been written across two or more columns.
• The place of birth is very likely misspelled if a foreign city or country.
• No further research was done to verify data in any entry. Try to verify the data with other records, e.g., will or estate files, bible records, gazetteers.
• Newspaper death notices were rare during this time period (better by the 1880s).

Many, many surnames are spelled phonetically. The column labeled Transcriber’s Comments includes our guess for the equivalent surname based on sound, letters, and familiarity with some St. Clair County family names. Sometimes the handwritten letter looked like two different letters, e.g., i and e, or terminal n and r. The Transcriber’s Comments column will include the letter substitution in such cases.

Given names may be easily recognized even though misspelled. Here is a list of often misspelled names or words in this sexton’s book.