This Cemetery is located in the southeast corner of section 17 of Hancock Township.

To get to it the motorist takes Illinois state road No. 136 east out of Carthage.  Seven or eight miles out there is a building on the north side of the hard road where someone back in the 1950s operated a garage were automobiles were repaired for people.  Just above this building, which is now a storage place for landowners for a family who resided in a nearby house, on high hilltop is Cameron cemetery.  The field is a pasture heavy underfoot with blue grass.

This introduction is being prepared September 18, 1970.  The writer Warren L. Van Dine went to Cameron cemetery earlier in the day and copied the inscriptions from the half-dozen stones.

The live broken up or if not so off their bases here and there on a grass mute evidence that another generation of man lived here a hundred years ago back in the Civil War days, the era of muzzle loading rifles and the outskirts.

Items from the 1968 county history and the historic sites of Hancock Township list compiled by the Hancock County Historical Society will be added to this Cameron Cemetery entry.

(1968 Hancock County history, page 324)

"Cameron Cemetery is a family cemetery located on hilltop near the southeast corner of section 17.  Mrs. Sarah (Cameron) Rhea died at the homer for father, John Cameron, May 16, 1850, and in compliance with her request, she was laid to rest in this particular spot which she had selected on her father's farm.  She was the first one buried in this cemetery.  John Cameron one of the early settlers, was buried in this Cemetery, October, 1866 in his wife Elizabeth, was buried there December, 1872.  In 1967 there are no monuments standing, and only broken tombstones marked the burial site."

(Hancock Township historic sites list drawn up by the Township sites chairman Joe Johnson and the committee made up of John Siepel, Vesta Holloway, and Mildred Nelson).

9-1.  Cameron cemetery no longer exists.  Just a few broken fragments of monuments marked the spot.  Here Mrs. Sarah Cameron Rhea was laid to rest were she had picked, on her father's farm.

(Carthage Republican-article by J. C. McCubbin, date of writing May 1, 1934).

Mrs. Sarah, nee Cameron, Rhea, died at the homer of her father John Cameron, June 20, 1850.  In compliance with her request, the remains were laid to rest in a particular spot which she had selected on her father's farm.  Hers was the first burial that took place in what is now known as the Cameron Cemetery.  It is located near the west line of the southeast quarter of the southeast quarter of section 17.

Cameron, Elizabeth - b: September 12, 1799   d: December 26, 1873  aged 74 years 3 months 14 days  (w/o John Cameron)
Cameron, John - b: June 3, 1799  d: October 23, 1866  aged 67 years 4 months 20 days  (h/o Elizabeth Cameron)
Leonard, Stephen - b: February 15, 1842  d: April 18, 1856  aged 14 years 2 months 3 days
Rhea or Ray, Sarah - b: December 12, 1823  d: May 16, 1850  aged 26 years  5 months 4 days
Robinson, William D. - b: dates unreadable  aged 11 years to months 10 days
Robinson, Abner - b: no dates