This cemetery burial list was compiled by Miss Mary H. Siegfried May 5, 1972.  She is to receive full credit for it.

Mrs. Siegfried is a professional researcher living in Denver in Harmony Township in Hancock County.  She has furnished quite a number of burial list for this project.  This is the Warren L. Van Dine sponsored project which has been carried on for nine years (began in 1962).

Miss Siegfried prepared an introduction for this list.  Her introduction will be given here in addition to this Introduction which is being written by Warren L. Van Dine.

She states in her introduction as readers of this will note that the biographical sketch of John W. Kittel appears on page 557 of the 1880 Gregg "History of Hancock County, Illinois".  Turning to this account now so we can become acquainted with the American family three members of whom rest in death here in this St. Albans Township burying ground we find:

Mr. Kittel was a farmer who was labeled by Gregg as "And one of the pioneers of Hancock County,  and also of St. Albans Township".  He was "Not only one of St. Albans wealthy men", but he was known as "One of the solid man of Western Illinois".

The fax of his life as chronicled by this early days newspaper man fall into a pattern like the stories of poor boys rising to fame and fortune by reason of clean living and working 16 hours a day which were pouring in a golden stream from the pan of Horacio Alger, rags to riches fiction writer of that day.  By that day is very definitely meant the other century back of us when one could buy enough beefsteak for ten cents in cash money fora family meal.

Mr. Kittel was born in Germany in 1824 he stepped off a ship on the New World soil in 1850 at the halfway mark in the century.  He lived a while in Adair County N.Y. and from there he drifted to Quincy, Illinois, a river community in Adams County below us on the map of the Prairie state.  But he did not find the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow in either of these places.  If there ever was one to find some other guy got away from him in the competition for jobs and wives.  Probably he didn't know the right politicians.

Next week? The here of our story as Alger would call him if he were writing this in Warsaw here in Hancock County working as a teamster, and occupation he followed in that down at the heels burg from 1852 till 1862.  It was 10 years of his life wasted but he managed to keep the proverbial wolf away from his door in that way which he is more than a lot of guys were able to do in that town at that time.

Mr. Gregg comment about this gentleman becoming wealthy almost before he unpacked his suitcase here in St. Albums Township.  "He has made all of his large fortune of 430  acres of good land by the sweat of his brow and strict honesty", etc..  Land was still practically being given away here in the early 1860's when this fellow bought and.  Ali had to do was to sit down and wait for it to go upward and outward and upward price in the opic of nation-building going on on our American frontier.

He had about a dozen dirty faced kids by his two marriages.  And he was a Methodist and the Republican.  Somewhere along the tough food of life according to Gregg he acquired a fair education.

He was able to read both German and English fluently.

America and St. Albans Township was a land of opportunity for him and he got in on the ground floor in a big way.

The 1874 Andreas Atlas of Hancock County shows the 430  acres this guy own located in Section 16 and 17 of St. ALICE Township in that wonderful rolling land country about halfway between West Point and what is today the north-south concrete road No. 96.  His name is spelled differently here, Kettle, but however it is spelled it means just one thing and that is that nowhere but in America could this have happened, wealth in a lifetime for a pour indigent youth who had only bulging muscles by way of assets.

Here in Kittel Cemetery 3 of this fine Americans loved ones sleep at the final sleep when life and dreams are over and we become dust again.  His two wives listed here passed on not at all across the black waters of the river of death at about the age of 40 and an infant daughter born of the second marriage.

Just volumes of human hopes and efforts these family cemeteries of Hancock County hold for those who take the time to research on the stories of the men and women who wait in them for the resurrection.

(introduction prepared by Miss Mary H. Siegfried) this cemetery is located to in one-half miles and southeast of West Point, in the southwest corner of the northeast 1/2 Section 17 Township 3 W 7 W (St. Albans Township), on the blacktop road running west from West Point to Route 96.  Three members of the family of John M. Kittel, a former owner of the land, are buried here.  It is sometimes called the bank's Cemetery as members of the BANKS family still own the land.  Is fenced with ordinary wire fencing and the names are inscribed on a gray granite monument about 3 1/2 feet high a biography of John M.
Kittel appears and Gregg's history of Hancock County on page 557.  Is located one half mile west of the old rural Pleasant Hill school house.
This record was made by Mary H. Siegfried May 5, 1971

Wives of John M.Kittel
Kittel, Mrs. Anna Barbara M. Conrad- b: 1824   d: 1867 She was first married to a Conrad.
Kittel, Margaret E (Kittel)- b:1844   d: 1883 (1st wife of John M. Kittel) In the marriages of Illinois she is listed as a Kittel and married John M. Kittel)

Daughter
Kittel, Sarah E- b: 1875   d: 1879

To My Mother
Initial for stones for the three.