White cemetery is a family burying ground opened by the Hickerson Wright branch of the right families of eastern Hancock County in an early pioneer days in Western Illinois.

Hickerson Wright, according to the 1880 Gregg county history, page 821, was born in Virginia, 1791; came to the county in 1883; died, January 1857.

According to a biographical sketch on page 839 he was raised in Kentucky.  His father died when he was a small boy and he was raised without schooling, without even learning to read and write.

But our County was the promised land for the poor of the older settled states in the pioneer era where men without book learning and cash assets could accumulate wealth in a few years.  Its soil was black and all a strong man like Hickerson had to do was to stick a plow into it to tap resources greater than fabled wealth of the Indies.

Hickerson Wright not only cashed in here but he raised a family of 11 children.

This pioneer and his wife Cynthia are at rest now in a fenced square enclosure about 20 by 20 ft. on a level spot in a broken field pasture about a half mile northeast of the ghost town of Webster.

It is on a farm owned by Mr. Leslie Corder, a retired monument dealer of Carthage, Illinois, and rented to the Robert Tillman family.  The farm home on this farm where the Tillmans live is on the blacktop road just east of Webster.

There are some weights in addition to the heavy stand of blue grass in the enclosure but the fence is a well built a very substantial farm field fence which keeps livestock out.  From the looks of this fence it seems likely no farm animal will set foot on the graves of these dead at least in our Twentieth Century, probably not until well into the Twenty First Century.

The writer of this the forenoon he went to the cemetery to compiled this list by copying data from monuments (December 27, 1965) stopped at Mr. Corder's home on the east brick pavement (east main street) and the Carthage.  Mr. Corder who is now retired from his monument business lists and a fashionable recently built a large modern design home where he is enjoying a well earned gold and sunset of life.

He stated citizens of our county could be assured that as long as he owned this farm the right cemetery would be treated with respect do the honored pioneer dead of Western Illinois.  Mr. Corder is a worker in the Carthage Assembly of God Church and disposition on this is completely commendable from the standpoint of both the laws of God this honored and respected Protestant group acknowledges and the laws of the state of Illinois.

This farm was as the writer of this understands part of the Hickerson Wright holdings in his day.

The Hickerson Wright family was the first of the Wright families to come to Western Illinois from the older states.  Several brothers of this man joined him here in Hancock County almost before he settled down to housekeeping in our county
 

Small marble shaft
Willey, Sterling P.- b:   d: December 30, 1866  Aged 2 years 20 days  (age not plain) (s/o J. S. and D Willey )

Elaborate marble shaft.
Wright, Hickerson- b: 1791  d: January 24, 1877  Aged 86 yrs (h/o Cynthia Wright)
Wright, Cynthia- b:   d: May 20, 1846  aged 41 years 3 months 29 days  (w/o Hickerson Wright)
Wright, James B.- b:   d: November 6, 1850  aged 18 years 2 months 20 days  (s/o Hickerson and Cynthia Wright)
Wright, Infant- b:   d: May 1, 1842   (s/o Hickerson and Cynthia Wright)
(Elaborate marble slabs for Mrs.Wright, James B. Wright, and small marble slab for Infant son of above)

Marble slab
Wright, Cossiah- b:   d: March 22, 1865  aged 37 years 9 months