Another burial plot could lie in path of new Missouri 150By DONALD BRADLEY -
The Kansas City Star
Date: 05/14/01 22:15William Holloway didn't know his pioneer relatives, the
ones who came from Kentucky in the 1840s to settle in Missouri. But Holloway
soon could attend those ancestors' burials. Reburials, actually. A highway
construction crew unexpectedly unearthed the Holloway family cemetery, which
lay in the path of the new Missouri 150 between Holmes Road and U.S. 71 on
Kansas City's southern edge. Officials with the Missouri Department of
Transportation have been eager to find Holloway heirs to help with the
exhumation and relocation of the nine graves. The state is paying all
reburial costs, but having relatives to speak for the deceased can hasten the
process, allowing the $13.6 million highway project to get back on track.
Other heirs also have been found. That's good news for state officials
because they want as many names on a petition as possible when they file in
Jackson County Circuit Court to move the graves. They hope to file those
papers within days. But now those officials have another worry. After a story
in The Kansas City Star last week, genealogists and historians deluged
officials with information about the Holloway family tree. They gave names
and dates and even told of a Holloway link to Daniel Boone. "We sorted
through all of them," said John Cave, attorney for the transportation
department. But a few callers offered another kind of tip: Construction
workers may run into another unplatted family plot as the highway project
works its way east. "We know that's a possibility," transportation
department
spokesman Steve Porter said Thursday. The problem is that old family
cemeteries, particularly those dating to before the Civil War, were seldom
recorded. Thus, they were not identified when state officials planned the new
route for Missouri 150. Callers to The Star suggested the other cemetery --
if there is one -- may be that of the Keeney family. Tom Keeney, a historian
who lives in Belton, acknowledged that his ancestors operated a farm just
east of the Holloway farm. "There may well be a cemetery not far from there,"
Keeney said. First, though, the Holloways. William Holloway, who lives in
Terrace Park, Ohio, is the great-great-grandson of John C. Holloway, the
family patriarch who loaded his family in a horse-drawn wagon and moved west.
Records show that John C. Holloway acquired the property, either through
purchase or homestead agreement, in 1848 and that several generations of his
family farmed the land through the 1880s. Porter said some of the family
eventually moved to Utah and Oregon, but many stayed in Missouri. The first
headstone discovered at the site by construction workers was that of America
Ann Holloway, who was the wife of John Holloway's son, Isaac. She died in
1858. State archaeologists later discovered what they believe are eight other
graves. "It's too early to know what is going to be done," William Holloway
said Thursday from his home in Ohio. He said he had no knowledge of his
family that far back and referred questions to Jay Roberts of Harrisonville.
Roberts described himself as a "shirt-tail relative" of the Holloways,
meaning he is related by marriage rather than blood. He's also a genealogist
who has traced the Holloway family tree from the time John Holloway left
Kentucky, and he has located several direct descendants of the pioneer. State
officials were glad to get the help. But they won't like what Roberts has to
say about that missing Keeney cemetery: "It might be in the direct path of
that highway, and they could run right into it." To reach Donald Bradley,
call (816) 234-7810 or send e-mail to dbradley(a)kcstar.com