While all of Lawrence County’s cemeteries are historic to some degree, only one cemetery in Lawrence County is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

St. Mary’s Cemetery, five miles east of St. Joseph, on Gieske Road is the only remnant of the abandoned German Catholic settlement of St. Mary’s. Established in 1872, the community of St. Mary’s had a log Catholic church and was home to a handful of German immigrants who came to Lawrence County as part of the German Catholic Migration of the 1870s.

The parish was eventually absorbed by St. Joseph and the log church is long gone, but the little cemetery at St. Mary’s remains, and it is still an active burial site. Buried there are members of the Gieske, Kerstiens, Henkel, Regensberg, and Bergob families, among others.

Some of the earliest stones, like this one marking the grave of Theresia Bergob, have German epitaphs. Although some parts of the stone have been worn almost illegible by more than a century of the elements, Theresia Bergob’s stone (as far as I can read it) says the following:

HIER RUHT
THERESIA BERGOB
GEB den 27 FEBR 1842
in Beisinghausen Gemeinde
Reiste Westfalen
GEST den 25 OCT 1908
Deuneliebe songinicht
mehrdein Erkaliendein
Erblassen schulg uns Wunder
lief und schuwer

The German epitaphs, combined with the cemetery’s association with the German Catholic migration, make the cedar-ringed burial ground unique enough to meet the rigorous criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

St. Mary’s Cemetery was listed on the National Register on October 10, 1984.