Last week’s placement of a new, permanent sign at Freedom & Remembrance Memorial Park on the south side of Peoria is the latest, and (for now) final, improvement at the site, which was dedicated almost three years ago to commemorate more than 2,600 Peorians buried at the former Moffatt Cemetery that was located adjacent to the park.
Freedom & Remembrance Memorial Park, which was dedicated in a ceremony on Flag Day, 14 June 2023, includes three Illinois State Historical Society markers: one telling the story of Moffatt Cemetery, another listing the 52 military veterans who were interred at Moffatt, and a third relating the remarkable story of Nance (Legins) Costley (1813-1892) of Pekin and Peoria. The park’s name, Freedom & Remembrance Memorial Park, derives from the common theme and spirit of those stories.
Nance (Legins) Costley and her husband Benjamin Costley (c.1812-1883) and their son Leander Costley (c.1845-1886) are among those buried at the former Moffatt Cemetery in Peoria. She and her three eldest children (including her son William, who subsequently was an eyewitness to the first Juneteenth as a soldier in the 29th U.S. Colored Infantry) are known to history as the first African-Americans to be freed from enslavement with the help of Abraham Lincoln, through the landmark Illinois Supreme Court case Bailey v. Cromwell (1841).
Moffatt Cemetery was closed in 1905, after which it fell into severe neglect for about five decades, until in the mid-1950s the City of Peoria cleared away the gravestones and, claiming all the burials had been removed, rezoned the property to light industrial. In fact, most of the burials are still there. Over the course of about seven years, Robert Hoffer of the Peoria Historical Society and a team of volunteers worked with the Peoria Park District and the City of Peoria and numerous community groups to create Peoria’s new memorial park.
After the 2023 naming ceremony, further plans were made to improve the park by adding paved areas, including a circular central plaza for the flag pole, storyboard, and historical markers, parking spaces, new sidewalks, and a new entryway. Almost a year ago, those additional improvements were implemented.
Also planned was a permanent sign that would include the logo of the Freedom & Remembrance Memorial Park Project. The logo, which was designed by Hoffer, includes the colors red, white, and blue for America and the 52 veterans there; a red star that illustrates the memorial and park location; straight lines that represent Adams and Griswold streets; a pennant ‘flag’ that depicts both the shape and location of the cemetery; and a white line on the ‘flag’ that demarks the area of the cemetery was that never used for burials.
That sign has now been installed, though Hoffer and his fellow Freedom & Remembrance Memorial Park Project volunteers are hopeful that more will be done to honor and restore the former cemetery grounds.
Robert Hoffer announced the placement of the new sign in an email sent out Saturday, March 21, addressed “To our many sponsors, supporters, and associates of Peoria’s Freedom & Remembrance Memorial,” the text of which follows:
Just a short note to thank you again, on behalf of the entire Freedom & Remembrance Memorial Project Team, for your support for this project.
The City of Peoria placed a very nice marker at the Park this past week and I wanted to share a couple of photos with you.
This is a quality and fitting ‘exclamation point’ on this many-years effort to commemorate those so long forgotten at the lost and destroyed Moffatt Cemetery.
I mentioned to my wife as we were going down to see the sign that it is just short of 11 years since she asked me where her Swedish immigrant Great-Grandfather was buried in Peoria.
So glad to have been able to answer that question and provide fitting closure related to the more than 2,650 other Peorians who still lie buried there in unmarked graves yet today.
Longer term, I am hopeful that a full redemption of the four modern property parcels which made up the old cemetery can be transformed into a cleared open space of community remembrance.
Our most sincere thanks again.
- Bob Hoffer, for the Freedom & Remembrance Memorial Project Team
- Carl Adams, Joe Hutchinson, Jared Olar, David Pittman, Bill Poorman
