Fermilab Pioneer Cemetery a link with history
Historic Pioneer Cemetery has a new flagpole and is now fully fenced. Fermilab maintains the cemetery in recognition of the pioneers buried there and other ancestors who settled and farmed the Illinois prairie. A fresh sign also is being prepared. Source: Ferminews Vol. 4 No. 2, January 8, 1981
A tiny cemetery on the Fermilab site preserves the grave of Thompson Mead, a general in the War of 1812. His grave is one of 18 identifiable burials in the small plot on old Batavia Road, south of Wilson Road, west of the Meson Area.
Newspaper stories before Fermilab entered its present location report that the tiny cemetery was at one time completely abandoned. Through the efforts of two Batavia residents, Ernest Lundine and August Meier, the Kane County Veterans of Foreign Wars began, in 1958, to unearth the tombstones, including that of General Mead. The earliest burial was found to be 1839; the latest recorded burial in the plot was in 1871.
In September, 1972 the VFW rededicated the plot, raising a flag from the White House. "The feeling was that this soldier's grave should be preserved just as other soldiers' graves are preserved in military cemeteries throughout the United States," the VFW noted. Fermilab has agreed to continue perpetual care of the cemetery.