Numerous U.S. Census records give Abdiel's birth year as
1822 & alternately as 1824.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Daily Review (Decatur, IL) 6 November 1910

Abdiel T. Risley died at 7 oclock on Saturday night at the residence of A. L. Breakway, 541 N. College street. His death was due to the infirmities of age more than to any specific disease. He had been steadily declining for several years and during the last five weeks he had been confined to his bed.
Mr. Risley was the oldest man in this part of the state. Had he lived seven months longer he would have been 93 years old.
He was born June 23, 1812, in St. Lawrence, county, N. Y. As a boy he went to Kentucky but after a short time there he returned to New York and entered the Canton, N. Y. institute from which he graduated and then he went to work for a surveyor at a salary of $3.50 a month and board. He had studied civil engineering and was anxious to follow that line of work. After working for the surveyor for three months he again went to Kentucky, thinking there might be an opening there for him as a civil engineer, but there was not much to do in that line at that time and he taught school there and in Tennessee as his regular employment for three years,doing engineering work on the side. He looked so much younger than he really was that it was hard for him to get people to trust him with an inspection job of engineering.
He came to Decatur in October, 1856. He followed engineering until 1871 and then he went into the real estate business. He was the first man in Decatur to build houses for sale on the installment plan and in this he was eminently successful. He invested his savings in farm lands and four years ago he own 963 acres of land in Illinois. He was considered a very wealthy man. A few years ago he deeded nearly all of his property to his children, retaining only a life estate in some of it. At the time of his death he had practically no property.
For over a half a century Mr. Risley lived in Decatur and during most of that time he was helping to build up the city. When he came here in 1856 there was a scarcity of houses. As he accumulated money he conceived the idea of building houses for sale on the installment plan and by 1871 he had accumulated funds enough to put his scheme into practice.
Decatur being the crossing point of two important railroads, was already attracting attention and the demand for houses was increasing. He began building houses and selling them on monthly payments. He erected and sold in this way 102 houses. That record was never equaled by any man in Decatur during the time he was in business. He made it possible for many person to own their own homes and by giving them many terms hastened the day when they became independent of the landlord.
In all of his experience in the house building line he never had but one failure and that came after he was out of the deal. On a lot valued at $160 he built for a family a house costing less than $500. The family might easily have paid out by practicing economy but as seen as they got into the house they bought a horse and rig and indulged in other extravagances. At one time they had their indebtedness to Mr. Risley reduced to $150 but later they neglected to pay interest or principal and the debt increased to $300. Then they borrowed money from another man and paid Mr. Risley all that was due him. The second man finally foreclosed on them and took their property. Mr. Risley used to refer to this in speaking of the rapid advancement in the price of real estate and he said that that same family later bought back the property paying $1000 for it. Mr.Risley did not see large profits. He kept an accurate account of the cost of labor and material used in a house and to this he added 8 percent.
Mr. Risley is survived by seven children, Mrs. I.H.Terhune, Mrs. Mrs.G.V.Loring,Grant Risley and A.G.Risley, allof Decatur Allen T.Risley of Bond county, Albert T. Risley of Streator, A D.Risley whose present address is unknown and Mrs. ? Willis of Houston,Tex. He also leaves a brother and sister in New York state.
Mr.Risley used to travel a good deal and on those trips he nearly always sent back some interesting accounts of the places he visited. He was a good penman and an interesting writer. He was acquainted with Abraham Lincoln and some of the other big men of Illinois in that day.
The body was removed to Monson & Wilcox undertaking establishment and prepared for burial. No time for the funeral has been set but it will probably be on Monday.

Obituary & plot information furnished by Janet Donner (#46623112).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RISLEY, Abdiel T.

The funeral of Abdiel T. Risley will be held at 2:30 Tuesday afternoon at the residence of his daughter, Mrs. George V. Loring, 801 East Wood street. The services will be conducted by Rev. J.M. Lively. Friends may call from 9:30 to 12 o'clock Tuesday. The body will be placed in the mausoleum at Greenwood.

The Daily Review (Decatur, IL) 7 November 1910
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.T. was originally entombed in the cemetery's large masoleum, which was widely purported to be haunted (one of the subjects of a local author's book, "Haunted Decatur"). **
Sometime around the 1920's the area received a large amount of water damage due to poor drainage and heavy rains. It was subsequently torn down. His body was one of those that was unclaimed from the mausoleum and in March of 1966 it was buried in a large open area directly across from the old masoleum site along with other, unclaimed occupants. His burial spot is unmarked.

He was a city surveyor and a local politician. His signature was found in the title search records obtained by his great-granddaughter, Rita Risley Weatherford, when the property she and her husband owned was paid off circa 1980!

Information sent by D. Kemp, Quarterly Editor for the Decatur Genealogical Society, states that Abdiel & Elvira's daughter Estelle's obituary was published in The Daily Republican, Saturday Evening, October 14, 1882, Page 3 (Decatur, Macon Co., IL). Ms. Kemp came across more than 35 trial records for the People Vs. James D. Wheeler trial in which he was tried for Estelle's murder. He was found not guilty. She was only 22 years old. (although other sources have her death at age 62.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Greenwood Cemetery
Where the Dead Still Walk

The beginnings of Greenwood Cemetery are a mystery.
There is no record to say when the first burials took place on the land that would later be called "Greenwood". The cemetery is the oldest burial ground still in existence in the city today but as the reader just discovered in the preceding pages, it was not the first.

The Native Americans of the Illiniwek Confederation were the first to settle in the area around Decatur. Before they settled here, the lands of middle Illinois were covered in a vast sea of prairie grass for as far as the eye could see. They built villages in the immediate region, hunting the forests and fishing the rivers. Strangely though, none of these villages were ever built on the site of the future city of Decatur. Instead, the area was used as a burial ground. Some "historians" have made excuses for this, citing confluences of rivers and other reasons, but these alternate explanations never see fit to explain the burial mounds that have been found throughout the downtown area. Many of the burial sites have become common knowledge as the years have passed while others have simply vanished with time.
According to Native American beliefs, their burial grounds were chosen very carefully and locations were preferred that were more closely connected to the world beyond. They felt this would aid in the progress of the soul to the place that lay beyond death. The burial grounds served as passageways, they believed, to another dimension. Some believe that the land on which Decatur would someday rest was just such an area, a place that allowed easy access from this world to the next. With this thought in mind, perhaps this is why Decatur has come to be regarded as so haunted. Combine the Native American burial sites with the disturbed cemeteries of yesterday and possible hauntings don't become so hard to believe anymore!

One of the sites believed to have been used by the Native Americans as a burial ground was the southern part of the current Greenwood Cemetery. There are a number of possible unmarked graves and impressions here that suggest a number of burials that have taken place and have been unrecorded.

The first home built in this area was a log cabin erected in 1820 by William Downing. It was located just south of the Sangamon River. Downing remained in the area until 1824, when he sold the house and property to the Ward family. A short time after Downing arrived, the Stevens family followed him and several other settlers, who also built homes near the Stevens cabin and near the Ward cabin, creating two small settlements. As the next few years passed, more frontiersmen continued to arrive from the east, adding to the struggling population of the region.

Life was hard in those days and anything from weather to illnesses could wipe out an entire family with ease. There were no real burial customs in those days, no undertakers and no embalming. Funeral services consisted of nothing more than a few prayers and bible passages over an open hole in the ground. The corpses were placed in these holes without benefit of coffins and were normally just wrapped in a winding sheet in a close proximity of the rituals the settlers knew in their former homes. And while some of these burials took place literally in the back yards of the log cabins scattered throughout the area, most of the settlers searched for a communal place to bury the dead. This led them to begin burying in places that the Native Americans had also used, namely what would be Greenwood Cemetery.

Burial records did not exist in this time, so we are now forced to speculate on the number and the exact location of these burials. There are many unmarked graves in the cemetery and it is also known that the settlers often used wooden planks and perishable materials to mark burial sites with. These items would have long since been lost to the elements, leaving both the locations and the occupants of the graves unknown.

Before the local residents began using the burial grounds through, another incident took place that marked the last of the Indian internments in the cemetery. It was not a burial that took place by choice however. It was an act of cold-blooded murder and may have been one of the incidents that has contributed to the hauntings of Greenwood.

The late historian Roy V. Terneus wrote about this particular event, which has been only touched on in the "proper" annals of Decatur history. He called the event the "Moonshiners and the Indians", although he was never clear as to when exactly it took place. Based on the records and other events of the time though, it is thought to have occurred in the late 1820's; possibly 1828.

One day, in the spring of the year, a small group of settlers were encamped near the Sangamon River, just south of the present day cemetery. The men had constructed a crude liquor still and were hard at work making alcohol (or "moonshine") from corn. It's thought that perhaps they were sampling the end product of the still as they were unaware of a group of Native Americans that was passing by. What may have happened next is unknown, but for some reason, the settlers decided to pursue the Indians through the woods. Whether or not this attack and pursuit was provoked also remains a mystery. Regardless, the Indians were chased through the woods and they ran up a hill in the direction of the burying grounds. Before they could make it to the top of the incline, the settlers opened fire on the Indians and they were cut down on the side of the hill.

The area was heavily wooded at this time and the men were unlikely to have been seen in the commission of these murders. However, they did not want to take the chance that the killings would be revenged by any others of the Indian populace. There had been trouble just a short time before when Indians raided a farm at a local settlement and stole a number of livestock. Most of the Native Americans had been driven out of the Sangamon River region by the middle 1820's, but even the scattered tribes that remained far outnumbered the white settlers. For this reason, the moonshiners decided to conceal the bodies of the Indians in a shallow ravine on the side of the hill where they fell. The bodies were dragged into the ditch and a number of stones were heaped over them. The makeshift grave can still be seen on the side of a hill in the southwestern part of the cemetery.e

The story of the settlers and their victims has been largely forgotten over the years but folk legends survive and it is sometimes re-told. As hauntings in cemeteries have often been blamed on incidents such as this, it is impossible to ignore it as a likely cause for strange happenings in Greenwood. Could the restless spirits of these Native Americans still be stalking the grounds of the cemetery? Or is this just another of the horrific legends that still haunts the history of the graveyard?

It would still be another 10 years or so after this event before the burial ground would turn into a full-fledged cemetery. It has been recorded that burials continued to be carried out at the Common Burial Grounds until at least 1838. After that, many of the city's dead began to be interred at Greenwood as well.

Thanks to the relative seclusion of the cemetery, other burials began to take place here too. It is believed that local abolitionists used the cemetery as a secret burial place for escaped slaves. According to the lore, a number of unmarked graves began to appear and burials were carried out under the cover of darkness.

There have been many stories passed down through the years about locations in the city being used as "stations" on the Underground Railroad. The "Railroad" was a system of safe houses and hiding places that smuggled slaves out of the south and into freedom in the north and Canada. According to the local tales, escaped slaves crossed the Mississippi River at towns like Chester and Alton and carefully made their way through Central Illinois. The city of Decatur was actually located along one branch of the "Chester Line" during the decades before the Civil War.
Slaves who did not survive the dangers of the journey were often buried in secret and according to old accounts, many of them were hidden away in graves in Greenwood Cemetery.

-------------------------------------------

HAUNTED DECATUR
GREENWOOD CEMETERY

The haunted location of Greenwood Cemetery has been known for many years because of its many ghost stories and legends.

GREENWOOD CEMETERY in the south end of Decatur, is possibly one of the most haunted sites in the Midwest. It was incorporated in 1857, but on one really knows when it was started but burials took place there as far back as the 1820's. After nearly a century, the graveyard was in poor condition. The grounds were overgrown and grave robbery was common. Tales of ghostly apparitions and misty forms have been collected over time, including tales that have endured for decades like the Greenwood Bride and the story of the Barrackman staircase, where the ghost of a weeping young woman has been reported.

The old public mausoleum at Greenwood is remembered as one of its most haunted spots.
Sadly, it no longer remains today.. although its destruction is a ghost story in itself!

One of Greenwood's haunted and lost locations is the old mausoleum, which was torn down in 1967. The building had been in terrible condition at the time and rumors circulated of strange screams and lights that could not be explained. The mausoleum was emptied prior to being torn down and unclaimed bodies were placed in a common grave across the road. Recent paranormal investigations have detected strange activity is still emanating from this location.

On this hill is where the Greenwood Ghost Lights have been reported for decades... they remain one of the cemetery's enduring mysteries.

Another of Greenwood's legends are the ghost lights that have appeared for several generations on the southern edge of the graveyard. The lights are said to be the spirits of lost souls whose bodies were washed away by a flood many years ago. The spirits are said to be searching for the places where their bodies are now buried.

Greenwood's most notorious haunted spot is in the Civil War section. During the war, Decatur was frequently visited by prison trains carrying Confederate prisoners to camps. One of these trains contained a number of men who had died from Yellow Fever while en route. The railroad tracks passed close to the cemetery so a wagon was used to carry away the dead. The prisoners were buried in an unmarked grave on the side of a hill near where the War Memorial section is today. The grave was quickly dug, but in the haste, it is believed that some of those soldiers may not have actually been dead.

There are many who say that these soldiers still walk the hills of Greenwood Cemetery and many other claim to have an uncomfortable feeling in this area. One man even says that he encountered one of the soldiers in person.

He was walking through the cemetery one day when he saw a man standing among the tombstones. He gestured and the man went closer. He noticed that the fellow seemed to be wearing a tattered uniform of some sort and look very confused.

"Can you help me?" the man in the uniform asked, "Where am I?"

The other man looked at him closely and saw the fear in his eyes, then he got a chill down his spine as the man in the uniform spoke again. . .

"I just want to go home," the man said softly and then he vanished.

Greenwood Cemetery is located at the dead end of Church Street in south Decatur. It is open to the public from sunrise to sunset daily.

Copyright 2000 by Troy Taylor, All Rights Reserved