The Williamson Cemetery is an African-American cemetery located on an acre of land in Wyandotte County that was sold by Jacob T Williamson on February 18, 1886 for one dollar to John Elmore, Henry Francis, Clayborn Cannon, Sololmon Hodges and Junius G Groves. (Junius Groves also helped buy the Franklin Cemetery at 86th Street and Swartz Road in Kansas City, Wyandotte County, Kansas.) When the Williamson Cemetery was first rediscovered in about 1978, it had been neglected and fallen into disrepair. Since that time, volunteers have undertaken efforts to significantly improve the condition of the cemetery. Developer Steve Shelton found the 1886 deed when he began building houses nearby on the Williamson Farm. In 2006 the city of Edwardsville secured the deed to the property and assumed responsibility for maintenance. While there are a handful of headstones in the cemetery, large rocks were apparently used when families couldn't afford a proper marker. Kay Haines Beach, an Edwardsville historian, said in a November 2, 1978 Bonner Springs-Edwardsville Chieftan article that there once was a cemetery association which took care of the graveyard, but no one knew what had happened to all the association's records, with the last living member of the association having died in 1976. The earliest death recorded on a tombstone, for Mary Jane Cannon, is 1883, three years before the date of the land's official purchase.
John Kindred, chairman of the Edwardsville cemetery committee, said one of the issues to be worked out with the cemetery is how to provide access to it. Right now the only access is either through a path from Edwardsville Drive through the woods, or through the property of Shelton, whose housing development abuts the only easement the city has to the cemetery. That easement, which begins at a cul-de-sac, runs through trees and bushes.
The names of those known to be interred at the cemetery are: Eugene, Martha and Wylie Bennett, Mary Jane and Sgt. C Cannon, John and Solomon Hodges, Clarence and Fannie McCoy, Permenia Thompson, John Elmore, and Henry Francis. Efforts are ongoing to identify additional individuals.