Picture courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture courtesy of Jim Kuntz

John Asgill Conner was born in Pomona Township, Illinois, in 1824. Conner joined Daniel Brush and Dr. William Richart in promoting the new town of Carbondale. He held a considerable number of the town's lots and built the second residence in Carbondale on land which is now part of the property of the First United Methodist Church at West Main Street and North University Avenue. He died on April 2, 1875.

"Mystery" of the Sarcophagus - A stone coffin, or sarcophagus, sits above ground near the center of the cemetery. There are two versions of who is buried there and the story behind it. The first story is that a young woman from Vicksburg, Mississippi, the wife of J.W. Landrum, was buried in the above ground coffin. She was placed there because she did not want to be buried in Yankee soil. Her husband was a Carbondale native and was said to have sprinkled soil from Vicksburg inside her coffin before the lid was closed.
The second story is that Lt. Colonel John Mills of the Union Army was supposedly buried there. Upon hearing that a Confederate soldier was to be buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, the Mill's family had his body removed from the ground and placed in the sarcophagus so that the two soldiers would not occupy the same land.

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