02/10/2026
Did you know…that in 1980, a Westville, Illinois, family discovered a small family graveyard in their back yard? The Brown family purchased a home on Knight Street in Westville in 1977. Three years later, they bought some additional property behind their original purchase. The area was covered with underbrush. Once cleared, they discovered a small family cemetery. There was a large, six foot tall granite monument marking the graves of Joshua Caraway (1787/89-1858), his wife Elizabeth (d. 1869), and their daughter Cynthia (1828-1858). Joshua and Charles Caraway had a land patent grant in Vermilion County, dated 1824. In a 1909 interview with Elizabeth West, for whom Westville was named, she shared that the Caraway family was well-to-do, arrived in Westville from Virginia in the early years of settlement, and had the largest home in the area, made of logs, and was sometimes used for church services. The large stone pictured here in the 1980s evidently replaced the Caraways’ original stones. There were a number of smaller stones in the cemetery as well. Joan Brown, when interviewed for the Commercial-News article, shared that the family was rather proud of the cemetery and that her sons Adam and Paul enjoyed playing around the Caraway monument.
