As of August 2025, our database lists 4,247 burials, plus 13 additional named individuals whose burial sites are unknown. There are also 62 others who have monuments or inscriptions but are not actually buried at Rose Hill. Of the total burials, 290 are in unmarked graves, including 10 with unknown names—mostly infants. Uncertainty in the records makes these numbers imperfect and subject to change as ongoing research uncovers more information.

Computerizing of our records began in the 1980s by transcribing handwritten logs and headstone inscriptions. Misspellings, abbreviations, and nicknames were common. Wives were often recorded by their husband's name, e.g. Mrs. John Doe, or a gravestone might reflect an earlier married or maiden name. First and middle names are often swapped, especially when a person was generally known by their middle name. Different names for the same person may have led to duplicate entries or confusion when a burial appeared to be missing. A burial might not have been recorded at all or was lost if it wasn't copied into the current sexton's log. Unmarked graves of unnamed infants in family plots were sometimes conflated as the same child. Monuments installed years or decades after death sometimes contained inaccurate dates. Further complicating things were undocumented disinterments, where remains were moved either to or from Rose Hill.

Albert P. Dancer, the 20-year-old son of Rosalia and David Dancer, died of typhoid fever on November 28, 1881. He was the first to be buried on the land that would later become Rose Hill Cemetery. The cemetery trustees purchased the land from the Dancer family in 1885, and Rosalia Dancer served as one of the trustees. She is believed to have named the cemetery "Rose Hill," as recorded in the 1885 deed.

Some headstones in the cemetery bear earlier dates of death, but these were for individuals originally buried elsewhere and later moved to Rose Hill during the early 1900s—many from Sweet Home Cemetery, located exactly two miles south.

John Godfrey, a Civil War Navy Captain, who died and was buried in 1894. His monument is near Albert Dancer's, another tree trunk monument. It is three rows west of the main crossroad.

In 2025 there were 211 flags and 446 crosses.
In 2024 there were 215 flags and 439 crosses.
In 2023 there were 203 flags and 423 crosses.
In 2022 there were 196 flags and 388 crosses.
In 2021 there were 208 flags and 361 crosses.
In 2020 there were 203 flags and 283 crosses.
In 2019 there were 215 flags and 243 crosses.
In 2018 there were 206 flags and 278 crosses.
The numbers change as flags and crosses get added or damaged, but it has grown from the first year, in 1978, when there were only 12 veteran flags, 6 on each side of the main entry road. There were almost 100 flags by 1990. Occasionally, research uncovers the fact that someone buried at Rose Hill was a veteran and the records get updated.

The Lamoni Lion's Club is in charge of this. They purchase a 5'x8' U.S. flag for a donation that covers its cost (currently $55) to honor a veteran. Alternatively, a family can donate the flag that was given by the military. But those flag will be taken out of service once they are worn beyond repair. When the Lamoni Lion's Club and the VFW started this Memorial Day tradition all of the flags were the military flags that the family turned over to the VFW. Most all of them now are purchased ones.

Gary and Shelly Waugh do this as a labor of love to honor Lamoni veterans. Shelly keeps a list of veterans with flags and crosses and Gary makes the crosses. The Waugh family and others place the crosses in the ground alongside the flags that the Lion's Club put up. Shelly has done research on veterans and collaborates with Rose Hill to share information. Besides war and branch of service, Shelly also records where the veteran is buried if not at Rose Hill and special distinctions like rank, Silver Star, Purple Heart, KIA, or POW.

Contact us at LamoniRoseHill@gmail.com with the following information: the veteran's name, branch, wars served, rank, any distinctions (e.g., KIA, POW, Purple Heart), your relationship to the veteran, your contact information, and where the veteran is buried if not at Rose Hill. We will then update our records and share the information with the Waugh family, who make the crosses, and with the Lamoni Lions Club, who manage the flags. The Waugh family currently provides crosses at no cost.

The number of flags that can be raised is limited by the available flagpoles and ground mounts. For veterans buried at Rose Hill or Lamoni residents buried in a veteran cemetery, the Lions Club requests a $55 donation to cover the cost of a flag—checks should be made payable to Lamoni Lions Club with Veteran Flag in the memo line. Please note: there are, and always will be, many more crosses than flags.

This practice was discontinued years ago as the number of flags and crosses grew. There are many more crosses than flags (almost 2-to-1). There should be a cross that corresponds with every flag, but not vice versa.

Starting in 2023, the crosses were organized in groups by war service starting at the west and meandering to the east side in order from War of 1812, Spanish American, Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and vets without war service. Multi-war crosses are placed along the main entrance road segment. They are not in any particular order otherwise, so look for other crosses with the same category of war service as a starting point.

Finding the name written on a flag is very difficult. The tradition of marking flags began in the 1970s, when the local VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) received burial flags that had been presented to families. These flags were then displayed at the cemetery over Memorial Day. Upon receiving a flag, the VFW would carefully write the veteran's name, rank, and war service in block letters along the seam to match the military record.

Today, however, the flags flying at Rose Hill are not those original flags. They were purchased through donations to replace damaged ones and to add new flags, so families no longer need to give up the flag presented to them. As a result, the names written on newer flags may not match the military name on record, and the lettering varies depending on who wrote it. Even if legible, reading the name high up on a flagpole requires the right combination of sunlight and wind. With more than 200 flags now flying, this tradition may eventually come to an end. If you're trying to locate a specific veteran, we recommend searching for their cross instead of their flag.

Rose Hill Cemetery was established by the leaders of the City of Lamoni in October of 1885, when Lamoni was being incorporated. It is a wholly owned affiliate of the Lamoni congregation of the Community of Christ and operated by a board trustees. It has never received funding from the church and has always operated as the Lamoni cemetery, without special privileges for church members. At the beginning of the 1900s, when it was clear that funding was needed to run the cemetery, there was a move to transfer it to the city by the trustees (who were also city leaders). However, state law changed which allowed cities and counties to have cemetery taxes go to private cemeteries in lieu of operating their own, so Rose Hill continued with its current structure to this day. Ever since 1906 the city has provided some financial or other support for running the cemetery.

Annual operations are about $27K a year, or $32K if we had a paid sexton (currently a volunteer). Expenses include mowing, trimming, road gravel, grounds care, insurance, and communications (e.g. postage, signage, brochures, website). Special projects are added when we have surplus funds, grants, and donations to cover them. Volunteers help us keep costs down. Besides a volunteer sexton other volunteers have helped pick up debris and do pruning.

The City of Lamoni provides about 1/3 of operational expenses as a subsidy for services rendered to its citizens. Another 1/3 is covered by earnings from the cemetery endowment fund, but that was less during the pandemic when the market was depressed. The rest must be covered by farmland rental of future expansion property, burial income, lot sale income, and donations. Only half of the lot sale income is available to us since the other half must go into the endowment fund. We retain $250 of the open/close fee for each burial or receive $250 for a cenotaph (monument to someone whose remains are elsewhere). We charge $525 per burial space, half to be deposited in the endowment fund. We expect 15-20 burials (or cenotaphs) per year and 10-15 spaces sold per year. We receive about $400 in the donation jar at the information canopy over Memorial Day weekend. We also receive generous donations by check in memory of loved ones and by friends of Rose Hill Cemetery.

They are not directly connected. We draw from each other in order to provide more accurate information. The burial data on our site will be more current and searchable than what IAGenWeb.org has online for our cemetery.

Discrepancies arise for many reasons. Women are often buried under a former married name that differs from the name on their death certificate, and widowed daughters may be buried under their maiden name in family plots. Headstones placed years later can include errors. Newspapers and obituaries often contain typos or misinformation, especially when written after the person being remembered—the one knowing the details—has passed away. Even official records like birth, death, and census documents can be misleading or inaccurate. Crowd-sourced sites like Ancestry.com and FindAGrave.com rely on volunteers, and well-meaning assumptions can sometimes lead to mistakes.

We believe LamoniRoseHill.org is the most accurate source for our cemetery's information. Ironically, some errors on other sites may have come from us—early digital records from the 1990s were based on handwritten logs that were sometimes hard to read or incomplete. Those files were shared before being fully vetted and may still be circulating online. We've since made many corrections and even today we are updating our records.