Someone recently ask me if I could identify two old graves on fieldstones which had eroded beyond reading on their property a couple of miles northeast of Sparta. Old-timers in the area told the family a lot of work mules used to be kept on the place in a large barn beside a big spring. She said her family often finds muleshoes when they dig around the place. The 1912 platbook shows that in 1912, the place was owned (along with many, many hundreds of other acres) by Robert E. Lee, who at that time was Mayor of Springfield. He was the oldest son of Joshua Lorenza and Cynthia Perry (Hepler) Lee. J. L. Lee had begun the J. L. Lee Tie and Timber Company in the early 1880's. The Lee (& later Hobart-Lee) company was the county's largest employer for a number of years. Joshua and Cynthia had nine children, raising three sons and two daughters. One of the four children who died young, a boy named Perry, is buried in Chadwick. The family came from Thomasville, Davidson County, North Carolina to Marshfield, Webster County, Missouri in 1869 where Mr. Lee ran a store. They went to Waco, Texas a couple of years in the 1870's, returned to Marshfield, then Chadwick, then Springfield, all the time building up land holdings and timber and mining rights. In 1891, J. L. Lee suffered a stroke in Lead Hill, Arkansas and became largely disabled. Soon afterward, Robert E. Lee was named President of the company and a partnership with a Mr. Hobart changed the name of the company to Hobart-Lee Company - I'm unsure whether the words "tie", "timber" or "lumber" were in the name, as I've seen a variety of combinations. Anyway, the company also owned a number of lead mines in the general area where the timber was being cleared for bridge timbers, railroad ties, and wood for other uses including lumber and firewood. J. L. Lee died of a second stroke in 1894, and Robert E. Lee and his brother Albert Sidney "Bert" Lee were officers of the company for a number of years. Because most of the family is buried in Hazelwood or Maple Park Cemetery in Springfield, I feel sure that these graves are not Lee graves. I would suspect that they would more likely be those of company employees. Does anyone know the name of the "cemetery" - it's just two graves - or the identify of those buried in this cemetery. It's not far from the Grayston/Johnson Cemetery, but it's not that one. The stones there are new and the identity of those buried there is known.