LANES PRAIRIE — During the May 23 Maries County Commission meeting, County Clerk Rhonda Rodgers shared an old newspaper clipping she had found among family documents. The story featured a blunt yet peculiar headline: “Cousin Louie is Dead.”

The article, which appeared in the Thursday, June 26, 1958, edition of The Bland Courier with no byline, was a remembrance of a popular Lanes Prairie resident who had died a couple of weeks before: Cousin Louie, the canine companion of Silas Stockton.

Two photos accompanied the article: one showed Stockton crouching beside Cousin Louie, almost as if they were having a conversation, and the other showed the canine’s tombstone. Also above the article was an excerpt from the poem “The Little Dog-Angel” by Canadian writer Norah M. Holland:

“High up in the courts of Heaven to-day

A little dog-angel waits,

With the other angels he will not play,

But he sits alone at the gates”

The article describes Cousin Louie as “a little white dog with no pedigree or even a birth certificate to convince prudish people, but who at Christmastide always received more greeting cards than most folks in the neighborhood.” Stockton reportedly buried him in a “polished coffin hewed of native walnut wood” before putting it “down deep on the grounds where for 12 years and some months he had buried bones and then dug them up again.”

According to the article, Stockton found the dog “homeless and friendless” when he “wandered nearly starved and cold-paled” to Woodruff’s Store in Lanes Prairie. Stockton was the store’s operator, and he saw some of himself in the dog because he had also been homeless before he took over the store.

“As the years wore and faded away they were inseparable friends,” the article said.

The article portrays Cousin Louie as an empathetic creature, which likely contributed to his reputation and popularity in the community.

“Cousin Louie wouldn’t care if you broke and cried, or if you were grouchy and maybe called bad names at somebody because you hated yourself, for he would let you know as he licked your hands that he was downright sorry… and understood,” it said.

Although Stockton cared for Cousin Louie, the article explained that “neither possessed another.” It also attributed some of Stockton’s success operating the Woodruff Store to the dog’s knack for making friends.

“For had not Cousin Louie fostered the business by making friends who returned to the store and bought more?” the article said. “Was not he so much a part of the store that mail addressed simply to Cousin Louie, Belle, Mo., found its way to the store at Lanes Prairie? Greetings to Cousin Louie at Christmas from his friends at one time confused postal clerks but that was years ago. Cousin Louie had become a part of this man’s world.”

The author of the article found Stockton’s explanation of the dog’s unusual name to be worthy of a quote: “I really don’t know,” he said. “Just for the oddity, I suppose. There will never be another Cousin Louie.”

The last section of the headline bears the heading, “Good Friends’ Lives Are Short.” It details Cousin Louie’s slow decline in his old age, which the public noticed. Stockton prepared a headstone for the dog’s burial site. Its inscription read:

“Cousin Louie

Man’s Best Friend

A Real Pal of Silas Stockton”

“His big heart bursting with the strain of love and to prove his loneliness, Cousin Louie yielded to the last call of old age Saturday night, June 14,” the article said. Stockton held a memorial service at the store the following day.

As good friends’ lives are short, Stockton did not live long after the death of his companion Cousin Louie. According to an obituary, he died less than two years later on March 9, 1960, at the age of 63 from pulmonary fibrosis and arteriosclerosis. The following day, he was buried at Skaggs Chapel Cemetery. He had no children.

Eastern District Commissioner Doug Drewel said he had heard stories about Cousin Louie and his gravestone, but he was unsure if the marker still stood at the dog’s burial spot. After asking around, he found that it had been moved next to Stockton’s tombstone at Skaggs Chapel Cemetery.

Last Friday, a small group sat near the gate of Skaggs Chapel Cemetery collecting money for upkeep ahead of Memorial Day. Debbie Drewel, the cemetery’s secretary-treasurer said referred to it as “sitting with the jar.” She said she had participated in the practice with her grandparents growing up, and she became involved with the cemetery again after moving back to the area more than a decade ago. She said she had faint memories of seeing Stockton at the store though she was very young.

Volunteer boards oversee many small, rural cemeteries, and they accept donations for the costs of keeping the cemeteries tidy. Edward and Alice (Lehnhoff) Brueggeman, of Ballwin, were also collecting donations for the cemetery. Alice is from the area and has family buried in the cemetery. The couple also has a plot and headstone made to make it their final resting place.

“It brings a sense of nature,” Edward said during a walkthrough of the cemetery, which he called his “adopted future home.”

“It’s a calm and peaceful place to be, I do believe,” he added.

Local cemeteries help to preserve local history as places of remembrance. Some of the people, like Stockton and Cousin Louie, were well-known in their times. Others, such as Jane Creekpalm, whose grave also resides in the cemetery, become landmarks after their deaths. With a date of death in 1812, Creekpalm’s grave is notable as one of the oldest recorded in Maries County.