The site: White Chapel Memorial Gardens & Mausoleum (also known as White Chapel Cemetery or Memorial Lawns Cemetery according to some early Kansas maps) is an 80-acre cemetery in east Wichita, established in 1918 after the influenza epidemic had taken its hold on the area. There are several graves at this site dated prior to the official establishment of the cemetery. Some of these graves were moved from their original resting places to White Chapel Cemetery after 1918, and others don't have such a history, suggesting that perhaps some locals considered this spot a final resting place before it was officially named as one.
This Kansas map from 1956-57 shows the White Chapel Cemetery as well as three other nearby cemeteries that were established by that time - Wichita Park Cemetery, Old Mission Cemetery, and the Wichita Hebrew Cemetery (marked but not by name).
The story: The oldest recorded burial here is that of infant Joseph D. Bratley (d.1878), possibly the brother of Jesse H. Bratley (Jesse's father was named Joseph, so it makes sense he would have named a son after him). Jesse would have lived in Wichita in 1878 - he moved here in 1870 from Wisconsin and left in 1893 after accepting a job with the government as a teacher. He taught (or forced) young Native Americans the European man's way of life through government education. He was instrumental in documenting the sequestration and oppression of Indigenous peoples during that time, and documented artifacts from the S’Klallam, Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Havasupai, Hopi, and Seminole tribes. Jesse Bratley's collection of Native American photographs artifacts are memorialized in the book Objects of Survivance: A Material History of the American Indian School Experience, and on permanent display at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
The cemetery was established in 1918, 40 years after the death of infant Joseph. Was this stone somehow placed in Kansas by them in memorial of a lost child 40+ years earlier? Or was Joseph the first to be laid to rest here, dedicating this land as sacred ground for generations to come? The style and quality of the gravestone may lend some clues, but regardless of the time of placement at this cemetery, Joseph D. Bratley is the oldest marked gravestone here.
The cache: The cache is hidden near baby Joseph's final resting spot. Once you find him, you'll be close to the cache (or vice versa). You may notice something similar about the surrounding graves. Perhaps this area of Section 1 was once a very important place to some parents in the community. You're looking for a small black pill container with a log only. BYOP!