In January 1921, John William Turner, Jr. and his wife, Mary Alice, deeded two acres of their farm as a burial ground at Idalou Cemetery. The first burial was their infant nephew, Weldon Fred Turner, whose grave is marked by a homemade marker. In May that year, C.J. and Mary Hallmark buried their infant son C.J., and in July thirteen-year-old Mable Gladis Andrews was interred. By 1928, when the Turners and Selma Graves donated more land, area residents had formed the Idalou Cemetery Association, with E.T. Daniell, W.M. Weaver, and H.W. Lasater as the original board members. Over the following decades, additional land donations expanded the cemetery to its present size, and volunteers and families worked to maintain it. Today, its curbed plots, numerous upright shoulder stones typical of twentieth-century grave marker designs, and open prairie landscape with native plantings connect it to the many generations who have contributed to Idalou's history.