The Albright Evangelical Church Cemetery is an abandoned cemetery in
southeastern Crete Township, Will County, Illinois. Named after its founder,
Jacob Albright, the Albright Evangelical Church, also known as the Evangelical
Association of North America, was a denomination or "body of American
Christians chiefly of German descent" and patterned after the German
Methodist Church. Its congregations were served by circuit-rider pastors, and
in 1856 such a congregation was established in Crete Township on
the farm of German immigrant Friedrich Hecht. Mr. Hecht and his wife,
Dorothea nee Rotermund, had purchased the farm around 1852. In 1855, a
new circuit was carved out of the existing Kankakee Circuit. Straddling the
Illinois-Indiana border, it would be identified as the Cedar Lake Circuit, and in
1855 embraced "Cedar Lake, Monee, Peotone, Deer Creek, Roselle and
Valparaiso." Rev. George Vetter was stationed on the new "charge." [The term
"charge" applied to multiple congregations served by individual ministers acting
as circuit riders, riding on horseback between the sometimes far-flung
congregations in their "charge".] Very likely prompted by Mrs. Hecht's brother
Heinrich Rotermund, himself a minister laboring within the same circuit and
year, it was in 1856 that the new congregation, consisting of twelve families,
was organized by Rev. Vetter in Crete Township, with a meeting place
established on the Hecht farm; a "small house of worship" was erected in 1862.
Deaths would occur within the little congregation, and a small church cemetery
was established on the Hecht property. Friedrich Hecht died during the winter
of 1870; his remains were interred in this cemetery. His widow, his daughter
and family, and his resident brother soon moved to Iowa. Referring to the
"Albright Evangelical Church" in Crete Township, the History of Will County,
Illinois 1878, subsequently commented that "the society has not been very
prosperous [and that] seven families at present belong to the organization."
The church folded around 1880, the building was ultimately razed, and the
cemetery eventually abandoned, very sadly the victim of neglect, desecration
and vandalism.

However, the Albright Evangelical Church Cemetery in Crete Township has
now been officially identified by the State of Illinois and is protected from
development by the Illinois Human Skeletal Remains Protection Act (HSRPA)
(20 ILCS 3440; Ill. Rev. Stat. 1991, ch. 127).