Oak Woods Cemetery

Posted on August 29, 2016 by admin

Large thunderstorm during the mid-afternoon today following a clear morning. That wasn’t so odd, but when I checked the radar maps it looked like only the northwestern suburbs were getting any rain at all. The storm also decided to linger here, and pour and pour, rather than race to the southeast as usual.

Oak Woods Cemetery occupies about 183 acres on the South Side of Chicago, only a short distance southwest of Jackson Park and about a mile west of Lake Michigan. On Saturday morning, I got up earlier than usual, drove down to Oak Woods and joined a Chicago Architecture Foundation tour of the cemetery. No one else in my house was interested, so I went by myself.

Skies were overcast, but at least the rains had stopped. Oak Woods, founded in 1853 south of the city — I believe it wasn’t in the city proper until the great annexation of 1889 — was part of the 19th-century vogue for park-like cemeteries. Which it remains to this day, green and leafy in late summer.

To design the place, the founders of the cemetery tapped one Adolph Strauch, a Prussian landscape architect who did parks and park-like cemeteries in the United States (Ve vill haf Ordnung, he was known to mutter). He was especially active in Cincinnati, but in Chicago, Strauch also did the highly picturesque Graceland Cemetery, the North Side equivalent of Oak Woods.

There are also a number of water features that add to the overall aesthetic.
The tour was partly concerned with the burial sites of well-known people. Oak Woods has quite a few, such as a number of Chicago mayors. Here’s Big Bill Thompson’s obelisk, for instance.
Here’s Harold Washington.

Other notable markers we saw included baseball player Cap Anson; Bishop Louis Henry Ford, head of the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ; John H. Johnson, founder of Ebony and Jet magazines; Rep. James R. Mann, who lent his name to the Mann Act; Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, star of the Negro League; and activist Ida B. Wells.

Along with Jesse Owens.
As well as Illinois politico Roland Burris. Former Sen. Burris, it should be noted, is still alive. He’s planning ahead with a sizable tomb detailing some of his career in stone, in a way that earned him a fair amount of ridicule. It did seem like a pompous exercise. Perhaps he doesn’t understand that Death doesn’t care about your CV.

Interesting stones I didn’t get to see included Enrico Fermi, Nancy Green, Chicago Mayor Monroe Heath, and pre-Capone Outfit boss Big Jim Colosimo, who was rubbed out in 1920. Or the monument and flag for the 16 firefighters and workers who died fighting the blaze at the Cold Storage Building at the World’s Fair on July 10, 1893.

Off in a corner of the property is a small, separate Jewish cemetery, fenced off probably to discourage vandals from disturbing the stones.
Reminded me a bit of the old Jewish cemetery in Krakow, though that’s had a few more centuries to age.

Mount Holly Cemetery, Little Rock

Posted on July 14, 2016 by admin

In pricing rooms in Little Rock, I discovered that a downtown room provided by a limited service hospitality chain (as they say in the biz) wasn’t much more expensive than one out on the highway. I opted for the downtown property.

You get what you pay for at that kind of place: the ice machines were all broken, and so was our room’s landline, though I except few guests would notice that any more. I only noticed because I wanted to call the front desk to ask if any of the ice machines were working. The answer to that, which I got at the front desk in person: no. Something about the filters breaking at the same time.

The front desk clerk helpfully got some ice from the restaurant for me, however. He also told me the location of a nearby grocery store, since one thing to do when you’re on the road is enjoy a grocery store-based meal in your room, the contents of which depend on whether you have a refrigerator or microwave in the room.

As I drove to the grocery store, I noticed an old Little Rock cemetery. The Mount Holly Cemetery. The next morning, before the day’s heat kicked in on June 27, I walked to the cemetery from the hotel while Ann still slept. A sign in front says the cemetery was founded in 1843 — part of the first wave of park-like burial grounds — and is the burial places of six U.S. Senators, 11 Arkansas governors, four Confederate generals, 15 state Supreme Court justices, 21 mayors of Little Rock and “others prominent in the history of Arkansas.”

Sad to say, I’m not up on Arkansas history. I have a list of the prominent burials in front of me and I don’t recognize any of the names. Still, that isn’t why I went to the cemetery. This one was for aesthetic reasons.

Not bad. Not as fine as Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum in Dayton, but few burial grounds are. Mount Holly has a lot of weathered old stones (which for some reason, bastards vandalized recently). The plots are organized in rows and columns, like city blocks. Necropolis blocks, I guess.

There’s some funerary art, such as an angel over GOOD DOCTOR Craven Payton.

Or this one, whose name I cannot read.

This one’s definitely for a child. I think the dates are 1919-1926.

A new historical marker (dated 2015) at one edge of the cemetery told me that three cadets who fought at New Market, all natives of Little Rock, are buried at Mount Holly: Samuel B. Adams, Chester G. Ashley and Francis S. Johnson.

Also in the necropolis: David O. Dodd, “Boy Martyr of the Confederacy,” whose story I didn’t know until I read about it. I didn’t see his grave. Casualties of the “Brooks-Baxter War” are also in Mount Holly, I read. It’s another story from Arkansas history I didn’t know, and a fairly remarkable one at that — an armed quarrel over who would be governor of the state in 1874.

One unusual feature was a small bell house deep in the cemetery.

A sign inside the structure says, “Ring Bell For Sexton. These streets were designed for carriages. Please be cautious with your automobile!”

GTT 2016

Posted on July 10, 2016 by admin

On June 23, Ann and I left the Chicago area and headed south, returning earlier today. I’m calling the trip GTT 2016, as in Gone to Texas, but also Gone to Tennessee, another destination. Our route took us south to through Indiana and Kentucky and then to Nasvhille; west through West Tennessee and Arkansas and on to Dallas; and south again to Austin and San Antonio. The return was via Dallas and through Oklahoma and Missouri. All together, from backing out of my driveway to coming back to it, I put exactly 3,005 miles on my car, mostly on Interstates and US routes, but also a fair amount on the streets of Nashville, Austin and San Antonio.

None of the routes or places were new to me, except maybe Texarkana, where I’d never stopped before, and it’s been a long time since I’d traveled US 281 north of Johnson City, Texas, or on US 67 on to Dallas. But no matter how familiar the place or the route, you can always find new things.

In central Kentucky, near Elizabethtown, we visited Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, which features a granite and marble monumental building with a not-really-Lincoln’s log cabin inside. Near Mammoth Cave NP, we walked through Diamond Caverns, an unrelated show cave.

By the time we got to Nashville, the heat was on — in the 90s at least every day, which made stomping around outside less pleasant, especially for Ann, but I did manage to take her to the Nashville Parthenon, which she didn’t remember seeing in 2008. The more important thing we did in Nashville was spend time with old friends Stephanie and Wendall, and pay a visit to Mike Johnson’s widow, Betra.

In Memphis, we saw the Peabody Hotel ducks and the National Civil Rights Museum. In Texarkana, we drove down State Line Road and stopped at the only post office in the nation in two states. In Little Rock, I visited Mt. Holly Cemetery in the morning just before the heat of the day and then the Clinton Library (in full, the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park) and, just before we left town, the Arkansas State Capitol.

Dallas was mostly given over to visiting my brother Jay and working. Jay joined us for our few days in Austin, including the Fourth of July, and for a few more days in San Antonio. In Austin on July 2, Ann went to RTX 2016 at the Austin Convention Center, a sizable event held by the media company called Rooster Teeth; I was her chaperon. We visited my old friend Tom Jones the next day, and on Independence Day, saw both the Baylor Street Art Wall and municipal fireworks over Lady Bird Lake. San Antonio was mostly about visiting my mother and brother Jim, and (for me) holing up in a cool place with Wifi and doing more work.

Naturally, the trip involved long stretches of driving. I want to do that while I still want to do that. Because of my obstinance in not getting Sirius or the like, terrestrial radio helps fill the yawning spaces between destinations. The trip was bookended by two news events whose coverage was limitless, even when there was no new information beyond speculation: Brexit near the beginning, and the murder of Dallas policemen toward the end. I also listened to more religious radio more than usual, mostly only minutes at a time, except for the erudite Alistair Begg, whom I will listen to until his show’s over or the signal fades.

The selection of music was mostly what you’d expect, drawn from the rigid genres created by the radio business, though there were a few oddities, such as the Mesquite Independent School District radio station (KEOM) in metro Dallas that played teacher and student shows, besides a selection of completely conventional ’70s music. On I-40 between Nashville and Memphis — the Music Highway, according to official signs along the way — I picked up an oldies station whose playlist was a little older and odder than usual. I heard it play “Waterloo” (Stonewall Jackson), “Ahab the Arab,” “and “Running Bear and Little White Dove,” the last two I haven’t heard in years.

We stayed in a nondescript chain motel in Elizabethtown; in Stephanie and Wendall’s fine guest rooms in Nashville; in another, less nondescript motel in Little Rock; with Jay in Dallas; in the Austin Motel on South Congress in Austin, an updated version of a tourist court that’s been there since 1938; and in an updated former company hotel (vintage 1914) in San Antonio, the Havana Hotel, since there were too many of us to be comfortable at my mother’s house.

During the return home, we stayed at the Munger Moss Motel in Lebanon, Mo., last night, because of course we did.

It’s the same as it was in 2009 and two years ago. Except (maybe) a couple of signs like this were added to the grounds.

Motel co-owner Ramona Lehman was selling Gasconade River Bridge postcards, sales of which help support the restoration of the bridge, a structure about 15 miles east of Munger Moss on the former US 66. I bought one. I didn’t stop to look at the bridge — this time — but it’s visible from I-44 if you know when to look, and I did.

The Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, Dayton

Posted on June 6, 2016 by admin

In the Spring/Summer 2014 edition of American Forests magazine, Tate Williams wrote, “In the early 19th century, as cities like Boston grew, inner-city burials were no longer cutting it. Land prices were rising and the small church burial grounds were overcrowding. Storms would flood the grounds with gruesome results. Outbreaks of diseases like cholera and typhoid fever had communities fearing urban burials.

“In response, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society presented a vision that would solve the city planning problem, while carving out a piece of land they would turn into a horticultural wonder to rival the gardens popular in Europe at the time. It was dubbed a ‘garden of graves’ or a serene ‘city of the dead.’ Mount Auburn Cemetery grew into a feat of landscape design, sculpture and meticulously manicured Victorian-style gardens.

“The rural cemetery movement spread as other cities established their own garden cemeteries, from Green-Wood in Brooklyn to Laurel Hill in Philadelphia. They were extremely popular among locals and visitors alike, becoming regular gathering places for strolling and picnicking. ‘In a country sorely lacking in public green spaces, these cemeteries provided these graceful, elegant places,’ says Keith Eggener, architectural historian and author of the book Cemeteries. ‘They were all around recreational and artistic centers for people. They became seen as major urban amenities.’ ”

So they still should be, but mine is a minority opinion. In 1841 — ten years after the founding of Mount Auburn — the growing manufacturing town of Dayton founded its own garden of graves, which in our time is called the Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum. Cemetery because about 107,000 souls repose there; arboretum because about 3,000 trees grow on its 200 acres.

It’s a hilly, gorgeous place. I spent about an hour and a half there on the morning of May 29.

Woodland Cemetery, Dayton

Some cemeteries make it a chore to find the noteworthy burials, such as way that St. Mary’s Cemetery in Appleton, Wis., doesn’t seem all that eager for you to find Joe McCarthy. Woodland helpfully provides signs to famed permanent residents, and it wasn’t five minutes before I spotted the one that pointed to the Wright family plot — including Wilbur and Orville, their sister Katharine, the two children who died as infants (Otis and Ida), and their parents (Milton and Susan).

I spared a penny each for the Wrights.

Woodland Cemetery, Dayton - Wirght Brothers grave Wonder who left the shells. Not far away is the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who also happened to know the Wrights.

Near the entrance is a sign that says that Dayton native Erma Bombeck’s grave is nearby. So I went looking for it. My mother read some of her books, presumably because they amused her. I remember seeing them around the house. I never had much interest in her writing until I read an article of hers in the early 1990s, in Outside magazine (I think), of all places. It was remarkably good article about her and her husband’s visit to Papua New Guinea. One of her main points: if you’ve got the time and means, but don’t ever go anywhere interesting, you’re a dullard.

I couldn’t find anything with her name on it in that section. I did notice a large orange-ish boulder in the section, and it had a few withered flowers nearby, but no plaque or carving that I could see. Was that her monument?

Yes. I read later at Find-a-Grave: “A 29,000-pound rock has become a monument for her grave. It was brought by flat-bed truck from her home in Arizona. It reflects the empathy she had for the Southwest desert and to her years of residency.” That Erma. What a card, even in death.

In keeping with my idea that it’s important to note the obscure as well as the famed, here’s one near Erma Bombeck’s boulder. An interesting one, at least in a place like western Ohio.
It’s a bilingual stone: the other side is in English, informing me that Peter and Anastacia Piatnicia, along with (I assume) their daughter Ludmila de Ybarra, repose there.

The stone also says “Cossack” in Roman letters, as opposed to the more complicated designation in Cyrillic. Cossacks in Ohio. People get around.

The Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Highway & Lundy Lundgren

Posted on April 20, 2016 by admin

If you have time, US 20 is the best way between metro Chicago and Rockford. I-90 is faster but not as interesting, and a toll road besides. We went to Rockford on the Interstate for speed, but returned at our leisure on the US highway, which is sometimes four lanes, sometimes two, along that stretch.

US 20 is also known as the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Highway in Illinois, honoring Gen. Grant, who spent some time in western Illinois. In fact, the highway runs by his house in Galena. (US 20 itself runs cross-country, from Boston to Newport, Ore., or vice versa.)

The honorary designation has been in place since 1955, but most of the original signs were lost or fell apart. In 2007, the Illinois DOT started replacing them with brown-lettered signs that include a portrait of Grant. The route passes very close to where I live in the northwest suburbs, and I remember starting to see the signs appear nearly 10 years ago. I thought the designation was new as well, but now I know better.

One of the places on US 20 between Rockford and the northwestern suburbs is Marengo, a burg of about 7,500 in McHenry County. Oddly, it seems to be named after the battle of that name, which did so much to solidify Napoleon’s top-dog status, at least until Waterloo. Maybe some of the town founders included Bonapartist sympathizers, but well after the fact, since it was established in the 1840s.

For years, I’ve been driving by a sign that points to a historical marker just off US 20 in Marengo. High time I took a look, I thought this time. The marker is a few blocks north of US 20 on N. East St. This is what I saw.

Carl Leonard Lundgren (1880-1934) hailed from Marengo, and behind the sign is the very field where he perfected his pitching skills, at least according to the sign. As a young man, Lundy Lundgren pitched for the Cubs from 1902 to ’09, and in fact pitched for the team during its most recent appearances in the World Series — 1907 and ’08.

He’s buried in the Marengo City Cemetery across the street from the plaque.

I took a look at the place from the street, but didn’t venture in. Most of it’s modern-looking, or at least 20th century, but there’s a small section whose stones look very old, older even than Lundgren’s, wherever it is. That bears further investigation someday.

Fredericksburg Stroll & Der Stadt Friedhof

Posted on March 15, 2016 by admin

March 4 was sunny and pleasant in Fredericksburg, a settlement dating back to the efforts of German immigrants to Central Texas before the Civil War. A good day for a small town walkabout. As I walked, looking into the Main Street boutiques and wine shops and jewelers (James Avery has a shop there) and bistros and art galleries, it occurred to me that there needs to be a term for a town that partly or mostly lives off of upper middle-class day-tripers, retirees many of them, from near but not-too-near major metros.

Not tourist traps exactly, though there’s an element of that. I’ve been to a few of these towns, such as Galveston and Galena, Ill., and Sturgeon Bay, Wis., and Portsmouth, NH, and now Fredericksburg. Its locational advantage is proximity to Austin and San Antonio, and the town has a pleasant Main Street, a.k.a. Hauptstrasse, sporting a lot of repurposed 19th-century structures, many of historic or architectural interest.

The building on the left below was once the White Elephant Saloon, dating from 1888, featuring a whitish elephant above the entrance for reasons probably lost to time.
This was once a hospital.
I didn’t try for an exhaustive photo record of the many fine buildings in Fredericksburg. These visitors did a much better job of it, including many things I missed.

According to one source at least, St. Mary’s Catholic Church — which is off Fredericksburg’s Main Street by a block — counts as one of Texas’ Painted Churches, most of which are east of San Antonio. Some kind of adoration was ongoing at St. Mary’s, so I was able to drop in to see the lovely interior. Painted, yes, but also featuring stained glass and other objects of beauty.

“Still known as ‘new’ St. Mary’s, the church provides a classic example of Gothic architecture and was consecrated on November 24, 1908,” KLRU tells us. “Its principal architect was Leo Dielmann of San Antonio, with the contractor and builder, Jacob Wagner of Fredericksburg. Built of native stone quarried near the city, the total cost of building and furnishing the church was around $40,000.

“Still fully functional is the original pipe organ built by George Kilgen & Son of St. Louis, Missouri. It was installed in 1906 as a pump organ and has been completely electrified. The beautiful stained glass windows were added around 1914 and 1915.”

Further away from Main Street — and with absolutely no day-trippers or anyone else (alive) around — was the Der Stadt Friedhof, a cemetery established in 1846.
It’s more interesting than picturesque. For one thing, there are no trees or other large plants to speak of on the grounds, except out at the periphery. There’s a little funerary art, but its presence is fairly muted.

Still, I enjoyed looking around. The further you get from the boundary roads, the newer the stones become. Among the older stones at the edge of the cemetery are a number of graves surrounded by iron fences.
Many of which are neglected.
Almost all of the oldest stones are German, with ethnically appropriate names, such as Durst, Kallenberg, Keidel, Kramer, Lochte, Schmidt, Schuchard, Stein, Weiss, Zincke, usw. Adm. Nimitz’s parents are somewhere in the cemetery, though I didn’t look for them, and the admiral himself is buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Fransisco.

The Waxahachie City Cemetery

Posted on November 3, 2015 by admin

Jay and I passed through Waxahachie in Ellis County, Texas, on October 22, and besides visiting the handsome Nicholas P. Sims Library for a little while, we also spent a few minutes at the Waxahachie City Cemetery a short distance away.

According to a Texas Historical Commission marker on site, “the first burial here occurred on Jan. 1, 1852, after the death of pioneer merchant Silas Killough (b. 1805), one of the founders of this community. The original 4.16 acre tract was given in 1858 to trustees of the Methodist church by Emory W. Rogers (d. 1874), who was Waxahachie’s first settler (1846) and donor of land for the townsite. About 1900, the cemetery was transferred from church to municipal jurisdiction. By gifts and purchases of additional land, the site has grown to 65 acres and contains about 10,000 graves.”
It had been dry in this part of Texas since a wet early summer, so the cemetery was rich in earth tones in October ahead of the massive rains that fell over the next few days.

Not the most ornate cemetery or the shadiest one, but a nice small-town Texas boneyard, something like the one I saw in Flatonia, Texas a half-dozen years ago, and not as tumbledown as the old San Antonio cemeteries I saw earlier this year.

The Rock Island National Cemetery & Confederate Cemetery

Posted on April 7, 2015 by admin

These days, visiting the Rock Island National Cemetery means crossing over to Arsenal Island (formerly Rock Island) in the Mississippi River, which is located smack in between all four of the Quad Cities. The island is occupied by a U.S. Army facility, and has been the site of one kind of military installation or another for about two centuries. You pass through a checkpoint where a soldier looks at your driver’s license and asks your business, and then it’s a short drive the cemetery.

It was a quiet place on the morning of March 28, a Saturday. It’s probably quiet most of the time.

The entrance to the Rock Island National Cemetery used to be marked by this piece of ironwork.

These days, the historic gate marks the entrance to the cemetery’s Memorial Walkway, which features about 30 memorials to various branches of the armed forces, or groups related to them, such as Pearl Harbor survivors, Mexican War veterans, female veterans, Gold Star Mothers, and local veterans organizations. I was glad to see that the Seabees have a stone there.

Not that I have a special connection to the Seabees, though I used to work with a fellow who said that his brother, who had died in Vietnam, had been a Seabee. It’s nice to see lesser-known battalions get their due.

The walkway leads to the grave of Thomas J. Rodman and his wife, Martha Ann. The NPS says that “Brigadier General Rodman, the ‘Father of Rock Island Arsenal,’ was an officer during the Civil War and was the arsenal’s commanding officer from 1865 to 1871…

“Rodman invented the construction method used in producing [Rodman guns], which involved casting the cannon barrels around an air- or water-cooled core, ensuring that the barrel cooled and hardened first. This allowed the cannon to withstand higher pressures, making them stronger, safer, and more reliable, while also greatly increasing the lifespan of the cannon.”

Not far from the Rock Island National Cemetery is the Rock Island Confederate Cemetery, “final resting place for nearly 2,000 prisoners of war who died in captivity from disease and the poor living conditions of the camp,” the NPS says.

It’s a much simpler cemetery, with only one memorial besides the gravestones, a six-foot obelisk erected only in 2003. (Some work around it seems to be under way now.) It says:

In memory of the Confederate veterans who died at the Rock Island Confederate Prison Camp. May they never be forgotten. Let no man asperse the memory of our sacred dead. They were men who died for a cause they believed was worth fighting for, and made the ultimate sacrifice.

Erected by the Seven Confederate Knights Chapter #2625 and the Daughters of the Confederacy.

The Rock Island prison camp, incidentally, is where Margaret Mitchell put character Ashley Wilkes after his capture in the service of the CSA. So by a peculiar circumstance, he’s better known for being there than any of the actual prisoners.

Tumbledown Cemeteries Near Downtown San Antonio

Posted on February 23, 2015 by admin

Cemetery tourism isn’t what it used to be. I’m pretty sure that most San Antonio tourist literature either ignores or gives scant mention to the Eastside Cemeteries Historic District, as the city calls it.

Too bad. I’d call it a fascinating agglomeration of old graveyards amazingly close to downtown San Antonio. Officially 31 separate cemeteries over 103 acres, and even better, as unkempt as old burying grounds sometimes are.

City Cemetery No. 1, fittingly, is the oldest in the district, dating from the 1850s. Even a mild climate like San Antonio’s will wear stones down eventually.

Here lie Aug. and Georgiana Ohnescorce, both of whom passed their lives in the 19th century. Their stones are still legible, but you have to look at them pretty closely.

I didn’t seek out well-known permanent residents of the Eastside Cemeteries Historic District, though the San Antonio city site cited above tells us there are a number of them, including mayors, prosperous local businessmen, German pioneer families, 19th-century soldiers (some of them Buffalo soldiers), the woman who led the fight to preserve the Alamo in the first decade of the 20th century — Clara Driscoll — and the man who designed and advocated the San Antonio Riverwalk, Robert H.H. Hugman.

This is Cemetery No. 6, not quite as tumbledown as No. 1.

According to the city, the Confederate Cemetery is separate from Cemetery No. 6, but that’s hard to tell when you’re there. In any case, the Confederate Cemetery sports the Stars and Bars.

The cemetery’s historical markers says that there were over 900 burials in the cemetery, including former CSA soldiers, but also their dependents, some later descendants, and some vets from WWI and WWII as well.

Then there’s the Hermann Sons Cemetery, also enjoyably frowzy.

The first Texas lodge of Ordens der Hermanns-Söhne was founded in San Antonio, and the organization is no thing of the past.

Green-Wood Cemetery

Posted on October 26, 2014 by admin

One of the larger neighborhoods in Brooklyn is a necropolis, with about 560,000 permanent residents: Green-Wood Cemetery. Take the R line subway to either 25th St. or 34th St. station, and you’re there. Fairly early in the morning of October 14, I went to 34th St. station, got a map from the guard at the entrance, and walked right in.

“Founded in 1838 as one of America’s first rural cemeteries, the Green-Wood Cemetery soon developed an international reputation for its magnificent beauty and became the fashionable place to be buried,” the map tells me “By 1860, Green-Wood was attracting 500,000 visitors a year, rivaling Niagara Falls as the country’s greatest tourist attraction…”

Besides groundsmen and other obvious cemetery employees — including one driving a garbage truck — I noticed exactly three other people visiting Green-Wood that morning. It was a weekday, but even so cemetery tourism isn’t what it used to be.

I didn’t have all day – or even all morning – to explore the vastness of Green-Wood, so I cut a path from the 34th St. entrance to the 25th St. entrance, spending about an hour. The better way to see the place would be the trolley tours that the cemetery gives, but I couldn’t fit that into my schedule. Still, I managed to wander some of the paths.

And marvel that the cemetery has hills. A lot of hills. Since when does Brooklyn have hills? Turns out Brooklyn has glacial moraine hills in spots, especially the cemetery, which in fact includes the highest point in the borough (about 200 feet above sea level).

Note the street sign. There are many streets and paths in Green-Wood and, unlike some other parts of the borough, they’re all well marked.

“Today Green-Wood is 478 spectacular acres of hills, valleys, glacial ponds and winding paths, throughout which exists one of the largest outdoor collections of 19th- and 20th-century statuary and mausoleums,” the map continues. It also points out that there are also 7,000 trees, though I’ve read that some of them were knocked down by Hurricane Sandy. I didn’t see any lingering damage from the storm, but I didn’t really see that much of the place, either.

I did see some funerary art. At the Michel mausoleum, for instance, a pair of dogs waits patiently for their masters – the Michels would be my guess. It’s pretty clear they aren’t guarding the place.

Other mausoleums sported angels.

An awfully female-looking being, considering that angels are thought to have no gender. This particular angel is associated with the mausoleum of Rocco M. Agoglia. You have to like a name like that.

Find A Grave, for what it’s worth, tells me that “Rocco M. Agoglia of 7717 Narrows Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, died suddenly at Amityville, Long Island, on July 1, 1931. He was 69 years old. He is survived by eight sons, John, Fury, Sylvester, Arthur, Joseph[,] Rocco Jr., Herman and George, and one daughter, Mrs. Ida Carey.”

Fury? At least his many children (presumably) still had the scratch during the Depression to commission a nice mausoleum for their father in Green-Wood, which causal passersby can still see here in the early 21st century. Or maybe they couldn’t pay for it until a lot later. Or maybe Rocco himself paid for it before he needed it. Anyway, there it is.

Jesus Himself makes an appearance above this stone.

Being such a fashionable cemetery at one time, Green-Wood sports a good many notable dead people, especially but not exclusively from the 19th century. The map notes some that are instantly recognizable, such as Henry Ward Beecher, Leonard Bernstein, DeWitt Clinton, Henry Halleck, Samuel Morse, Boss Tweed, Horace Greeley, and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Others noted include Cooper Union founder Peter Cooper, “Father of Baseball” Henry Chadwick, silent movie star William S. Hart, actress Laura Keene, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, “dancer, adventuress” Lola Montez, Broadway lyricist Fred Ebb, and “Steeplechase founder” George Tilyou.

I really wanted to visit Boss Tweed, but he was pretty deep into the cemetery, so I had to settle for a handful of other notables. Such as D.M. Bennett.

D.M. Bennett? I’d never heard of him, either. But DeRobigne Mortimer Bennett (1818-1882), his stone says, was “the founder of The Truth Seeker, the defender of liberty and its martyr, the editor tireless and fearless, the enemy of superstition, as of ignorance, its mother, the teacher of multitudes… though dead, he still speaks to us and asks that we continue the work he left unfinished.” Though it’s arrant reductionism, I’m going to characterize him as a free-love advocate. At least, Comstock busted him for sending free-love pamphlets through the mail.

Later I found my way to the large memorial of DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828), sixth governor of New York and main impetus behind the Eire Canal (“DeWitt’s Ditch”) – which, if you think about it, makes him an indirect founder of Chicago. He has a statue atop his grave, with the plinth memorializing the building of the canal.

The sun wasn’t in the best position for a good shot of Gov. Clinton, but I gave it a go.

Note that good republican that he was, the governor’s wearing a toga. He is not, however, bare-chested, unlike a certain noteworthy statue of George Washington. The Clinton statue is by Henry Kirke Brown, better known for equestrian statues in New York.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Cemeteries