The Bluff City Cemetery, Elgin

Posted on August 27, 2014 by admin

At Costco the other day, I was waiting in line at the keep-’em-in-the-store food service window, which is across from the row of check-out stands. The line was about eight people deep, and had started to snake toward the check-out stands, partially blocking the flow of people and shopping carts as they headed for the exit.

“Please move the line against the wall,” a Costco employee told everyone in line. It was a reasonable request, and we all moved away from the check-out row. A few seconds later, a man wheeled his cart past us in the line, and said, “Thanks. There’s no more Thermopylae.”

Did he actually say that? I wondered. I decided he had. I didn’t particularly feel like we were holding off a host of Persians, but I chuckled anyway. That’s someone who’s read his Herodotus. Or more likely, watched 300.

I spent some time one warm day recently at the Bluff City Cemetery in Elgin, Illinois, which has been a municipal burying ground since 1889. It’s a large place, 108 acres, and unusually uneven for Illinois terrain. My guess is that as a rolling bluff, the site wasn’t good for much else, so it became the cemetery.

A lot of mature trees, a lot of stones. Not a lot of funerary art, but I did see some examples, such as this figure, atop a monument to people named Hanson, and holding what looks like a chain attached to an anchor. I’ve read that anchors were early Christian symbols of hope, and are sometimes found on funerary art, though I can’t say I’ve ever seen one before.

The cemetery also sports a few burial vaults built into the hillside.

There are some small mausoleums as well. I liked the Snow mausoleum, with its ivy.

The Snows are under a large oak tree, and the entire time I was there it spat acorns at the ground near me.

Mother Jones in Mt. Olive

Posted on August 6, 2014 by admin

Gene Autry – the singing cowboy, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” Gene Autry – recorded “The Death of Mother Jones” early in his career: 1931, shortly after the death of labor agitator Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones). It’s worth a listen.

For years I’ve been seeing the sign on the Interstate advising me that Mother Jones’ memorial is off Exit 44 in Mt. Olive, Ill., not far outside greater St. Louis, but it’s been a one-of-these-days destination. The day turned out to be July 27, 2014, our last day of the trip. I’d planned to have lunch at Crown Candy Kitchen in St. Louis, and remarkably enough, I didn’t have any trouble finding that establishment. But at about 1 on that Sunday afternoon, a line was out the door. Crown Candy might be good, but not that good.

So we pressed on into Illinois. I’d stopped for lunch in Litchfield some years ago, and had a good enough memory of that, so that was the target. But then I saw the Mother Jones sign, and a billboard for a diner in Mt. Olive, pop. 2,000-plus. A winning combo. We got off at Exit 44 and followed the signs to the Union Miners Cemetery, final resting place of Mother Jones and presumably a lot of mining men. This is the view from her memorial.

The view of her memorial.

Why Mt. Olive? The Illinois Labor History Society tells us that Mother Jones herself made the request a few years before her death.

A Special Request to the Miners of Mt. Olive, Illinois:

When the last call comes for me to take my final rest, will the miners see that I get a resting place in the same clay that shelters the miners who gave up their lives of the hills of Virden, Illinois on the morning of October 12, 1897 [sic], for their heroic sacrifice of [sic] their fellow men. They are responsible for Illinois being the best organized labor state in America. I hope it will be my consolation when I pass away to feel I sleep under the clay with those brave boys.

— Mother Jones

The monument was dedicated in 1936, and according to the society, “The cash raised for the monument was $16,393.25. All of the labor involved was donated. It stands 22 ft. high on a 20 x 18 ft. base. It is built of 80 tons of pink Minnesota granite. The name of the sculptor is lost from the record.

“The dedication was, itself, a monumental event. Five special trains and 25 Greyhound buses brought celebrants to Mt. Olive. Others came in private cars or hitch-hiked to the town. The crowd was estimated at 50,000. There were 32,000 in the line of march.”

The memorial also includes plaques to men killed in the Virden Massacre, which Jones mentioned, a gun battle in 1898 between union men and company guards over whether strikebreakers were going to detrain at a major mine in Virden. The miners prevailed, in that no one got off the train, but a number of them died. The names of the dead I saw included E.W. Smith, E. Kraemmerer and Joseph Gitterle. “General” Alexander Bradley has a plaque too, though he died in 1918.

“Who were the miners who led this fight? The best known was Alexander Bradley, a 32-year-old mule driver who worked in the Mt. Olive mines,” says Illinois Labor History… By the mid-1890s, Bradley had traveled widely throughout the Midwest, tramping with other unemployed miners to Chicago and taking part in the famous march to Washington DC of Coxey’s Army of the unemployed of 1894.

“In the course of the strike, ‘General’ Bradley, as he became known, developed a well-earned reputation as a colorful and charismatic figure. Arriving with his ‘troops’ in Collinsville, for instance, Bradley sported ‘corduroy trousers, a light blue coat, white shirt, brown straw hat, toothpick (narrow and pointed) shoes, at least three emblems of secret societies and several rings on his fingers…[as well as] a light cane or a furled umbrella.’ ”

More about Virden – “Hotter than San Juan Hill” — is here.

The Dickeyville Grotto

Posted on June 25, 2014 by admin

Writing for PBS, cultural anthropologist Anne Pryor says that, “In Dickeyville [Wis.], one of the area’s small towns, is Holy Ghost parish, the home of a remarkable piece of folk architecture. Situated between the rectory, church, and cemetery is the Dickeyville Grotto, a structure so amazing that I have seen unsuspecting drivers come to a full halt in the middle of the road to gape. What stops them short is a 15-foot-tall false cave, decoratively covered with colored stone and glass, dedicated to Mary the mother of Jesus, to God and country.

“Although the name implies a singular structure, the Dickeyville Grotto is actually a series of grottos and shrines. It includes the grotto dedicated to the Blessed Mother, the structure seen from Highway 61; a shrine dedicated to Christ the King; a shrine to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; and a Eucharistic Altar in the parish cemetery, formerly used for annual outdoor Corpus Christi processions. The large Patriotic Shrine depicts the history and love of country represented by Columbus, Washington, and Lincoln.

“All of these creations display decorative embellished cement ornamentation achieved by placing patterns of colorful materials in the concrete when it is still damp: shells, stones, tiles, glass, petrified moss or wood, geodes and gems. Iron railings with the same distinctive decorations border the walkways between the different shrines and grottos, unifying these separate structures.”

We arrived at the Dickeyville Grotto late in the morning on Sunday, when it was already sunny and very warm. The Blessed Mother grotto is striking indeed, and in case there’s any doubt, the site proclaims itself to be about RELIGION and PATRIOTISM. (And another sign mentions the gift shop.)Here’s the back of the Marian grotto. Virtues are literally written in stone.

Most of the surfaces are as colorful as can be. Under strong sunlight’s a good way to see it.

Father Mathius Wernerus, priest at Dickeyville’s Holy Ghost Parish, and his parishioners built the grotto during the late 1920s. It was renovated in the late 1990s. The timing of its origin must account for the aforementioned and odd (to us) Patriotism Shrine, with Columbus, Washington, and Lincoln. The patriotism of U.S. Catholics was widely and openly questioned at the time, so it makes sense.

Also worth seeing at Holy Ghost Parish is the cemetery, which fulfilled my informal requirement of at least one cemetery visit per trip. While my family poked around the gift shop, I strolled through the cemetery. Not a lot of fancy funerary art, but still a handsome array of gravestones in a bright Midwestern setting. The most interesting stone I saw was a large one depicting a large farm, which presumably the deceased had owned and operated.Also worth seeing, and not just for the air conditioning, was the church building. Its stained glass is nice, and tucked away in the landing of the stairway that connects the basement and the nave are a couple of statues with themes you don’t see that often (at least I don’t), such as St. Sebastian, whom I’ve seen depicted more often in paintings.

And this pietà. Maybe I’m not up on my Christian symbolism, though I have heard of broken vessels standing in for us sinners. But I’ve never seen a statue quite like this.

I didn’t see anything to identify the work or the artist, so I’ll have to leave it at that. Enough to say that Holy Ghost Parish and its vernacular grotto were well worth detouring a few miles into extreme southwestern Wisconsin to see.

Subtropical March ’13

Posted on March 30, 2014 by admin

Slowly warming over the weekend, but not enough to call spring. It’s this time of year especially when I miss the springs of South Texas and Middle Tennessee, or even the Kansai, which are already under way. This time last year, San Antonio was greening up nicely.

Such as at the Sunken Gardens, officially the Japanese Tea Gardens, when we visited last year. I expect it looks this way again about now, complete with greenery along with edge of expansive koi ponds.

We discovered that the garden also sports some plant graffiti. Floroffiti, maybe?

Other places were greening, too. But not that green. At Mission San Juan, the grass was still its usual winter brown.

Grass also gets brown under the heat of summer, which can last a long time. So it’s better to say that the predominant color of South Texas grass is brown, with interludes of green at certain times of the year.

This was the San Jose Burial Park, which isn’t far from Mission San Juan.

We didn’t spend much time there, but it looked like a peaceful burial ground, not much known expect by people who live nearby.

St. John UCC Cemetery, Palatine

Posted on March 10, 2014 by admin

The snow was still pretty deep this weekend — but starting to melt — at St. John United Church of Christ in Palatine, Ill., when I dropped by for a look at the churchyard cemetery. So I didn’t do a lot of wandering around or taking notes about individual stones. Still, it’s a pretty little graveyard, winter or summer.

I’d been there before, but not for the better part of a decade, despite how often I pass nearby. Some of the older stones are in German. Fittingly, since much of this part of Cook County was originally settled by German famers.

The church is the third building on the site, dating from 1885.

According the church web site: “August 21 [1885] the church was destroyed by fire after the steeple was struck by lightning. September 14, the cornerstone for the new church identical to the old was laid. The bell in today’s belfry holds the original bell cast in 1885… The new church was built by [contractor] Christian Brinkman for $2,700.

“The pipe organ was built by Emil Witzmann around 1885. It has a balanced mechanical stop-action and is registered in the Organ Historical Society Registry. The center aisle lights were originally candle lights. The fourth Sunday in Advent of the same year, a new church (our present building) was dedicated.”

There are other little suburban cemeteries and churches I need to make a point of visiting this year, ones that aren’t that far away. Since they’re so close, I get lackadaisical about making the time to drop by.

Quantill’s Graves

Posted on January 14, 2014 by admin

Odd discovery for the day: the remains of William Quantrill seem to be buried in two different places. I was looking at the Wiki page devoted to the notorious raider and noticed, without apparent explanation, pictures of two gravestones for the man, one in Ohio, another in Missouri.

I looked into the subject a little further and this article has some explanation of it. Through a series of convoluted acts of skullduggery on the part of his mother and others, parts of Quantrill ended up in two different places, one close to where he grew up, the other close to where he made his name.

Reminds me of the two gravesites for Daniel Boone, but in that case there’s a dispute about where all of his mortal remain are – Kentucky or Missouri. In Quantrill’s case, the two states seem to have divvied up the distinction of having his final resting place.

Confederate Field

Posted on September 25, 2013 by admin

Another major section of the Texas State Cemetery honors Confederate dead. Even before we went, I knew that Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, who took a slug at Shiloh, had been reburied at the cemetery. Sure enough, he has one of the larger memorials, at a place of honor among the field of Confederates.

The memorial, including a recumbent statue of Gen. Johnston, was done by Elisabet Ney, another European sculptor who did well in 19th-century Texas, though she was no slacker before she left Europe. “Among her best-known works from this period [i.e., pre-Texas] are portrait busts of Arthur Schopenhauer, Giuseppi Garibaldi, and Otto von Bismarck, and a full-length statue of King Ludwig II of Bavaria,” notes the Handbook of Texas. After establishing herself in Texas, she did busts of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston (presumably not from life), among others. All in all, quite a career.

These days her Austin studio is a museum. How did I not know about it? Got another thing to see in Austin someday.

The light was poor on the recumbent Gen. Johnston, so I didn’t make an image. Not far away, however, is a much more obscure Confederate general, John A. Wharton. He was in full sunlight.

Another Confederate Texan, his date of death is listed as April 6, 1865, so I figured he was one of the unlucky few killed in action just as the war ground to an end. But no. Again from the Handbook of Texas: “On April 6, 1865, while visiting Gen. John B. Magruder’s headquarters at the Fannin Hotel in Houston, Wharton was killed by fellow officer George W. Baylor in a personal quarrel that grew out of ‘an unpleasant misunderstanding over military matters.’ Even though Wharton was found to have been unarmed, Baylor was acquitted of murder charges in 1868.” Geez.

The bust was by Enrico Filiberto Cerracchio, another European sculptor who ended up in Texas. Who knew there were so many? He came a little later, though, and is best known for his large bronze equestrian figure of Sam Houston at the entrance to Hermann Park in Houston, which dates from 1924.

Generals are one thing, but far more of the cemetery is occupied by ordinary Confederate soldiers, or more exactly, old men who had once been CSA who died in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Confederate Field is large.

Stephen F. Austin and the Company He Keeps

Posted on September 24, 2013 by admin

There are a lot of notables in the Texas State Cemetery, but who’s more notable for Texas than Stephen F. Austin, especially since Sam Houston is buried somewhere else? Austin’s been in the cemetery in Austin for over 100 years now, reposing under a statue by an Italian sculptor who did most of his work in Texas, one Pompeo Coppini, whose name is conveniently on the base, and who had an interesting career I didn’t know about until I looked him up.

Wonder how many people who know about the city of Austin for its tech industries or music scene or its politics or UT or Keep Austin Weird or its moon towers know even a bit about Austin the man. Anyone who took Texas History in the 7th grade or read Texas History “Movies,” maybe.

Coppini gave Austin a determined visage, reaching for the future. Since he died young, at only 43, you have to wonder what he would have done had he lived another 30 years — at the very least held a number of high offices in the republic and the state, as Houston did.

The plaque in front of the figure says:

Stephen Fuller

AUSTIN

“The Father of Texas”
was born in Wythe County, Virginia
November 3, 1793
and died in Brazoria County, Texas
December 27, 1836

Wise, Gentle, Courageous, and Patient
He was the founder
of a mighty commonwealth

He’s actually one of the few full-sized bronzes in the cemetery. Most of the funerary art involves other shapes, such as that of Ma and Pa Ferguson, who are not far from Austin.

James and Miriam Ferguson, that is, who were both governor of the state at various times. My mother remembers them, and I heard about them from her from time to time.

One of the least conventional memorials in the cemetery — or in any cemetery — was this one, to William and Carrin Patman, whom I had to look up. He was a long-time Texas state senator and also spent a while in the U.S. House.

Other notables we spotted on “Republic Hill,” whose centerpiece is the Austin statue, included Walter Prescott Webb, Bigfoot Wallace, Rep. Barbara Jordan, Rep. Jake Pickle, and a few other governors and state officials. Coach Darrell Royal is buried near the road. I hadn’t realized he was dead. His stone features a UT gold ring and the words, “Let’s Give Him Three.”

The Texas State Cemetery

Posted on September 23, 2013 by admin

The Texas State Cemetery, which is in Austin east of I-35 but still not that far from the capitol, is a lush patch of mildly sloping land, artfully landscaped, graced by a variety of trees, a few water features, narrow roads, many Texas flags, and lots of monuments of different sizes and shapes, as you’d except from a good cemetery. Jay and I stopped by the State Cemetery on the afternoon of Friday the 13th under partly cloudy skies, and during the usual high heat you’re going to encounter in September in Central Texas. Fortunately, there was also a good bit of shade.

One thing the cemetery did not have, at least when we were there, was many other visitors – maybe a four or five all together, and I think at least one of them worked there. Then again, that’s not so strange. I often find myself alone – among living people, anyway – even in large cemeteries. The only recent exception to that has been Arlington National Cemetery.

The invaluable Handbook of Texas tells us that the 22-acre Texas State Cemetery “is divided into two plots. The smaller one includes some 234 marked graves of more or less prominent men and their wives, including… representatives of every department of state government and every period of state history. The larger plot contains the marked graves of some 2,047 Confederate veterans and their widows, who died after 1889 in the Texas Confederate Home and the Confederate Woman’s Home.”

The cemetery also still has room for expansion. I understand that most state officials can be buried there if they so desire, and the legislature can offer burial in the cemetery to whomever it wants. That would account, for example, for the stone dedicated to Wille James Wells, “El Diablo,” 1906-1989.

I hadn’t heard of him before. His stone says, “Played and managed in the Negro Leagues, 1924-1948. Began his career with the St. Louis Stars and became baseball’s first power hitting shortstop… He was best known for his aggressive play [hence the nickname]. During his career he compiled a .392 batting average against Major League ballplayers. In 1997, Willie Wells was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame…” Wells’ connection to Texas isn’t obvious from the stone, so I looked him up, and it turns out he’s native to Austin.

Roads run through the cemetery, making a T shape. The formal entrance to the grounds is at the bottom of the T. According to Wiki at least, the stem of the T shape is part of Texas 165, which also includes part of a side street that borders the cemetery. It isn’t clear from the text whether the rest of the T also counts as Texas 165, but never mind.

This is the view looking north, past the top of the T. Whatever you call it, the road is abundantly lined with Texas flags.

A Short Visit to Brussels

Posted on July 10, 2013 by admin

Southern Door County, the part below the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal, isn’t the Door of tourist lore. But we discovered one of its charms all the same. Wisconsin 57 is the main road from the city of Green Bay to the town of Sturgeon Bay, and consulting the invaluable guidebook Moon Wisconsin, I noticed a town called Brussels just off the highway. “Brussels and surrounding towns… constitute the country’s largest Belgian-American settlement,” Moon asserts. “The architecture of the region is so well preserved that 100 buildings make up Wisconsin’s first rural National Historic Landmark.”

I had to take a look at that. We headed from 57 up County Highway C, and from that vantage, I have to say, it’s easy to miss most of those historic structures. Until you get to the junction of Highway C and Cemetery Road, that is, where you’ll find the St. Francis and St. Mary Parish Church. The setting is distinctly rural, complete with the odor of cow manure.

ST FRANCIS CHURCH is carved over the main entrance, but I understand that another congregation, St. Mary’s, joined St. Francis at one time. Not surprising, considering the way rural populations have dwindled in recent decades. My family thought I was stopping to see the adjacent cemetery, which looked interesting enough, but I really wanted to see whether the church was open. To my surprise, it was. I had to pry everyone else out of the car to come see the interior, which has some nice stained glass.

One side was well-lit by the sun, so I took some pics of saints. Because who doesn’t like stained-glass saints? Such as Agnes, patron of chastity, gardeners (?), girls, engaged couples, rape victims, and virgins.

Or Hubert, patron of hunters, mathematicians, opticians, and metalworkers.

I also discovered, on further inspection, that the Francis of the church name is Francis Xavier, missionary to Asia, though why the Belgians who built the church chose him, I couldn’t say.

Everyone was waiting for me in the car as I looked around the cemetery, so I didn’t have long. Besides gravestones, it also featured a small grotto.

The light wasn’t quite right, but I say when you run across a grotto, take a picture if you can.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Cemeteries