Springdale Cemetery

The afternoon was getting long in the tooth in Peoria last Saturday, but I told Ann there was one more place I wanted to go before we proceeded to the highway out of town. Yes, of course, was her mild reaction.

The minor delay was entirely worth it, as far as I was concerned. We soon found ourselves at the entrance to Springdale Cemetery, a wooded, hilly, well-populated stretch of land where gravediggers first turned their shovels in the late 1850s. Roads lead off in various directions through this enormous place, a rare example of a rural cemetery movement cemetery that still retains a rural feeling, even though the city of Peoria is all around.Springdale Cemetery Springdale Cemetery Springdale Cemetery

Springdale isn’t over-thick with stones, though there are plenty. It isn’t thick with sizable memorials, though a few rise over the others.Springdale Cemetery

Deeper in the 223-acre cemetery are rows of soldiers’ stones, beginning with those who fought to save the Union and peppered with later participants in later wars.Springdale Cemetery Springdale Cemetery Springdale Cemetery

Even deeper in, the forest becomes as thick as any I’ve seen in a cemetery. In early April, the trees are still bare, but it won’t be long. The warm air was alive with birdcalls while the din of city traffic — so much part of a “rural cemetery” in our time — was far in the background.Springdale Cemetery Springdale Cemetery

We saw just a handful of mausoleums. I suspect there most be more in other parts of Springdale, since Peoria had a long stint as a prosperous industrial town, and that’s the kind of thing that captains of industry used to buy for themselves. But we only had time for the handful.Springdale Cemetery

Zotz was a German newspaper publisher. Springdale Cemetery The mausoleum door isn’t original. In fact, it’s a recently created trompe l’oeil.

Springdale Cemetery Zotz

Nearby were more modest, but still compelling stones. About 78,000 people lie in Springdale.
Springdale Cemetery
A gorgeous place, all in all. One that would be worth seeing during the seasons other than spring, I believe.

Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, Bourbonnais

While visiting Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais on Sunday afternoon, I spotted a church building from a distance that I took to be the campus chapel or the like. I decided to drive over to its parking lot for a closer look.Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic ChurchI was wrong. It was Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, which is decidedly not part of ONU, though adjacent to it for historic reasons that I will get into.Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church“The original Maternity BVM Catholic Church, a 110-foot-by-50-foot wood-framed structure, had burned to the ground in September 1853,” Jack Klasey wrote in the Daily Journal, a local paper. “The frame church had been built in 1847 to replace the settlement’s first Catholic house of worship, a small log structure known as the church of St. Leo. The log church had been erected in 1841.

“Like many of his parishioners, [Rev. Isadore Lebel] had been born in Canada. The plan that he brought to Bourbonnais Grove reflected the church architecture of his native Quebec province. It is believed to be based upon a church in Cap-St.-Ignace, located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, a short distance downstream from Quebec City… Construction work was probably begun some time in 1855 or 1856 and not completed until 1858.”

I was certain the building would be locked (as it was, too bad), but I got out the car for a look anyway. Then I noticed a patch of land next to and behind the church that seemed worth investigating.
Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic ChurchA grotto.Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church

Maternity BVM has an informative walking tour on its web site for downloading. The centerpiece of the grotto, it tells me, is a shrine built to Our Lady of Lourdes.

“Br. John Koelzer, a Viatorian brother, began building the grotto just over 100 years ago, in 1915. It took three years to complete [and] is fashioned (using stones carved by local residents) in the image of Our Lady of Lourdes, when she appeared to young Bernadette.

“Over the years, she has interceded for the safety of soldiers as far back as World War I, as well as countless school children, bridal couples, rosary groups and worshippers of all ages who have sought her protection.”

The Viatorians — another group I’d never heard of till I researched a place I’d been — are “an international Roman Catholic religious congregation comprised of priests, brothers and lay associates, headquartered in Arlington Heights, IL. Collectively, the congregation is known as the Viatorian Community.”

“Fr. Louis Querbes (1793-1859) founded the congregation in Vourles, France in the 19th century during the years following the French Revolution. Realizing the need to provide education for youth, Fr. Querbes’ vision was to send religious brothers and lay catechists of deep faith and competent learning to parish schools in the countryside.

“As patron saint of the congregation, Fr. Querbes chose St. Viator, a young, 4th century catechist-lector of the cathedral church of Lyons, France.”

True to their education focus, the Viatorians who found their way to Bourbonnais from Canada set up a school that became St. Viator College in 1868. The Depression put an end to the school, however, and the site was sold to Olivet Nazarene University.

The church and the grotto remain. As does a cemetery on the grounds. I wasn’t expecting that.
Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church

“Now take a look around the cemetery/grotto and you will also notice several headstones scattered throughout the space,” the tour says. “The cemetery was opened near St. Leo’s Chapel in 1842. By 1884, the old graveyard had no more empty spaces as hundreds are buried here. Many of the grave markers have deteriorated over the years, but there are approximately 30 headstones that still exist and have legible engravings. The earliest legible burial was David Spink, 1848.”

Deteriorated indeed.
Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic ChurchElsewhere on the grounds is a sundial.Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church

Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church
When I stood in front of the sundial, it was about 3:30 CDT, or 2:30 by the sun, a time I could have indeed told by the shadow. The sundial was a gift from the St. Viator College Class of 1917, dedicated on June 13 of that year. Eleven members of that class are listed on the sundial plaque, including the class treasurer, Fulton J. Sheen. He had quite a career ahead of him, with influence in unexpected places.

Near the entrance of the grounds is a boulder with a plaque askew.
Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church
The plaque has been in place almost exactly 100 years, having been dedicated on Decoration Day, 1921. It honors the aforementioned “sturdy Viatorian pioneers” (the plaque’s term) who founded St. Viator College.

Just as we were about to leave — I was already back in the car — I spotted yet another plaque, one considerably harder to see, under a bush. In spring or summer, it might be impossible to see.
Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church baseball home plate plaque“I have to see one more thing,” I told my family. They’re used to that kind of thing. But I knew if I ignored it, I’d wonder about it later. I was well rewarded by my curiosity, since the plaque made me smile. It wasn’t anything remotely like I expected.
Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church baseball home plate plaqueA home plate memorial. Listen closely on moonless nights, maybe, and you can hear the faint cheers of late 19th-century Catholic collegians playing base ball.

Cemeteries Along Archer Avenue

First of all, just about any search for information about Resurrection Catholic Cemetery & Mausoleums in Justice, Illinois, is going to turn up a reference to Resurrection Mary, a ghost purported to hitch rides along Archer Avenue, or in one version I read, go dancing with a living man at a dance hall that used to be on that road. Afterward, he gives her a ride back to her home — which turns out to be Resurrection, as the poor lass had died in a car crash at some earlier time.

The vanishing hitchhiker story, in other words. So well known that that’s the title of Jan Harold Brunvand’s book on urban legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, which I read in the ’80s, along with a lot of other people. If I remember right, the story has been attested back to the 19th century, when it involved a horse-drawn wagon rather than an automobile, and I suspect — with their high-quality roads, wagons and belief in spooks — the Romans must have told a similar story.

What’s the enduring appeal? Can’t say. Also can’t say that I take it any more seriously than it deserves, which isn’t much, though it is an element in Resurrection’s sense of place, so that’s something.

I arrived at Resurrection early in the afternoon on Saturday. At once I noticed that it was a busy place. Maybe the busiest cemetery I’ve been to since we went to Arlington National in ’11. I counted no fewer than six funerals going on during the hour or so I was there, plus a lot of other people simply visiting graves. It was a good day for a visit.

It’s an expansive Catholic cemetery founded in 1904, with about 190,000 permanent residents resting across 400 acres, so I was able to stay at a distance from everyone else. Not particularly for health reasons, but because as a cemetery tourist it’s important not to bother people during more somber visits. Usually it isn’t much of any issue.

Resurrection is a curious mix of a cemetery. Parts of it are thick with upright stones, while other parts feature mostly include flush-to-the-ground plaques, though memorials of both kinds can be found in every section. The cemetery has a scattering of trees and is almost completely flat, except for undeveloped places where piles of soil exist as a byproduct of large landscaping efforts.Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums

Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums

There is still a fair amount of unpopulated land, since the Catholic Church is nothing if not an organization that plans centuries ahead. There is also a sizable belt of wetlands near the edge of the property, full of reeds, that I suspect will never be developed, and which probably counts as the cemetery’s effort to be green.

The cemetery’s indoor mausoleum features the world’s largest stained glass window, at least according to Roadside America, with 2,448 panels telling Bible stories. That surely would have been a sight to see.
Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums

As soon as I parked next to the building, however, I noticed a line of cars snaking along the road I had just driven to get there. Sure enough, it was a funeral procession headed for the mausoleum, so I made myself scarce and didn’t make it back later. Another time, maybe, since the place does look to be a midcentury tour-de-force.

Instead I spent some time at one of the outdoor mausoleum complexes.Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums

No stained glass, but there are mosaics of Biblical scenes on some of the walls of niches. I’d never seen anything quite like that.Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums

Though not thick with funerary art like some grand old rural cemeteries, there is some at Resurrection. New-looking works especially, the likes of which can probably be ordered online. Yep.Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums

This statue marks a small section devoted to the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Third Order of Saint Francis, a group I’d never heard of. They’re still around.
Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums

One large work of art, a bronze of St. John Paul II, has its own Roadside America entry, which — in typical RA style — calls it the “20-Foot-Tall Pope.”Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums
“In 1969 and again in 1976, before he became Pope John Paul II, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Kracow [sic], walked the grounds of Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois,” the cemetery web site notes. “In 1969, the Cardinal visited Resurrection Cemetery to see and bless the Polish Millennium Shrine honoring the 1000th anniversary (966 – 1966) of Christianity in Poland.

“On Memorial Day, May 30th, 2016, Archbishop Cupich blessed a 20 foot tall bronze statue of Saint Pope John Paul II that’s placed on an eight foot tall American black granite base located in Resurrection Cemetery directly behind the cemetery’s office building.

“Commissioned by the Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2013 and designed by Teresa Clark of Clark Design[, the] statue weighs approximately 8,000 pounds and rests upon a black granite base of 86,000 pounds.”

Good to take note of monumental things at a cemetery, but also to pay attention to some of the more human-sized stories that the stones and other memorials clearly allude to.

Such as recent bereavement. Not far from John Paul.Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums

In the thick of other stones.Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums

Found on the grounds of the outdoor mausoleum.
Resurrection Cemetery & Mausoleums

Resurrection wasn’t the only cemetery on Archer Avenue I saw on Saturday. Next to it is another large burial ground, Bethania, which is nonsectarian, and looked crowded with upright stones. I didn’t have the energy for it.

I did take a drive through the rolling terrain of Fairmount-Willow Hills Memorial Park, which is also on Archer Avenue, though in the village of Willow Hills. Most of its memorials are flush to the ground, though there are upright ones. Overall, that gives an impression of large open spaces.Fairmount-Willow Hills Memorial Park Fairmount-Willow Hills Memorial Park

On a sizable hill is a sizable clock tower, with niches around the base (and maybe inside; it was locked).
Fairmount-Willow Hills Memorial ParkI noticed that its clockface (not visible in my picture) wasn’t telling the right time, but as I visited the tower chimed the correct hour. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a clock tower at a cemetery, but somehow it belongs. Reminds us of that thing, time, that we will all run out of someday.

St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church and Cemetery

Saturday was warm and pleasant, Sunday raw and unpleasant, and today — Ides of March Snow. If Rome had had a few inches that day, Caesar might have stayed home, since the rarity of snow would surely have been a warning not to do any official business. Oh, well.

Except for scattered dirty piles in parking lots, all of the massive February snows had melted by March 14. The March 15 snow will last a few days at most, due to a warming trend predicted for later in the week.

Illinois has a few hills, typically relics of ancient glacial movements. Built on top of one of them, in the village of Lemont, is St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church, which got its start in historic times — but still quite a while ago, in the 1830s.

On the slope of the hill is the church cemetery.St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic ChurchOne side of the hill — maybe better to call it a ridge — is quite steep, yet still sports stones.St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church

The rest of the family had other things to do during the day on Saturday, which as mentioned turned out to be clear and warm, so I headed south for a look around the suburban stretch of Archer Avenue (Illinois 171) between Lemont and the village of Justice.

The urban section of Archer Avenue, “Archey Road,” was the haunt of Mr. Dooley once upon a time, but that’s a matter best left for others to describe (if you feel like paying for access).

In our time, suburban Archer Avenue is a thoroughfare featuring independent and chain restaurants, small office buildings, auto repair shops, liquor stores, churches, schools, municipal facilities, and vast cemeteries. The surrounding forest preserve lands are even larger, the further out you go.

St. James at Sag Bridge is near the junction of Archer Avenue and the north-south Illinois 83, which (to the north) is one of the main transit spines of DuPage County. St. James’ hill also rises near the triple waterways of the Des Plaines River, the manmade Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and an older manmade leftover of the 19th-century canal-building boom, the tiny-by-comparison Illinois & Michigan Canal.

To the south of the church and cemetery is yet another artificial waterway, the early 20th century Calumet Sag Channel, which gives the area its name, Sag Bridge, for a predecessor bridge of the one that now carries 171/83 across the channel. The Calumet Sag connects the Calumet River system with the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which it joins just to the west of the church. It’s a complicated bit of geography that I was only vaguely aware of before I decided to examine this part of Archer Avenue.

Sag? I wondered about that as well. The full name of the canal is the Calumet-Saganashkee Channel. I didn’t know that either, but learning it generated another question, as is often the case. Saganashkee?

Named after a local feature with a modified Indian name, it seems: Saganashkee Slough, which is a lake on forest preserve land in the area.

“A case in point is Saganashkee Slough,” the Chicago Tribune reported in 1994. “It was formerly a huge swamp that extended from west of 104th Avenue to the limits of Blue Island, and its original name, Ausaganashkee, is a Potawatomi Indian word that means ‘slush of the earth,’ wrote former Forest Preserve District general superintendent Cap Sauer in a historical account written in the late 1940s.

“During the construction of the I&M Canal in the 1830s, a feeder ditch was dug in the swamp that helped supply additional water to the canal. The slough was almost destroyed in the 1920s by blasting during the construction of the Cal-Sag Channel. Saganashkee was reconstructed by the forest preserve district, although in much smaller form, Berg said. At 325 acres, it is still, however, one of the largest bodies of water in the district.”

As for St. James, the church was founded to serve workers, mostly Irishmen, who were building the Illinois and Michigan Canal, with the current structure completed in the 1850s. A place to go Sunday morning after Saturday night revels, and sometimes donnybrooks, at least according to Irish stereotypes. I suspect the congregation is a good deal more diverse these days.St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church

St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic ChurchIt’s a handsome limestone building, built from material from nearby Lemont-Sag quarries, which provided stone for Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago and the Chicago Water Tower besides. I understand the St. James interior is quite beautiful, but it was locked when I visited.

The Our Lady of the Forest grotto on the grounds was, of course, open for a look.
St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church - Our Lady of the Forest
Compared with the church building, the grotto is new, built in 1998 for the for the 165th anniversary of the parish. See grottos when you can.

Arlington Cemetery & Elm Lawn Memorial Park

Due south of Mount Emblem Cemetery are twin burial grounds, Arlington Cemetery and Elm Lawn Memorial Park, also in Elmhurst, Illinois. On Saturday I headed south from Mount Emblem along County Line Road, fully intending to find an entrance to I-290 and proceed home, but I noticed the two cemeteries before I got that far.

I’ve been driving by those cemeteries for years, seeing them from the highway, not realizing they were distinct and never getting around to seeing them any closer. Though the afternoon was getting chillier and patches of snow still covered the ground, I figured I’d take a look.

These images are of Arlington Cemetery, which is to the east.
Arlington Cemetery Elmhurst Illinois
Arlington Cemetery Elmhurst Illinois
These are of Elm Lawn, to the west.
Elm Lawn Cemetery Elmhurst Illinois
Elm Lawn Cemetery Elmhurst Illinois
A better aesthetic than Mount Emblem, which is say more standing stones, and the cemeteries ought to be nice in the spring and summer. It’s hard to tell in the winter whether these concerns, of some years ago, have been addressed.

As a casual visitor, there was no difference between the two. No fence or other demarcation. I noticed that the Arlington office building was permanently closed, with a sign referring visitors to go to the Elm Lawn office a few hundred feet away. Indeed, according to the cemetery’s web site, the two have been combined under single ownership for more than 25 years.

The permanent residents probably don’t care about any of that. If they do, they’re keeping quiet.
Elm Lawn Cemetery Elmhurst Illinois
A small section of Elm Lawn (I think) that I drove by is designated the Valley of Peace Shia Cemetery, which must be fairly new. Considering the demographics of the northwest suburbs, that’s thinking ahead on the part of cemetery ownership.

Mount Emblem Cemetery

A cemetery with most of its memorials flush to the ground — a mid-century notion that hopefully has faded — looks like a snow-covered field in winter. That can be nice, but it doesn’t say cemetery, and the added beauty of stones in the snow, rather than under it, is missing.

There were stones in the snow at the Elk Grove Cemetery in January 2010.
Elk Grove Cemetery 2010
Mount Emblem Cemetery in Elmhurst, Illinois, has all the ingredients to be a striking cemetery except standing stones. So on Saturday, I saw mainly this kind of scene.
Mount Emblem Cemetery
With a few reminders that loved ones are memorized somewhere under there.
Mount Emblem Cemetery
There are a few structures that won’t be denied their place in the pale winter sun.
Mount Emblem Cemetery
Mount Emblem Cemetery
Mount Emblem has, however, one thing unique in any cemetery I’ve been to, or know about: a Dutch-style windmill.
Mount Emblem Cemetery
It’s the Fischer Windmill, built in the mid-19th century, long before the cemetery was established.

“The windmill was built sometime between 1849 and 1865 by Henry Fischer, after he inherited part of the family farm from his father, Frederick L. Fischer, one of the original settlers in the county,” the Chicago Tribune reported in 1995. “It took two hired millwrights about three years to build it, including six months to fashion the main cogwheel.

“The main framework of the windmill is cypress, and it rests on a stone foundation. It features hand-hewn shafts and gearing of white oak and hickory… The mill ground wheat and corn for local farmers until the demand declined after the turn of the century.”

The cemetery association bought it in 1925 and, according to the Trib, installed chimes. I didn’t hear any chimes, but I did notice two loudspeakers mounted on the structure.

Queen of Heaven Cemetery, Or Christmas at the Cemetery

The Great Conjunction was up there this winter solstice evening. For us, behind all the clouds.

As December days go, Sunday was above-freezing tolerable, and unlike today, mostly clear. A good day for being outdoors for a while, which is what I did at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

Queen of Heaven Cemetery Hillside

Queen of Heaven is the southernmost of a pair of large suburban Catholic cemeteries, adjacent to each other, with a major east-west thoroughfare, Roosevelt Road, separating them. To the north is Mount Carmel Cemetery, permanent home to bishops, gangsters, Boer sympathizers and many others.

Queen of Heaven is newer, post-WWII, and more understated of the two, but with its own charms.

Queen of Heaven Cemetery HillsideQueen of Heaven Cemetery HillsideIncluding a handful of stately mausoleums.
Queen of Heaven Cemetery HillsidePretty soon I began to notice the Christmas decorations. A lot of them. I was inordinately pleased by the sight. I ought to visit more cemeteries in December.

Queen of Heaven Cemetery Hillside

Queen of Heaven Cemetery Hillside

Queen of Heaven Cemetery HillsideQueen of Heaven Cemetery HillsideQueen of Heaven Cemetery HillsideI also noticed that the cemetery was busy. Not urban center busy, but busy for a cemetery. Even at the largest and most picturesque cemeteries, I’m very often the only person in sight, or one of two, including groundskeepers sometimes.

On Sunday at Queen of Heaven, I saw a dozen people or more by themselves or in couples, along with three or four small knots of people. Those gatherings didn’t have the look of funerals. I got close enough to one of the groups, driving by slowly, that I could see the people gathered around a new grave, maybe a few months old. Must have been their first Christmas without the deceased, and there were there to pay their respects. Talk about life-affirming.

Forest Home Cemetery

After visiting Garfield Park in Chicago on October 25, I took a short drive to Forest Home Cemetery, which is near west suburban Forest Park. One of metro Chicago’s splendid cemeteries. It had been a number of years since I’d been there, but I hadn’t forgotten how schön the place is in October.Forest Home CemeteryForest Home CemeteryForest Home CemeteryForest Home CemeteryForest Home CemeterySome unusual memorials I didn’t remember.Forest Home Cemetery

Forest Home CemeteryI couldn’t identify this large mausoleum, since there are no names on it.
Forest Home Cemetery

Later I found out that it is the Lehmann Mausoleum, dating from 1902, and the largest in the cemetery. The Lehmanns ran department stores in Chicago, but for whatever reason, they built another mausoleum in 1920 in Graceland Cemetery in the city and had the deceased members of the family moved there, leaving the Forest Home structure vacant, as it remains, according to the cemetery’s web site.

The Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument.Forest Hill Cemetery - Haymarket Memorial

Forest Hill Cemetery - Haymarket MemorialForest Hill Cemetery - Haymarket Memorial“On June 23, 1893, thanks to Lucy Parsons [widow of Albert Parsons, one of those executed] and the Pioneer Aid and Support Association, the Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument was dedicated,” Atlas Obscura says.

“On the front of the granite monument is the imposing figure of a woman representing justice standing over a fallen worker. The bottom of the 16-foot monument features the final words of August Spies [also executed]: ‘The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today.’ ”

Emma Goldman and the cemetery’s gaggle of leftists are of course still present.
Emma Goldman graveIncluding some relatively new additions.Forest Home Cemetery Forest Home Cemetery

Forest Home CemeteryMaybe not a gaggle. What would be a good collective for leftists? How about a soviet of leftists? The opposite would be a fascio of rightists.

Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown

Lewistown, Illinois, isn’t very large. Only 2,100 or so people live there, as opposed to Oak Hill Cemetery in Lewistown, which has a population of more than 5,000. I arrived for a look on the morning of October 17.

I hadn’t expected such a good-looking cemetery. The fall colors helped, but only added to the overall aesthetic of woody terrain, sometimes hilly, peppered with upright stones and funerary art.

Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown

Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown
Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown
Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown
As you’d expect, there’s a Civil War memorial.Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown

Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown
Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown

It’s hard to see in this pic, but this is the entirety of the inscription, written on the stone bench:

IN MEMORY OF OUR PATRIOT DEAD
MDCCCLXI–MDCCCLXV

I didn’t know it until later, but the columns at the memorial were salvaged from the previous Fulton County courthouse, which burned down in the 1890s. When Lincoln came to town in the ’50s to speak, he stood on the courthouse steps between the columns, and so the town wanted to work them into its Civil War memorial.

In as much as Oak Hill Cemetery is known to the world, it isn’t for its beauty or a war memorial. Rather, Edgar Lee Masters took inspiration from it for Spoon River Anthology. Sometimes, I’ve read, very specific inspiration, since he knew many of the townspeople — such as the weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer and the fighter, to borrow language from the opening of the book.

“In the groundbreaking work, Masters, a onetime law partner of Clarence Darrow, gives voice to more than two hundred deceased citizens of Spoon River who are laid to rest in Oak Hill Cemetery, known to the locals as The Hill,” wrote Laura Wolff Scanlan in Humanities magazine in 2015.

“Freed by the shackles of life, the un-living who ‘sleep beneath these weeds’ confess their deepest secrets, disappointments, frustrations, joys, and warnings to the living in the form of brutally honest free verse poems.

“In some cases, Masters barely changed their names. Henry Phipps was really banker Henry Phelps. Harry Wilmans was Henry Wilmans…

“Even though most names were fictitious, everyone in town knew exactly who he was talking about. Because of this, the book was immediately banned from schools and libraries in the area, including the Lewistown library.”

When Masters died in 1950, he wasn’t buried in Oak Hill, but rather in Petersburg, Illinois, which is close to Springfield.

The Lewistown library started stocking the book in 1974. After the death of everyone mentioned in it, and most of their immediate families, in other words. In our time, Lewistown claims the work as its own, since what else is the town known for, or could be known for? For the centennial of the book in 2015, the town held Oak Hill Cemetery tours, exhibitions and theatrical performances, according to Humanities.

For avid Spoon River enthusiasts, and there must still be a few, the graves of the real people associated with fictional counterparts are marked with numbers.
Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown
Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown

There’s a guide available that will tell you who’s who in the cemetery, according to their Edgar Lee Masters number. I am not enough of an enthusiast to look any of them up.

Still, I respect it as a successful work of literature about the residents of a cemetery. Interesting conceit. Sometimes I imagine that if the dead at the cemeteries could talk freely, I might hear some salacious bits. On the other hand, many of them might not have very much interesting to confess.

We had a copy of Spoon River in our library when I was growing up, and I read some of the poems then and a few later. The other day I happened across a radio version from 1957, which is worth a listen. William Conrad is always worth a listen anyway.

New Harmony, Indiana, Part 2

After wandering around New Harmony, Indiana, for a while and seeing many interesting things, it occurred to me that we hadn’t visited one of the places that I was curious to see, because I didn’t know exactly where to find it.

Google Maps in this instance didn’t know either. Or rather, I didn’t know exactly what the spot was called, to tell Google. The search engine isn’t a mind reader, not yet (but surely that’s Alphabet Inc.’s dream).

We spent time looking around an antique and knickknack store on the main street, since New Harmony, pop. 750, has some of the elements of a day-trippers town (like Fredericksburg, Texas). I found a candle holder I wanted to give as a gift, and after paying for it, I asked the woman behind the counter two questions.

One, where I might find postcards, since her store had none. She offered a suggestion, and another customer who had overheard us offered another suggestion, which turned out to be closer by and correct.

My other question: “Can you tell me where I can find Paul Tillich’s grave?” I’d read it was in town. Not in a cemetery, but a standalone location.

I can’t claim to be an expert on Paul Tillich, or even remember that much about him or his theological ideas. Whatever I might have learned during my collegiate religious studies had long been forgotten. Still, I figured I should drop by and pay my respects, and later do a little reading to refresh my memory.

She told me where to find him. We’d wandered by previously without realizing it, since he’s tucked in a grove of conifers forming Paul Tillich Park.Paul Tillich Park New Harmony Indiana

Paul Tillich Park New Harmony IndianaNone of the stones in the pictures are his gravestone. Rather, they’re some stones in the park with Tillich’s words carved on them.Paul Tillich Park New Harmony Indiana Paul Tillich Park New Harmony Indiana

This is his stone.
Paul Tillich Park New Harmony Indiana
A little hard to read, even when you’re standing in front of it. Turns out to be Psalm 1:3.

PAUL JOHANNES TILLICH
1886-1965
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit for his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

What’s Tillich doing in Indiana? Broadly speaking, he was another inadvertent gift to the United States from the Nazis, like Einstein or Thomas Mann or Billy Wilder or Walter Gropius. Tillich came to America in 1933 and held a number of academic posts in this country. Apparently he was taken with the history and setting of New Harmony.

“Before his death in 1965, the philosopher Paul Tillich hoped to make New Harmony a center for his own teachings, and thus in a way fulfill the early ambitions of Rapp and Owen in making the town an example of spiritual and material concerns successfully united,” notes a 1978 New York Times article, which is worth reading all the way through. “The trust created Paul Tillich Park…”

Jane Blaffer Owen’s trust, that is, mentioned yesterday.

“Jane Owen’s charisma emanated from her spiritual liberality [also, maybe, her largesse]. She was profoundly affected by the teaching of the twentieth-century German-American theologian Paul Tillich, becoming by turns his admirer, student, and friend….” writes Stephen Fox in a magazine published by Rice University — also worth reading all the way through.

“In 1963, she persuaded Tillich to come to New Harmony to dedicate a site across Main Street from the Roofless Church for a park to be named in his honor.”

“On [Philip] Johnson’s recommendation, she had the New York landscape architects Zion & Breen design a natural setting of grassless berms planted thickly with spruce and hemlock trees, around which granite boulders inscribed with passages from Tillich’s writings and a bronze bust by James Rosati were installed. This is where Tillich’s ashes were interred in 1966.”

This is the Rosati bust.
Paul Tillich Park New Harmony Indiana

We weren’t quite finished with New Harmony after visiting Tillich. We spent some time at the town’s labyrinth, formally the Cathedral Labyrinth and Sacred Garden and patterned after one in Chartres Cathedral. Another work of the Robert Lee Blaffer Foundation.labyrinth New Harmony Indiana labyrinth New Harmony Indiana

We spent some time walking it. Ann had more patience with it than I did.

Finally, we approached the Harmonist Cemetery, or the Rappite Cemetery, a burying ground surrounded by a low wall. Outside the wall are an assortment of well-worn stones, dating from the 19th century but after the utopian experiments in New Harmony.
harmonist cemetery New Harmony Indiana

Many are illegible, but I could read the names and much of the info on this one.
harmonist cemetery New Harmony Indiana

JANE
Consort of
JOHN T. HUGO
Died March 11, 1846
Aged 27 years, __ months and 10 days.

“Consort” isn’t a word I’ve seen too much in cemeteries, but maybe I don’t go to the right ones.

Behind the wall are no stones, just a wide expanse of grassy ground.
harmonist cemetery New Harmony Indiana

There was nothing on site to explain that, but after a moment’s thought we speculated that the Harmonists didn’t believe in individual gravesites or markers, so we were looking at a mass grave. Later I checked, and that’s correct. Ann said that made the site unsettling, and I suppose mass graves can be, say if mass violence was involved. I don’t think that was the case for the Harmonists; just the result of the everyday dangers of living in the 19th-century frontier.

Note also the mounds. Apparently the area was home to Indian mounds before the Harmonists came, and so they must have considered it a natural for a burial ground. About 230 of the colonists lie there.