25 November 1886 – 24 July 1915 The Eastland, one of five chartered excursion boats meant to ferry employees, their families and friends from Chicago over to the Michigan City shore for the annual Western Electric Company picnic, keeled over into the Chicago River while still at dock, trapping hundreds inside its hull and leading […]
17 July 1895 – 24 July 1915 The Eastland, one of five chartered excursion boats meant to ferry employees, their families and friends from Chicago over to the Michigan City shore for the annual Western Electric Company picnic, keeled over into the Chicago River while still at dock, trapping hundreds inside its hull and leading […]
Eliza E. “Mother George” (Hamilton) George 20 Oct 1808 – 9 May 1865 Eliza was born in Bridport, Vermont and was the second wife of Woodbridge Cottle George, a man almost 20 years her senior. The couple started their lives together in New York where their three children were born (Eliza, Sterling, and Maria). Eliza […]
9 Nov 1835 – 17 Dec 1922 John H. Bass was born in Salem, Kentucky, and came to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1852. He first worked as a grocery clerk while he studied bookkeeping at night school, then worked for a railroad concern as an auditor. The next year, he joined his brother and some […]
John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman 26 September 1774 – 18 March 1845 Johnny Appleseed was a folk figure from the early days of the United States, famed for roaming the wilderness frontier that later became Ohio, Indiana and other parts of the Midwest and Canada, often shoeless, and usually carrying a bag of appleseeds he sowed […]
15 May 1895 – 26 September 1918 As his headstone says, Alex was killed in action in the Argonne Forest. Devastatingly, the headstone says, “in World War,” his parents who’d had this inscription made unaware that they would both live to see a second one. Don and Bessie married in 1881 in Odessa – the […]
7 June 1917 – 3 December 2000 Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas but when she was only six weeks old, her parents moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Brooks would call Chicago home for the rest of her life. She had one sibling, a brother a year younger. Her father had aspired […]
Corporal, Company A, 2nd Illinois Infantry, Spanish American War 8 September 1872 – 16 February 1914 This headstone is in Section C (near where Beulah Corley is buried) which I’ve learned since profiling Beulah was used for simple, time-limited term burials until just after World War II. The last burials you can find there date […]
Julius E. Heidenreich 17 May 1840 – 30 June 1927 Anna Margaretha Geisler Heidenreich 1839 – 7 December 1896 Johann Carl Heidenreich 1810 – 12 June 1889 Maria Elizabeth Heidenreich dates unknown Ida Margaretha Heidenreich 15 September 1868 – 28 October 1964 (possibly) Though I found a record that seems to indicate that Julius and […]
Forest Home (formerly German Waldheim) Cemetery Dedicated in 1893; Designated a US National Historic Landmark on and listed on the US National Register of Historic Places 18 February 1997 Every time I go to Forest Home, I photograph the monument. It’s beautiful and usually has some flowers or other remembrance left on its dais. If […]