Edward “Eddie” Grimms 25 Mar 1892 — 24 Jul 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 […]
Helena Pittelkow 5 September 1893 — 24 July 1915 Meta Zopke 25 April 1892 — 24 July 1915 Hedwig “Hattie” Zopke 5 April 1895 — 24 July 1915 Meta and Hedwig were sisters, and Helena was the little sister of their older brother William’s wife Minnie. All boarded the Eastland bound for the Western Electric […]
This stunning monument marks the Cummings family plot in the Fairlawn section at Graceland. Patriarch Columbus R. Cummings (1834 – 1897) — another of the Gilded Age tycoons whose monuments dot the cemetery’s landscape — came to Chicago from New York as a young man and went to work for Potter Palmer (whose spectacular monument […]
27 February 1849 – 5 January 1900 Ernst is another one of those Victorian rags-to-riches stories that are inescapable in American folklore. He was born in Germany to poor parents who immigrated to hte US when he was a toddler. They first lived in Wisconsin and then moved to Chicago. His father made baskets and […]
All three generations of Ludwig/Louis* Wolffs are interred at Graceland. Ludwig Sr is entombed in this sunken mausoleum on the far northern side of the cemetery while his son Louis Jr and grandson Louis III are buried together on a family lot near the southeastern corner of the cemetery, memorialized by this unique stone. The […]
Lucius George and Katherine “Kate” Louise (Eddy) Fisher Lucius (1843 – 1916) was a paper company magnate who commissioned (and owned for the rest of his life) the beautiful Fisher Building on Dearborn. Completed in 1896, it is the oldest 20-story building still standing in Chicago. His wife Kate (1849 – 1910) was the daughter […]
1864 – 5 January 1905 James had been a policeman for 14 years and had reached the rank of detective at the time of his death. He had married Mary Moroney (1865 – 1931) in 1884 and together they had four children, all of whom lived to adulthood: Thomas, John, Joseph (known as Dode), and […]
March 1876 – 2 August 1910 Originally posted February 7, 2021; Updated November 22, 2021 My first post on my @PostsInTheGraveyard instagram was of Beulah “Bulah” Corley’s headstone. I wondered what the story behind it was as it seemed lonely and tragic, the inscription protective and a bit defiant, so I decided to revisit it […]
Every time I try to add some records to findagrave.com quickly, my research mode kicks in, and I inevitably end up disappearing down a rabbit hole, and this family turned out to be a real mystery. Albertine Lemanski and Herman Niemoth married in 1887, six years after Albertine immigrated to the US in 1881 (where […]
2 August 1877 – 24 July 1915 This is the latest in my series on The Eastland Disaster which focuses on the victims buried at Concordia Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, and their families. Henry’s parents married less than seven months before he was born. His father Joseph Schuett was more than ten years older […]