John Samuel and Maud G. (Kennedy) Holmes John (1868 – 1931) was originally from Canada and came to the US as a teenager. Maud (1878 – 1955) was born in Michigan, the oldest of 5 children. The couple married in Chicago in 1900 when John was 32 and Maud was 22. In 1910, the census […]
Four generations (and possibly five) of Illinois natives are entombed here. The mausoleum was first erected for matriarch Barbara Cure Espert who died in 1907, many years before her husband. Originally buried at Elmwood Cemetery, she was moved to this mausoleum a year after her death. It would be another 24 years before her husband […]
Designed by Louis P. Sullivan, this is possibly my favorite of the traditional mausoleums I saw at Graceland. It is massive and black and sits back between two trees, glowering out at passersby. It is extraordinarily goth, and I love it. Martin Ryerson Sr was born in 1818 in New Jersey and came to Michigan […]
Thomas Rice and Harriet Wade (Rice) Lyon Thomas (1854 – 1909) was from Ohio and Harriet (1856 – 1936) from New York, but they met and married in Michigan. Thomas — who it seems may have come from family money (and at least his family seems to have been very well established, dating back to […]
Potter Palmer 20 May 1826 – 4 May 1902 Bertha Honoré Palmer 22 May 1849 – 5 May 1918 There are quite good biographies of both Potter and Bertha on their @findagrave pages and both have Wikipedia entries as well (Potter Palmer – Wikipedia | Bertha Palmer – Wikipedia), so I’ll just do a highlight […]
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 […]
Carrie Eliza Anderson Getty 1843 – 24 February 1890 Henry Harrison Getty 20 September 1836 – 28 March 1919 Alice Eliza Getty 15 October 1868 – 12 June 1946 There is a thorough write-up about this mausoleum on Carrie Eliza Anderson Getty’s findagrave.com page as well as a Wikipedia entry dedicated to the mausoleum which […]
Karel Vaclav Janovsky (1876 – 1962) emigrated from Bohemia at the age of 14. He used “Johns” as an Anglicized surname but over time (and likely due to finding the tight-knit Bohemian community in Chicago) used both names to the point that he hyphenated them on the family mausoleum. He married first wife Mary Theresa […]
10 November 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 […]
This stunner was hard to get good shots of the day I was there just due to the time of day and angle of the sun, so I tried to get a lot of detail photos to make up for it. Peter Schoenhofen was a German immigrant who started a brewery in Chicago that became […]