Chicago and Cook County Cemeteries

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Welcome!

If this is your first visit:

Discover great facts and stories about 272 Chicago area cemeteries. You will be surprised to find where the dead have been in and around Chicago.

803 cemetery listings:

Thumbnail information of 272 cemeteries, 258 cross references all found in the “list of all cemeteries” pages as well as over 300 Jewish cemeteries within other cemeteries, the majority in Jewish Waldheim

The blog posts

contain my best and most interesting feature stories. Most will be about the Chicago area, Chicago area cemeteries, people you should know, historical events or simply strange.

Don’t miss! I’m the kid behind the birdcage.

Growing up in Chicago in the 1950’s

or Lane Tech High School

Three LANE Schools over a Clay Pit

new lane 1930 tech prep

Read about Funeral trains serving the Cemeteries

Funeral Streetcars

Check out The Architecture of Death

or ROLLER COASTERS BETWEEN TWO CEMETERIES!

Don’t miss this just updated story (july 2022)

Liquor License in a Cemetery?

or some other popular ones An Elevator in a Cemetery! or The Battered Helmet

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or even the very weird story Burial Cards: John’s left foot

There are more than 100 stories in the archives. Check back often as I have so many more stories to tell .

Don’t miss these most popular posts

“Absolutely fireproof” –A human Tragedy Iroquois Theatre Fire December 30 1903

61 years ago -December 1, 1958 Our Lady of Angels school fire

1024px-Eastland_Postcard_-_View_of_Eastland_taken_from_Fire_Tug_in_river

When Chicago Cried The Eastland disaster

studio 6 nice 1910

Ghosts of Riverview Park

Don’t miss these useful posts

Finding your Uncle Louie

how to find one of your missing relatives

Why are Cemeteries where they are?

Cook County Cemetery at Dunning

purple — Diagram showing where bodies have been found. #1 is generally the “old grounds”. #14 is the “new grounds” opened 1890

Grave Mistake-the Story of Cook County Cemetery at Dunning link to blog

the incredible story of how we lost and rediscovered

a cemetery containing 38,000 souls.

for the whole story, visit www.cookcountycemetery.com

A GOOD READ about Cook County Cemetery (Dunning): Grave Mistake by Harold Henderson Sept 1989 https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/grave-mistake/Content?oid=874451

If I can help you

with your question on a burial location of a lost relative, understanding a death certificate, or any cemetery question in general, email me and I will be happy to help

More often than not, my fee is cookie

write me

Barry A Fleig bartonius84@hotmail.com

About this website

This is the modern version of a cemetery book research project began about 1988. After visiting hundreds of cemetery sites, libraries, and other resources, I had decided to document all burial places in Chicago and Cook County. So instead of writing about the just most obvious and large cemeteries,

Why?

There is an urgency for us to know and appreciate all of these burial places and their stories. The landscape of Cook County, Illinois is constantly changing, often at the expense of our cemeteries. Farmland has given way to shopping centers, expressways, toll roads, airports and subdivisions. Neighborhoods, and communities of yesterday have been replaced with new construction, altering our land and disguising our rich history.

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Saint Johannes Lutheran Cemetery within O’Hare International Airport, perceived by the City of Chicago to “be in the way”. The entire cemetery was disinterred and all graves were moved elsewhere.

Please come back to this website often and enjoy!

THIS WEBSITE IN THE NEWS:

How do you lose a cemetery!

Barry Fleig was interviewed on Extreme Genes radio by Scott Fisher. paste into your address bar, Turn up your speakers and enjoy :

https://extremegenes.com/2018/05/13/episode-236-lose-a-cemetery-chicago-native-can-help-you-father-and-step-son-make-remarkable-dna-discovery/

Famicity, based in France, posted November 24 2017 written by Erin Harris. https://blog.famicity.com/2017/11/preserving-cemeteries-in-chicago-illinois/?lang=en

DNAinfo was a great print and electronic media in Chicago. Check out their Oct 29 2017 Article https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20171030/west-ridge/barry-fleig-cemetery-blog-sheiners-picnic-grove

Bowmanville: Pickles, Flowers, and Skeletons

looking northwest from foster and lincoln

Flash back to about 1892 as we board the Lincoln Avenue trolley car at Dearborn and Monroe in downtown Chicago. We pay our 5 cent fare to travel eight miles north to Lincoln Ave. ( Little Fort Road at the time) and Foster Avenue (59^th avenue at the time).

The one-hour trip takes us to what was once largest native Indian village in the Chicago area existing until about 1835.

Many of us went underground for only 25 cents

If you lived in the Chicago area, I am willing to bet that you too enjoyed this place either as a child or as an adult.

It was noisy, there was a musty smell and at times you were plunged in pure darkness, a bit scary! No, you were not in a haunted house, but rather the wonderful coal mine exhibit at the Museum of science and industry on Chicago’s far south side at 5700 South Lakeshore Dr.

Beating Chicago’s Heat- Summer Gardens, Picnic Groves and even in cemeteries

They were everywhere! As Early as 1859 In Chicago they were a welcome refuge for Chicagoans coping with a hot summer. only to become less important with the advent of home air conditioning. In the 1920s there were more than 500 festive places in the Chicago area to escape the heat, eat, dance and drink. They were largely an old-world tradition brought to Chicago by German, Polish, and Irish immigrants.

Most summer gardens with names like Edelweiss, Germania, Heidelberg, Bismarck Gardens, or Rienzi.began by German-Americans. Wherever you went on a hot summer day you would find steins of beer, wine, music, dancing and a wide variety of activities.

Summer gardens were more commercial and elaborate, patterned after the old world European beer gardens. There you might find tables and chairs, food service, electric lighting, a stage, or even parking for your horse in a covered buggy shed. Some like Riverview evolved into amusement parks. and more. An orchestra of 12 to 20 pieces were common. Many but not all were on the north side catering to the German population. Back in the day newspapers describe the summer gardens as study of mosquitoes.

Although there was a fuzzy line between a picnic grove and a summer garden. picnic groves were more often a mom and pop operation. Many were simply behind a tavern with picnic benches and an outdoor bar. Larger ones could include a beer hall, dance pavilion, a bowling alley, rides or games.. They could be found just about anywhere there was a vacant piece of land. They could be found all over the city and it’s suburbs.

All was not perfect because summer gardens had to deal with noise, anti-German sentiment, labor strikes, and of course the prohibition act of 1919.

The most popular of course was Schutzen (Sharpshooters Park) which of course became the famous Riverview amusement park at Belmont and Western . There were two large picnic groves , refreshment stands and a ballroom . The groves could hold as many as 20,000 people in one day and were popular for organizations holding huge picnics and special events.

Other picnic groves were somewhat of a cousin to cemeteries but catering the mourners who made a long trip to bury their loved ones.

After a funeral and not wasting the rest of the day, there were picnic groves in close proximity to cemeteries where people could eat and drink and dance before the long buggy ride home.

And well after a funeral, death continued to be a constant visitor for many families, so family and friends would return to cemeteries often to “talk” and break bread with the deceased. Often it was simply a pleasant Sunday afternoon picnic among the tombstones remembering the deceased..

Read more as we visit many of them and learn of some of their oddities

13 year old Laura Elfring-buried in the middle of O’Hare Airport!

Her name was Laura Theodora Katharine Elfring, born August 18, 1885, in Barrington Illinois, the first born of Friedrich Johann Gerhard Carl “Fred” Elfring (1858-1930) and Mary Landwehr Elfring (1861-1952)

Thirteen-year-old Laura was killed on the morning of April 10, 1898 on the Milwaukee Road railroad tracks at Bensenville, struck by a morning milk train heading to Chicago.