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Several catholic graveyards,   Rock Springs, Old St. Patrick’s, Holy Trinity, and Old Cathedral, were relocated to Calvary throughout the mid-1800s and early 1900s. Remains from St. Bridget of Erin were moved into a massive, unmarked grave in 1960. It is unclear what happened to the headstones that were at St. Bridget of Erin and other graveyards.       Most human remains were placed in a massive unmarked gravesite at Calvary. However, some of the human remains that could be linked to a headstone were buried individually and with the original grave marker.  Eventually, due to the wear of the grave markers, Calvary would remove 1000 gravestones without consulting lot owners or families. Bellefontaine Cemetery and Arboretum is the neighbor of Calvary. The two are only divided by a road, Calvary Ave. Despite the closeness, the two cemeteries couldn't be more different. Bellefontaine predates Calvary only by a few years. Calvary is a catholic cemetery, while Bellefontaine is open to every belief or lack of belief.

1000 Gravestones Removed from Calvary Cemetery

Calvary Cemetery was established in 1854. The property was purchased from Henry Clay in 1853 and today is 470 acres. Archbishop Kenrick purchased this property and the land that would become Rock Springs Cemetery. There were human remains located on the property before Archbishop Kenrick purchased it. It served as a burial ground for Native Americans, soldiers from Fort Bellefontaine, and the Clay family. These remains were relocated and places into a massive grave on the property.

Calvary Cemetery

A short tour of some of the cemeteries and mausoleums in St. Louis City and Country. 

The individuals involved in the organization&nbsp;and direction of the new rural cemetery in St. Louis in 1849 were the cream of the young city's elite, involved in railroads, banking and real estate – businessmen, lawyers, politicians... and more than a few opportunists. Prior to that date, there had been&nbsp;more than twenty informal burial grounds&nbsp;scattered throughout St. Louis, which were in the way of the city's rapid expansion. By&nbsp;that time, St. Louis had existed for exactly 100 years, and the goal of the directors was to see their city compete with the most prestigious metropolises of the eastern U.S., including Philadelphia, Boston and even New York. These older cities had modern cemeteries, and the St. Louis directors wanted one equally modern and refined. (The cemetery was named after&nbsp;Fort Bellefontaine, originally located a few miles&nbsp;north of St. Louis, as well as Bellefontaine Road, which connected the city to the fort.) The need to bury the city's dead had also become more urgent: in 1849 seven percent (one source says 10 percent) of the total population, over 4000 people, succumbed to the cholera epidemic. The directors looked for inspiration to both Europe (Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, the first rural cemetery, opened in 1804) and the East Coast, which boasted, among others, Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery and Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. These new cemeteries have been described as "didactic landscapes, repositories for history and knowledge, showcases for fine art and horticulture, schools for the living."&nbsp;The superintendent of Green-Wood cemetery was a young man named Almerin Hotchkiss (born 1816), who expanded the site's original 178 acres by more than 200 acres. One of the directors from St. Louis came east to hire him, and Hotchkiss moved west soon thereafter. Though he would later plan sites in Illinois as well, including the community of Lake Forest, Bellefontaine became the chief work of his career.&nbsp; Many well-known figures are buried here, including Gen. William Clark (of the famous Lewis &amp; Clark expedition); Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri's first U.S. Senator; Adolphus Busch, founder of the Anheuser-Busch brewery; Brig. Gen. Richard B. Mason, the first military and civil governor of California; Charles Henry Peck, who was both an architect and a railroad and banking baron; and the notorious brewer Ellis Wainwright, whose monument for his wife and himself was designed by legendary architect Louis Sullivan. Many prominent African-American figures are buried here as well including John Berry and Merry Meachum, who&nbsp;taught Black children how to read and write even though that was illegal; Rev. John Anderson, founder of the Second Baptist Church who reportedly helped white abolitionist printer Elijah Lovejoy print ant-slavery pamphlets (Lovejoy was killed by pro-slavery mob and is also buried at the cemetery); and William and Francis Roberson, the inventors of barber scissors that made them wealthy before the Civil War.&nbsp;

Bellefontaine Cemetery was established in 1850, becoming the first designed large-scale rural cemetery west of the Mississippi. The parcel reached its largest size, 336 acres, in 1865, the year the American Civil War ended (it stands at 314 acres today). Its design combines elements of the rural cemetery concept, modeled on Boston's 1831 Mount Auburn Cemetery (which was itself derived from Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris) and the landscape-lawn movement, pioneered by Adolph Strauch in Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery in the 1840s. Designed and originally supervised by Almerin Hotchkiss, the designer of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, the landscape features rolling hills, trees, and man-made lakes, around which many imposing funerary monuments and mausoleums are arranged. Over 87,000 people are interred here, many of them in unmarked gravesites. The cemetery was entered in the National Register of Historic Places in August 2014. The cemetery is also an accredited arboretum, the only one in St. Louis.

Bellefontaine Cemetery

The Archdiocese of St. Louis was not spared from the changing St. Louis environment. Every time the city limits were expanded, they had to relocate graves. St. Bridget of Erin was built in 1859. The dirt floor basement would become a crypt to house the remains at Rock Springs Cemetery who were not identified or whose family was no longer in the area to help relocate them to Calvary Cemetery. Some headstones were also piled up in the corner of the crypt, and in some spots, the headstones were used to pave the dirt floor of the crypt. Based on the headstones, those entombed at St. Bridget of Erin Crypt were of Irish, English, German, French, and African American descent.The St. Louis Post Dispatch would describe the human remains in the crypt as glistening " in the candlelight, and the rows of teeth gleam at you." Both the drawing below and the photograph above show the human remains piled up in an unorganized way. It is unclear why this was done instead of grouping the bones. As the definition of whiteness changed and Irish immigrants gained a white status in society, they moved out of Kerry Patch and abandoned St. Bridget of Erin. By the early 1900s, the community changed around St. Bridget of Erin to an African American community. One thing would stay the same regardless of demographics; St. Bridget of Erin was always a church for the poor. The relocation of St. Bridget's crypt was handled in April of 1963 when the remains were placed into a mass grave at Calvary Cemetery. Reverend Shocklee and Reverend Hartnett handled the coordination of their relocation.

St. Bridget of Erin was built by the Irish community in an area known as Kerry Patch. The crypt at St. Bridget of Erin housed the remains of those whose families had moved out of the city or who were unidentifiable until the 1980s when they were relocated to Calvary Cemetery. St. Bridget of Erin was torn down in 2016.

St. Bridget of Erin

Henry Shaw originally planned to be buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery. He worked with the state of Missouri to be entered on his property. This is where he would end up building two mausoleums. The first one he had built out of limestone, and when it started to show wear from the elements, he had a second one constructed out of granite.

Henry Shaw Mausoleum

Father Dickson Cemetery was established in 1903 and named after Moses Dickson. On October 6, 2021, the cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Father Dickson Cemetery was established on August 30, 1903, and is 12.36 acres purchased from the Sappington family. The International Order of the Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor members established the Father Dickson Cemetery Association in 1903. Father Dickson’s remains were relocated to the cemetery in 1903, and a midnight service was held.        Initially, ownership of the cemetery grounds was in the hands of shareholders Fred Authenreith, W.D. Turner, R.L. Johnston, and T. R. Appel. The property would be sold when Fred Authenreith passed away. Fred Authenreith was buried at Father Dickson Cemetery. The property changed hands many times before landing with the DiLiberto family. Under the ownership of the DiLiberto family, the cemetery records would be donated to the St. Louis County Library. The DiLiberto family would struggle to maintain the grounds at Father Dickson Cemetery. Over the years, they would attempt to sell the property, and once the Friends of Father Dickson Cemetery group was established, they would often butt heads with the group over the maintenance of the grounds. In 1988, the Friends of Father Dickson Cemetery group was established. To this day, the group has been instrumental in the maintenance and preservation of the cemetery, and in 2021 Father Dickson Cemetery became a registered historic site.

The resting place of underground railroad pioneer Moses Dickson. After travelling the south and settling in the St. Louis area, he organized he Knights of Liberty who played a vital role in the Underground Railroad in St. Louis, MO. He was also an ordained minister.

Father Dickson Cemetery

Washington Park Cemetery was established in 1920 in Berkeley, Missouri. Andrew Henry Watson and Joseph John Hauer founded the cemetery as a for-profit Black cemetery in St. Louis. Initially, many Whites saw a homestead's conversion into a cemetery as a loss and an invasion (St. Louis Post Dispatch, 1). Before being a cemetery, the property belonged to B. H. Lang, a vice president of the United States Grain Corporation. Whites saw the loss of farmland in the county as a devasting blow. Eventually, the cemetery would grow to be the most prominent African American cemetery in St. Louis.       Four different construction projects would chip away at the cemetery. The first was the construction of highway 70, which required 75 acres of the cemetery to be taken and caused the cemetery to be bisected. This division was not on the side of the cemetery or located near the cemetery but instead was right through the middle, allowing motorists on highway 70 to see the plots. Additionally, rumors of graves not being relocated and paved over have proliferated through the years. The second and third significant development to impact the cemetery was expanding the St. Louis Lambert International Airport. The airport purchased nine acres of the cemetery in 1972 when it expanded. More of the cemetery was claimed when the airport expanded again in 1996. The fourth construction came when MetroLink claimed a portion of the cemetery in 1992. This was done to connect the airport to the current rail routes.  Sadly, these four different constructions lead to many families losing track of their loved ones' burial locations. The number of remains moved to twenty-three other cemeteries ranges from 12,000 to 13,600 interred individuals. At the time, this was the most extensive human remains relocation project in the country. Many of the remains were misplaced due to mismanagement of burial records (Arnold, 3). In 1980, the cemetery was closed to the public. Human remains were not removed again, and the grounds were allowed to fall into disrepair. The city of Berkeley bought the cemetery in 2019 for $30. Today, dedicated volunteers keep the cemetery grounds clean and reset fallen headstones.  In addition to the many disruptive construction projects that divided up the cemetery, billboards were also installed to distract from the fact that this is a place of reverence. Billboards were put up on the cemetery in the 1980s when DDI Media purchased a portion of the cemetery. In 2020 the billboards were removed from the cemetery after Wanda Brendon sued DDI Media. Brendon claimed that the billboards violate the remembrance of those interred there. The lawsuit did not seek financial restitution, and DDI was ordered to remove the billboards.

Washington Park Cemetery was established in 1920 in Berkeley, Missouri. Andrew Henry Watson and Joseph John Hauer founded the cemetery as a for-profit Black cemetery in St. Louis. Initially, many Whites saw a homestead's conversion into a cemetery as a loss and an invasion (St. Louis Post Dispatch, 1). Before being a cemetery, the property belonged to B. H. Lang, a vice president of the United States Grain Corporation. Whites saw the loss of farmland in the county as a devasting blow. Eventually, the cemetery would grow to be the most prominent African American cemetery in St. Louis.

St. Louis Cemetery and Mausoleum Tour

Calvary Cemetery

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources