cemeteries really began around like the late 1700s and early 1800s as we know them today. At first, it was a scary place. Most of the monuments, if they were made of stone had skulls and crossbones on them to remind us that we should fear death itself. And then, when the Victorian era hit, then there was this movement for the park like setting for the rural cemetery movement, where it wasn't supposed to be a scary thing anymore.
Cemetery grounds are emotional places for some peaceful places for others, in the setting of more than one spooky story or horror movie. But we don't always think of cemeteries as places of learning. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. Today we're talking about what you can find in a modern cemetery. stories told by the way monuments are made, and sometimes by the mysterious symbols carved into them. Each year in McLean County, we're hurtling community colleges located a group of historians tell stories from a local cemetery, and we're talking with one of them today.
My name is Candace summers. I'm the Director of Education at the McLean County Museum of History.
One of the things that a lot of communities draw from for history is it's sort of in a way, a document that continues on I don't want to say a living document, even though it does get expanded upon. But it's a document that shows the history of a community. Would you say that's the case with what you do with the Museum of History?
Yeah, absolutely. And I've also recently heard our beautiful evergreen Memorial Cemetery referred to like a museum in itself, that has so many stories to tell out there. Now, some of them we can tell, because we're fortunate to have the resources at our museum, archival papers from places like Illinois Wesleyan, Illinois State Wilmington Public Library, of course, newspaper archives, like newspapers.com has really revolutionized what we do at the museum. But then there's stories that we want to tell, but we can't, because we just can't find those little bits and pieces to put them together. And that's just the people, because there's another story out there that you can tell. And that's what the monuments, and the monuments tell us stories about what was in fashion at the time, what a person's beliefs are based on what could be carved or etched onto their monument. What was technology, it tells us about technology and what you could do with hand chiseled tools of yesterday versus the laser guided technology of computer aided design today. And so those changes, each tell us a story about where we came from and where we're going.
Well, the first bit of that story I'd like to touch upon is the cemetery, as we know it today itself. When did people start to create cemeteries? Wow, who did it? Every once in a while you'll see one or two monuments on somebody's personal property. Yeah. And I don't know when that stopped becoming common, or if it ever was common. And
well, you know, obviously, since people have existed, people have been burying our dearly departed. And so you know, from family plots, on your own personal property, to you know, you think of ancient Egypt where you find like caches of, of burials, you know, those who could afford it were mummified and those who couldn't Well, you're in the sand, you know, all by yourself. And then you have the churchyards that had the burial places, cemeteries really began around like the late 1700s, and 18 and early 1800s, as we know them today. And first, was a scary place. Most of the monuments, if they were made of stone had skulls and crossbones on them to remind us that we should fear death itself. And then, when the Victorian era hit in like the 1830s, then there was this movement for the park like setting for the rural cemetery movement, where it wasn't supposed to be a scary thing anymore. I mean, people still were afraid of death. But it wasn't as grim and gloomy with the Grim Reaper and things like that. And also, cemeteries became an escape from the city from the dirty congested city, because a lot of cities didn't have parks. And so many of the Victorian cemeteries were laid out with winding roads through them, so you could walk. picnicking was a very popular thing in cemeteries for many, many years. And it was a place to enjoy. There were lots of trees, a lot of modern cemeteries that don't have a lot of trees in them. They want it to be an easy to manage care for place. So you don't see the big monuments like you did have yesterday. Modern cemeteries in town you usually have flat blacks and the ground a little bit recessed in the ground, so you can just kind of mow right over them. But there's kind of been a resurgence lately, where some of those monument parks that were strictly flat plaques only now see people wanting those big monuments. Again, they want the headstones. They want the obelisks, they want those big things. And so they're setting up apart places in their cemeteries to accommodate the changing tastes again, for people.
So these things are kind of cyclical. Sometimes you get a fad. Yes, might happen. And then it goes away. And then it comes back again.
Yes, absolutely. It's all one cycle. So one really easy point in time to see in cemeteries was considered the Egyptian revival movement. So the late 1800s, early 1900s, Egypt was all the rage. I mean, you had King Tut's tomb found in the early 1900s. And so you find an awful lot of obelisks out in our cemetery, which an obelisk was created to bridge that gap between heaven and earth. But I like to say the taller your Obelisk the closer to the heavens you are. And so one of the neat things at Evergreen is you look out there and that cemetery and you just see a sea of obelisks, and you can tell what was in fashion then. So we have a lot of objects over here. And then you start seeing the newer lower to the ground monuments. And you also see the materials change. At first you had marble marble, even though it's a stone, and you would think it's hard, it's actually very soft. And marble is easy to erode due to rain due to pollution due to the air. And sadly, a lot of our marble monuments, you can't read who they belong to. And as technology changed, and our tools became better than you have granite, granite is kind of the standard monument material these days. And you can cut anything you want into it really deep cuts for deep lettering that will stand the test of time. And now you see the laser etching with like diamond tipped tools that can create anything you want. You're a Cubs fan, you can get a cub symbol on your monument. I've seen pictures reproduced on monuments today. And it's it's really amazing what you can do with your monuments?
Well, let's go back a little bit to when you say that you can get anything that can old picture you can duplicate that pictures of people with their pets, pictures, and symbols from sports teams. But if you go back to some older monuments, you started to see symbols then some of them are pretty obvious, obviously acrosses Star of David, many of those things, you understand why they're there? But then there are some more, I guess you'd say more esoteric symbols to the modernI. When did people start to include the symbols on monuments and grave markers? Well, like I mentioned
before you you first had like the skull and crossbones. And then you know as you go more into the 1800s to the 1830s and 40s, then you kind of start seeing more symbols like lilies on a monument arose for love, you'd see a lamb a lamb meant a child was buried there typically or a dove was a peace symbol or also a Christian symbol. You see praying hands, you might see a hand pointing to a book that maybe that's the person's life story. You also can see scrolls on monuments where if you see a scroll that's unfurled, that means that's kind of their unfurling life if you see it closed that mean the life has ended. Torches, you see a right side up torch, it's kind of like the eternal flame. But if you see a downturn torch, it's a life snuffed out. Another really popular one is oak leaves or an acorn. So a white oak is a symbol of strength and longevity. So that's kind of like life eternal there. If you see an acorn, it's the that's the start of life. That's the seed of life. So maybe that's another look way to look at death is another chapter in your life going on forward. There are countless, countless different types of symbols on monuments in any cemetery.
Yeah, I've seen a couple of them that I've seen a few times but I don't quite understand what they mean. Like a tree stump. The monument has got an area on it or it's shaped like a tree. Yeah,
so a lot of times a tree stump can mean a life cut short. One monument in particular that I always remember out at Evergreen is a pair of trees with their limbs intertwine, which is a husband and a wife. And then the number of limbs they have on their represents the number of children they have, some of them are cut off like the child's life was cut short. Another example of a tree monument or a tree stump is for the Modern Woodmen of the world, which is a fraternal insurance organization where as a benefit of your membership, you got a tree carving for your monument And then one of the neatest monuments at Evergreen. I've only seen one, this person has a pineapple on their tombstone, which means hospitality or that they were a good host, and that they're welcoming you to their monument. So there's some, there's some pretty unique monuments out there. garden furniture is a really popular thing nowadays, you see some in older parts of the cemetery, but really, people put benches as their markers to encourage a visitor, a lot of people I meet think that, Oh, why would you want to sit on this person's monument? You know, no, this is a way they can encourage people to stop and visit them, or that their loved ones put it there so they can sit and stay a while with that person to visit with them. So it's, there's no bad forum, sitting on a bench marker. Now sitting on other monuments? That's kind of a no, no, but the benches are specifically designed for that.
So there are a lot of military markers, obviously on the headstones and the monuments quite often, you know, with the branch of the military or there'll be a flag or there'll be some sort of easily decipherable element of that, was there any particular point in time where those became something you saw more of maybe tied in with one of the big conflicts one of the wars? When did we start to see more of the military elements on headstones?
I think the civil war over here, that's when you kind of, at least to me, it seems, do you see the standardized form for a military marker. Now a benefit of being of a veteran or a member of the military is that every single veteran gets a headstone from the Department of Veteran Affairs, that is something that's guaranteed to you, you can either have an upright headstone, or you can have a flat plaque marker in the ground, whether it is a bronze plaque, or a marble or granite stone. And on there, you always have your name, your rank, any conflict you served in, or the branch that you were in, of course, your birth and death dates, and then you get a symbol of belief on there. And it used to just be you had three choices, you had the Christian cross, you had the Star of David or nothing. I believe today, the last time I looked on the VAs website, there was 96 different symbols of belief that you could get. And if there wasn't a symbol that fit your beliefs, you could submit one to them to edge on your stone. But the first time that I can recall seeing the symbol of belief on a military headstone, I believe is World War One as civil war ones, I have not seen those on them, particularly out at Evergreen, but the standardized shape of them i It really seems like around the Civil War era,
you mentioned that you'd see a lot of the materials change. Was there a certain point where the markers, you know, sometimes we see people, these large monuments, and some people would see smaller markers, where it became a status symbol. Somebody has to make these monuments, it's a business. Certainly a lot of masons probably had it as part of their business early on in the 1800s. But some people, that's all they do, when or did it become a symbol of your status to have a large monument?
Oh, I'm sure it's been that way for a long time, other than the pharaohs. It's true. I mean, there's some pretty big monuments out in in our cemeteries, particularly evergreen Memorial Cemetery, and they definitely show the status of the family, Muslims, individual Muslims in particular, were a status symbol. Evergreen Memorial Cemetery has seven individual Muslims out there. So those people clearly had some money, in addition to the main Muslim where you can purchase a niche in there. And I mean, they're not too elaborate. I've seen Muslims and other cemeteries around Illinois where they have like stained glass and them and they're very fancy. Now, I don't know if maybe these Muslims at one point had stained glass and they got broken unfortunately, but these seem fairly reasonable, even though you have to have some means to have a mausoleum compared to other ones that I've seen. We also have the distinction out of any other McLean County Cemetery, where in Evergreen there is a woman who has her name alone on a mausoleum. No other cemetery in the county has a woman's name by herself on on her mausoleum, this Mrs. Anna Davis must have been a woman of means. And there are some other really big obelisks that are out in the cemetery. David Davis says quite the large one although not the tallest and evergreen. There's one in old city from the Timmerman family and that's about five feet higher than his. There's also a huge monument to Asa more right in the center circle across from Adly Stevenson. Each block had to be brought in by train by itself and lifted with a crane to be stacked on top of each other on Illinois State University class went out there many years ago to figure out how heavy it would have been. And I think they figured out it would be about 15 ons all together. And a sophomore did have quite a bit of money because he used to own and operate the Bloomington Normal horse railway in town.
If you're going for a walk around Evergreen Cemetery or any other cemetery, we talked about some of the symbols. We talked about different materials and styles, but anything else, see how cemeteries tell stories?
Just look at the names, you know, look at all the different names and you'll find yourself wondering, what is that person's story? What did they do in our community? Who were they, you can also learn about how people are placed in cemeteries. I mean, sadly, there were cemeteries that had segregation. So certain groups of people were placed in certain parts of the cemetery. And that's a story in itself. And just really take in that entire surrounding, you know, the types of trees that were planted in cemeteries might tell us a story, the place where the front office is put, or the caretakers house, you know, might have a story to tell. Or if you look and see that there were, you know, a husband and a wife and then they had like five children that all died around the same time. Was it during the flu pandemic? Was it during a cholera outbreak, so many stories just by reading the monuments and looking at what's on them and what they're made out of can really shed a lot of light on our local history.
Okay, this thanks so much for coming in and talking to us about this subject and about the work that the Kane County Museum of History is always doing with Evergreen Cemetery walk every year and the ongoing projects that you do at the museum throughout the year.
Absolutely. Thank you.
Candace Summers is Director of Education at the McLean County Museum of History. If you'd like to hear more interviews about history, or science, or art, or many other topics, subscribe to this podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening
