Forest Home Cemetery is a cemetery located at 863 S. DesPlaines Ave, Forest Park, Illinois, adjacent to the Eisenhower Expressway, straddling the Des Plaines River in Cook County, just west of Chicago. [1] The cemetery traces its history to two adjacent cemeteries, German Waldheim (1873) and Forest Home (1876), which merged in 1969.
The cemetery is known for its Haymarket Martyrs' Monument and surrounding gravesites.
Forest Home Cemetery was the site of a Potawatomi village and burial ground until 1835. [2] [3] Two memorials at Forest Home are dedicated to Native Americans who lived in the region. [4] [5]
Ferdinand Haase, founder of Forest Park, and other members of the Haase family are buried on what at one time also was a Haase family homestead. [2] The cemetery was formally established and incorporated under the laws of the State of Illinois in 1876. [2]
The German Waldheim Cemetery was organized by a group of German Masonic Lodges in 1873 with the first interment on May 9, 1873. The Waldheim Cemetery was established as a non-religion-specific cemetery, where Freemasons, Romani, and German-speaking immigrants to Chicago could be buried without regard for religious affiliation.
The two adjacent cemeteries merged on February 28, 1969, with the combined cemetery being called Forest Home (Waldheim means "forest home" in German). [2]
Jewish Waldheim Cemetery, located across Roosevelt Road, is a separate cemetery and is not affiliated with Forest Home.
The "Haymarket martyrs", as the five defendants sentenced to death in the Haymarket affair came to be called among their sympathizers, were buried at Waldheim because since its establishment, it had a policy of not discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity, or politics, in addition to being open to any religion. It was also the only Chicago-area cemetery that would accept their remains. [6] : 4 After their burial, the cemetery became a place of pilgrimage for anarchists, leftists, and union members. In 1893, the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument , designed by sculptor Albert Weinert, was erected.
In homage to the Haymarket martyrs, other anarchists and socialists later chose to be buried at Waldheim, well into the 20th century, including: [7]
The cemetery also includes the graves of:
The cemetery is also the final resting place for 45 victims of the 1903 Iroquois Theater fire that killed over 600.
A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite, graveyard, or a green space called a memorial park, is a place where the remains of many dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word cemetery implies that the land is specifically designated as a burial ground and originally applied to the Roman catacombs. The term graveyard is often used interchangeably with cemetery, but a graveyard primarily refers to a burial ground within a churchyard.
Forest Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States, and a suburb of Chicago. The population was 14,339 at the 2020 census. The Forest Park terminal on the CTA Blue Line is the line's western terminus, located on the Eisenhower Expressway at Des Plaines Avenue. This makes it one of just two municipalities served by the Chicago "L" train network that does not directly border Chicago.
A memorial is an object or place which serves as a focus for the memory or the commemoration of something, usually an influential, deceased person or a historical, tragic event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects such as homes or other sites, or works of art such as sculptures, statues, fountains or parks. Larger memorials may be known as monuments.
August Vincent Theodore Spies was an American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper editor. An anarchist, Spies was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder following a bomb attack on police in an event remembered as the Haymarket affair. Spies was one of four who were executed in the aftermath of this event.
Lincoln Park is a 1,208-acre (489-hectare) park along Lake Michigan on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois. Named after US President Abraham Lincoln, it is the city's largest public park and stretches for seven miles (11 km) from Grand Avenue, on the south, to near Ardmore Avenue on the north, just north of the DuSable Lake Shore Drive terminus at Hollywood Avenue. Two museums and a zoo are located in the oldest part of the park between North Avenue and Diversey Parkway in the eponymous neighborhood. Further to the north, the park is characterized by parkland, beaches, recreational areas, nature reserves, and harbors. To the south, there is a more narrow strip of beaches east of Lake Shore Drive, almost to downtown. With 20 million visitors per year, Lincoln Park is the second-most-visited city park in the United States, behind Manhattan's Central Park.
George Engel was a labor union activist executed after the Haymarket riot, along with Albert Parsons, August Spies, and Adolph Fischer.
Adolph Fischer was an anarchist and labor union activist tried and executed after the Haymarket Riot.
Rosehill Cemetery is an American garden cemetery on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois, and at 350 acres (1.4 km2), is the largest cemetery in the City of Chicago. According to legend, the name "Rosehill" resulted from a City Clerk's error – the area was previously called "Roe's Hill", named after nearby farmer Hiram Roe. He refused to sell his land to the city until it was promised that the cemetery be named in his honor. It is located in the north east section of the Lincoln Square community area.
Bachelor's Grove Cemetery is a cemetery in Bremen Township, Cook County, Illinois, in Chicago's southwest suburbs. The cemetery has also been called Bachelor Grove, Batchelor Grove, Batchelder's Grove, and Everden. This cemetery is the setting for a number of ghostlore stories.
Michael Schwab was a German-American labor organizer and one of the defendants in the Haymarket Square incident.
Showmen's Rest in Forest Park, Illinois, is a 750-plot section of Woodlawn Cemetery mostly for circus performers owned by the Showmen's League of America.
Oak Woods Cemetery is a large lawn cemetery in Chicago, Illinois. Located at 1035 E. 67th Street, in the Greater Grand Crossing area of Chicago's South Side. Established 172 years ago on February 12, 1853, it covers 183 acres (74 ha).
Louis Lingg was a German-born American anarchist who was convicted as a member of the criminal conspiracy behind the 1886 Haymarket Square bombing. Lingg was sentenced to die by hanging, but shortly before his execution, he committed suicide in his cell using an explosive.
Oscar William Neebe I was an anarchist, labor activist and one of the defendants in the Haymarket bombing trial, and one of the eight activist remembered on May 1, International Workers' Day.
The Haymarket Martyrs' Monument is a funeral monument and sculpture located at Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Dedicated in 1893, it commemorates the defendants involved in labor unrest who were blamed, convicted, and executed for the still unsolved bombing during the Haymarket Affair (1886). The monument's bronze sculptural elements are by artist Albert Weinert. On February 18, 1997, the monument was designated a National Historic Landmark.
The Haymarket affair, also known as the Haymarket massacre, the Haymarket riot, the Haymarket Square riot, or the Haymarket Incident, was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The rally began peacefully in support of workers striking for an eight-hour work day; it was held the day after a May 3 rally at a McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant on the West Side of Chicago, during which two demonstrators had been killed and many demonstrators and police injured. At the Haymarket Square rally on May 4, an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they acted to disperse the meeting, and the bomb blast and ensuing retaliatory gunfire by the police caused the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; dozens of others were wounded.
There are several monuments to commemorate the Haymarket affair.
Joseph Carter Corbin was a journalist and educator in the United States. Before the abolition of slavery, he was a journalist, teacher, and conductor on the Underground Railroad in Ohio and Kentucky. After the American Civil War, he moved to Arkansas where he served as superintendent of public schools from 1873 to 1874. He founded the predecessor of University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and was its first principal from 1875 until 1902. He ended his career in education spending a decade as principal of Merrill High School in Pine Bluff. He also taught in Missouri.
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