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] 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 the street, 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, it was the only Chicago-area cemetery that would accept their remains. [4] : 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: [5]
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 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.
Hillside is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2020 census it had a population of 8,320.
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.
Graceland Cemetery is a large historic garden cemetery located in the north side community area of Uptown, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Established in 1860, its main entrance is at the intersection of Clark Street and Irving Park Road. Among the cemetery's 121 acres (49 ha) are the burial sites of several well-known Chicagoans.
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.
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. The first performers and show workers that were buried there are in a mass grave from when between 56 and 61 employees of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus were interred. They were killed in the Hammond circus train wreck on June 22, 1918, at Hessville, Indiana,, when an empty Michigan Central Railroad troop train from Detroit, Michigan, to Chicago, Illinois, plowed into their circus train. The engineer of the troop train, Alonzo Sargent, had fallen asleep. Among the dead were Arthur Dierckx and Max Nietzborn of the "Great Dierckx Brothers" strong man act and Jennie Ward Todd of "The Flying Wards".
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 171 years ago on February 12, 1853, it covers 183 acres (74 ha).
Louis Lingg was a German-born American anarchist who was wrongfully 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. In 1893, Illinois Governor John Altgeld granted Lingg a posthumous pardon, stating that he and the other seven men who had been convicted were innocent of the charges.
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, the day after the events at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, during which one person was killed and many workers injured. 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.
The Old Calton Burial Ground is a cemetery in Edinburgh, Scotland. It located at Calton Hill to the north-east of the city centre. The burial ground was opened in 1718, and is the resting place of several notable Scots, including philosopher David Hume, scientist John Playfair, rival publishers William Blackwood and Archibald Constable, and clergyman Dr Robert Candlish. It is also the site of the Political Martyrs' Monument, an obelisk erected to the memory of a number of political reformers, and Scotland's American Civil War Memorial.
There are several monuments to commemorate the Haymarket affair.
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