Benjamin Harrison

In May 2005, I took a road trip through a couple of states in the Midwest and visited a number of dead presidents. Illinois is great base of operations for this since it is so centrally located and because there are five presidents buried in Ohio, one in Indiana, one in Illinois and one in Iowa. (Actually visiting Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield the year before gave me the idea to make the “dead presidents” a quest – this was prior to my owning a digital camera so I’m not sure I have much evidence left of that visit.)

Benjamin Harrison is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. Crown Hill is one of those neat old cemeteries (it was dedicated in 1864) with a lot of history and a lot to look at. Crown Hill is the burial site of such famous people as: Colonel Eli Lilly, 11 Indiana Governors, 1 Kentucky Governor, 14 Indiana Mayors, 13 Civil War Generals, poet James Whitcomb Riley, author Booth Tarkington, automobile manufacturer Frederick Duesenberg, and the infamous bank robber John Dillinger. Sadly, I hadn’t done my homework before visiting Crown Hill, so I only thought to look for Harrison.

Benjamin Harrison’s gravesite isn’t as ostentatious as some I visited (Lincoln is definitely high on that list), but it’s more than a simple headstone, and is well marked as being a presidential gravesite. He’s another one of those presidents that few Americans could name and even fewer could list anything he did as president.