Haymarket

Haymarket
Originally uploaded by Hapaxes

I’ll start out with an interesting echo in my life (gotta be deep and meaningful for the first shot out of the gate). I went to college in New England and studied a lot about American industrial history. Place like the Lowell Mills (Massachusetts) were close by and had long and important history in terms of our industrial past as well as revealing the roles of women in early industry. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire (Manhattan, 1911) was pivotal incident in the study of women in American industry as well.

I read about and knew about the Haymarket Riot (Chicago, 1886), but because I had never been to Chicago, it never solidified as much as those events whose locations I could visit in their current incarnation. Until I came to Chicago.

By the time I moved to Chicago I had forgotten a lot about Haymarket, and where it actually happened (map) until I wandered into the monument (this picture was taken in October 2005, but I’d visited it before – just without a digital camera). The Haymarket Martyrs' Monument was erected in 1893 Forest Home (formerly German Waldheim) Cemetery just outside Chicago. The artist was Albert Weinert.

I explore cemeteries and love to learn obscure bits of history from the monuments erected there. It is amazing that things we don’t know or hear about today were at one point so important to someone they spent a good deal of time and money to erect a monument in a place people seldom visit voluntarily.

It was also interesting to learn that the monument erected for the police that were killed in the riot was vandalized with explosives as recently as 1970. Chicago is truly an industrial town and they will not soon forget. The Haymarket Martyrs' Monument for the union dead has had a much more peaceful history and continues to have wreaths laid upon it. (Note the anarchy "A" marked on the plaque to the left.)