James Buchanan

James B. is in the bottom of the spectrum in terms of ostentation of his burial site (along with Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Pierce). Interestingly, Franklin Pierce was the president just before Buchanan, and both were seriously over shadowed (in effectiveness as president and in the lavishness of their burials) by A. Lincoln who followed after.













Buchanan died as a multimillionaire, and could have afforded a much more lavish tomb.

Andrew Johnson

This road trip pen-ulminated (I just made that up – blending “culminate” and “penultimate” meaning the one before it ended - if it catches on I'll want royalties or something) in a visit to Andrew Johnson’s grave in Greeneville, Tennessee. Again, I learned more than I thought I could about a former president we don’t often talk about. I’ve taken a lot of history courses, and they either end at the end of the Civil War or they endlessly covered the convoluted political squabbling of Reconstruction, so Andrew Johnson (1808 – 1875) has always been to me a second rate president that lived in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln and failed to bring the country back together again peacefully after the Civil War.

Andrew Johnson’s burial spot is similar to Zachary Taylor, but different because a cemetery did not exist on that spot until Johnson was buried there. He picked a spot he loved in the town he lived for most of his teen and adult life, which later became his family's burial ground. A national military cemetery was built around his hilltop grave site.

Johnson was a true rags to riches story. He was raised by his widowed mother and when old enough (still quite young) he was apprenticed to a tailor in North Carolina. He ran away and eventually ended up in Greeneville, TN where he opened shop as the town’s tailor.

He was a great orator (which in the day was apparently all that was needed to rise through the ranks of politics) and because he was a southerner opposed to secession he was chosen by Abraham Lincoln as his running mate. With Lincoln’s death he was made president and even though the war was over he had Reconstruction to deal with.

I get the feeling that he was unpopular because 1. he wasn’t Lincoln; and 2. no answer to how to rebuild the Union would have made everyone happy. Eventually, Congress impeached him (basically, they set him up – a fascinating story, which I had no idea about until I visited his National Historic Site). He was acquitted (not removed from office), finished his term and was elected to the Senate six years later (the only president to make it to Congress after their term ended. He died of a stroke the same year.

As I’ve said before, I picked a great time of year to visit Tennessee. Greeneville is in a beautiful area in the Smokey Mountains, and during my visit the dogwood trees were in full bloom.

Zachary Taylor

Something great about this quest to find all the dead presidents is that it gives me an excuse to take road trips to parts of the US I wouldn’t otherwise be visiting. And with each trip I really don’t know what I’ll find when I get to my destination. I do some research as to where I’m headed, but I don’t know for sure what I’ll find (it would take some of the fun out of it if I read about others’ experiences with the same quest – maybe when I’m done I’ll hunt some of them down [on the web, not literally]). Zachary Taylor is a case in point. I knew I was looking for a military cemetery in Louisville, KY. What I didn’t know was that it’s a very small cemetery in a suburban neighborhood. The cemetery had started as the Taylor family plot, and then in 1920’s the Taylor family convinced the federal government to take it over as a veteran’s cemetery.The government does not own the land, but the cemetery is maintained by the veterans’ administration.

The only non-military graves are Taylor family, and it seems like a lot of the military headstones are for men who died in combat and whose bodies hadn’t been reclaimed. Another interesting thing is that in the Taylor family plot is that two of the women are buried as “consorts” to men, not wives – I’m going to have to do some more research on that. I’m also going to have to do some research on some of the veterans buried there; a lot of the stones simply list the names of several men with a date. Usually when you see more than one person on a stone they are either related (which obviously these men are not) or they died together.

Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) was the twelfth president of the US and died in office. Known as “Old Rough and Ready” he was a career soldier who spent time in the Mexican War and wars against the Indians in the West. More of a soldier than a politician he didn’t negotiate with the Southern States when they threatened to secede:

“He told them that if necessary to enforce the laws, he personally would lead the Army. Persons 'taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang ... with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico.'"

Strangely, Taylor said that in 1849, the southern states didn’t actually secede until after Lincoln was elected in 1860 (three presidents later).

After attending 4^th of July celebrations he fell ill and died five days later. There is debate as to what he actually died from, most sources just list “illness”. Some theories include: heatstroke, from spending a day outside in the hot July sun; cholera, from water he drank directly from a pitcher at a reception that day; food poisoning, from the same reception; typhoid fever; and assassination by arsenic poisoning (his body was exhumed in 1991 to solve the mystery of his death and large quantities of arsenic were found).

In the Louisville cemetery Zachary Taylor has a monument, a mausoleum and a tomb in the side of a hill where apparently his body had been held temporarily (much like Lincoln). His monument celebrates his military background more that his presidency. In the mausoleum there are marble sarcophagi for him and his wife, Margaret.

Lincoln

It all started with Grant, but the trip that put the “Dead Presidents” quest firmly in my mind as something doable was my trip to Springfield, IL in 2004. The saga of Lincoln’s body after his death and the size and scale of his monument got me to thinking about the other presidents and whether or not they had anything to compare with Grant or Lincoln.
After Abraham Lincoln’s death in 1865 (he was shot on April 14th and declared dead on the 15th) Lincoln had several funerals and traveled many miles before ending up in Springfield. The first funeral service was in Washington on April 19th in the White House The funeral procession, including Lincoln’s catafalque, then proceeded up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol building where another service was held, and he lay in state for two days and was viewed by thousands.

On the 21st his remains and those of his son Willie who had died in 1862 were loaded on a special funeral train that first traveled to Harrisburg, PA, then Philadelphia, where he again lay in state in Independence Hall. On the 24th the train arrived in New York City and again the casket was put on view in the City Hall. The next day there was a funeral parade up Broadway witnessed by “nearly a million” people after which his casket was again loaded on the train to continue to Springfield.

After two weeks and a circuitous journey where Lincoln lay in state for public viewing and had funeral services at least three more times in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio and Chicago he arrived in Springfield on May 3. He again lay in state in the capitol for a night, and after the funeral the next day his body was placed in a receiving vault at Oak Ridge Cemetery (picture left), the site Mrs. Lincoln had requested for burial. In December, his remains were removed to a temporary vault not far from the proposed memorial site. In 1871, or 3 years after laborers had begun constructing the tomb, the body of Lincoln and those of the three youngest of his sons (Edward, William and Thomas “Tad” – eldest son Robert is buried in Arlington Cemetery) were placed in crypts in the unfinished structure.

In 1874, upon completion of the memorial, Lincoln's remains were interred in a marble sarcophagus in the center of a chamber known as the "catacombs," or burial room. In 1876, however, after two Chicago criminals failed in an attempt to steal Lincoln's body and hold it for ransom, the National Lincoln Monument Association hid it in another part of the memorial. When Mrs. Lincoln died in 1882, her remains were placed with those of Lincoln, but in 1887 both bodies were reburied in a brick vault beneath the floor of the burial room.

By 1895, the year the State acquired the memorial, it had fallen into disrepair. During a rebuilding and restoration program in 1899-1901, all five caskets were moved to a nearby subterranean vault. In the latter year, State officials returned them to the burial room and placed that of Lincoln in the sarcophagus it had occupied in 1874-76. Within a few months, however, at the request of Robert Todd Lincoln, the President's only surviving son, the body was moved to its final resting place, a cement vault 10 feet below the surface of the burial room. (From the National Park Service)

After spending some time in Chicago my trip to Springfield was an eye opener: “down state” Illinois is as far from Chicago as imaginable. The town isn’t terribly large although it is the capital of the state, and its primary industry (other than the farming going on all around it) seems to be Abraham Lincoln. There is the newly expanded and reopened Lincoln Library and Museum and the National Historic site with the only house he ever owned, and where he lived before he went to Washington as president (his birthplace, by the way is a National Historic site in Kentucky - that site seems like an interesting place to visit, apparently the “original cabin” is encased in a marble “Memorial Building”).

I now know why “down staters” hate Chicago so much: the city seems to be as unrelated to the rest of the state as Austin does to Texas.

Lake View Cemetery, continued...

Quite a few other famous Americans are buried in Lake View Cemetery.

Eliot Ness (1903-1957) has a very unassuming stone near a lake in the cemetery. I almost missed it – again I didn’t do any advance research on others to find, but as I was driving around slowly I was struck by the stone sitting alone by itself, the name is of course a unique one, known to all who have heard anything about Al Capone – and if you live in Chicago, you have. Although he lived in Pennsylvania when he died, Ness wanted to be buried at Lake View Cemetery. Actually the stone is just a memorial, his ashes were sprinkled in one of the cemetery's ponds by the Cleveland Police Department, as part of Ness' final requests.

Raymond Johnson Chapman is a sad story – he was killed playing baseball for the Cleveland Indians. While playing the New York Yankees in New York on August 16, 1920, Chapman was hit in the head with a ball thrown by pitcher, Carl Mays, and died 12 hours later. Chapman is the only major league baseball player to die due to an injury during a game. Dedicating the season in memory of "Chappie", the Indians won the league and world championship for the first time. His stone is decorated by Indians team gear left over the years - a poignant reminder of how much he is still remembered almost 90 years after his death.

John Hay’s (1838 - 1905) grave I noticed because of the artistry of the statuary, not because I recognized his name. He was an important and (formerly) famous American, serving as Secretary of State under presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt and as US Ambassador to England. The statuary caught my eye not so much because of the size, but because of the style, and come to find out; it was designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, a sculptor I’m quite familiar with (more on him later, probably - he did several large sculptures now in Chicago). The sculpture was executed by James Earle Fraser (a Saint-Gaudens apprentice), and erected in 1916.

From the New York Times, July 6, 1905:

The body of John Hay rests to-night in his family burying ground in a corner of Lakeview Cemetery. Five hundred feet to the west of his grave is the great memorial of James A. Garfield; 200 feet to the north rises the monolith of the Rockefeller family; closer are the graves of the Otises and the Rusts.

Most of these men were buried with funeral services far more elaborate than that of John Hay, certainly none of them could have been interred with ceremony more simple.

The day of the funeral was one of bright sunshine, whose warmth was tempered by floating clouds, and the wind that seems to blow forever over Euclid Heights. From the arrival of President Roosevelt in the morning until his departure in the afternoon brought the official day to its end, not a single untoward incident was in evidence. (NY Times, 7/6/1906, p. 9)

This was obviously written before the installation of the Saint-Gaudens statue, which is anything but simple and understated.

James Garfield

Continuing my May 2005 Midwest jaunt looking for dead presidents:

James Garfield’s monument is in the Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. He gets points for having one of the more ostentatious monuments (right up there with Lincoln, but not quite on par with Grant).

Another not so famous president, Garfield was in office for only a few months before he was shot by Charles Guiteau at a Washington train station on July 2nd, 1881. He held on for three months later and died on September 19, 1881, from infection as a result of his wounds. Basically, he is famous for being assassinated.

Like the Lincoln and Grant tombs, Garfield and his wife are in side by side caskets deep inside. There’s a huge statue of him in the rotunda as well as beautiful mosaics of events from his life.

Lately on my dead presidents quest I’ve been traveling with a companion. Bud (I call him Buddy) accompanied the drivers for the first ever US cross continental drive by car . I got the stuffed dog (on sale) at the Smithsonian after an exhibit about the drive closed – my original intention was to give him to my niece, but I kept him instead and he comes on all my road trips. When there is no on else around, and I feel it isn’t disrespectful, Bud gets to pose with the dead presidents. To the left he's posing on the top terrace of James Garfield's monument (I actually hung around a while up there until I was alone up there and could take the picture of Buddy without embarrassment - including being helpful to another group by taking their picture with the Cleveland skyline as a backdrop).

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.

Spirit of Radio

Another reason I enjoy wandering through cemeteries taking pictures (besides the peace of them and the great statuary you can photograph) is the unexpected history that you often encounter.

To the right is a picture of “The Spirit of Radio” a statue on the Grunow monument in Forest Home cemetery outside Chicago (see this post for some words about the Martyrs’ monument in the same cemetery). The statue caught my eye and reading the caption with the name intrigued me even more. On the other side of the mausoleum is the statue below: “The Spirit of Commerce.”

Why would these classical looking statues with classical symbolic elements (the palm leaf and shield held by “Radio” and the winged sandals, helmet and caduceus of “Commerce”) be in a cemetery? After very briefly looking into the name of Grunow, I found out William C. Grunow (1893 – 1951) was co-owner of the Grigsby-Grunow (Majestic) radio company in the 1930’s. Makes sense, but unless you were an avid collector of old radios you probably wouldn’t have made the connection between the man’s name and a statue of “The Spirit of Radio” on his tomb.

Franklin Pierce

Franklin Pierce
Originally uploaded by Hapaxes

Another interest I have – basically it’s an excuse to travel around the US taking pictures – is visiting all the graves of the former (dead, obviously) presidents. To date I’ve made it to 21 of the 38, with photographs of all but a couple (I chickened out taking a flash picture in the tomb of the 2 Adams).

I start with one I visited before I had a digital camera in 2005 (I was slow to adapt, being a photography purist and all): Franklin Pierce (1804-1869).

Franklin Pierce has one of most unassuming monuments (I’ve been surprised by the extremes I’ve seen in terms of simplicity and ostentation) – basically it’s a large obelisk that you’d see in any cemetery. The cemetery itself is quite small, located pretty much downtown Concord, New Hampshire. There is a plaque outside the cemetery noting he’s buried there (as I’ve found most presidential cemeteries have) but once inside, it took some looking to find his monument (it’s inside an enclosure that itself is not marked as having anything to do with him.

Pierce was not a remarkable president; he served a single term and apparently didn’t have much enthusiasm for the job. If you travel around New Hampshire, however, you’ll see his name all over the place, including a highway, a college and a law center named after him.

This is one of the first dead presidents I visited with my family. At first I think they were amused by my quest and a little disturbed at my interest in cemeteries. They’ve realized, I think, that it really isn’t that macabre and a person could learn a lot about our presidents and American history by making these pilgrimages.

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.)