Bellefontaine Cemetery dedicated 160 years ago today
On May 15, 1850 the city’s newest cemetery was dedicated (per St. Louis Day By Day by Frances Hurd Stadler):
The story of Bellefontaine Cemetery, a non-sectarian, perpetual care cemetery, begins with the year 1849, when many prominent citizens of St. Louis, who had the welfare of the City at heart, recognized that the old cemeteries located along Jefferson Avenue would soon have to be abandoned, since they were directly in the path of the City’s westward growth. (source)
This cemetery is one of the most beautiful and fascinating places in the city. If you haven’t been I suggest you plan to do so, it is located at 4947 West Florissant Ave.
Notable Bellefontaine burials from Wikipedia:
- Thomas Hart Benton (1782-1858), U.S. Senator
- Kate Chopin (1850-1904)Famous American Author
- Henry Taylor Blow (1817-1875), politician, statesman
- Susan Blow (1843-1916), educator
- Francis E. Brownell (1840-1894), soldier during the American Civil War, Medal of Honor recipient
- Don Carlos Buell (1818-1898), American Civil War general (Union)
- William Seward Burroughs (1857-1898), inventor
- William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), author
- Adolphus Busch (1838-1913), brewing magnate
- Robert Campbell (1804-1879), frontiersman, banker, real estate mogul, steamboat owner
- William Chauvenet (1820-1870), scholar, educator
- Martin L. Clardy (1844-1914), U.S. Representative
- William Clark (1770-1838), explorer
- Charles B. Clarke (1836-1899), prominent architect, designer of the Fagin Building (1888)
- Nathan Cole (1825-1904), U.S. Representative and Mayor of St. Louis
- Alban Jasper Conant (1821-1915), artist, author, educator
- Phoebe Wilson Couzins (1842-1913), pioneer suffragette
- Ned Cuthbert (1845-1905), baseball player
- James Eads (1820-1887), engineer and inventor
- Aaron W. Fagin (1812-1896), milling magnate, millionaire, and builder of the Fagin Building (1888)
- Gustavus A. Finkelnburg (1837-1908), U.S. Representative and Federal Judge
- Della May Fox (1870-1913), actress, singer
- David R. Francis (1850-1927), statesman, United States Secretary of the Interior
- Frederick D. Gardner (1869-1933), governor of Missouri and St. Louis funeral director and coffin manufacturer
- Jessie L. Gaynor (1863-1921), composer of children’s music
- Henry S. Geyer (1790-1859), U.S. Senator, lawyer
- James Eads How (1874-1930), son of wealthy St. Louis family, known as the “Millionaire Hobo”
- Benjamin Howard (1760-1814), first governor of Missouri Territory
- Anthony F. Ittner (1837-1931), Missouri politician, brick manufacturer
- Caroline Janis (1864-1952), painter and sculptor, member of “The Potters”
- Albert Bond Lambert (1875-1946), aviator
- John Edmund Liggett (1826-1897), owner of Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company, South St. Louis
- Theodore Link (1850-1923), architect of St. Louis Union Station
- Naphtali Luccock (1853-1916), a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church
- James Smith McDonnell (1899-1980), founder of McDonnell Aircraft Corporation
- John McNeil, Civil War general (Union)
- Charles Nagel (1849-1940), last United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor, lawyer
- Trusten Polk (1811-1876), elected both governor and U.S. senator in 1856
- Sterling Price (1809-1867), American Civil War general (Confederate)
- Mary Marshall Rexford (1915-1996), Red Cross worker and the first woman to land on Utah Beach on D-Day
- James McIlvaine Riley (1849-1911), Co-founder of Sigma Nu International Fraternity
- Irma S. Rombauer (1877-1962), author of The Joy of Cooking
- James Semple (1798-1866), Illinois state senator
- Henry Miller Shreve (1785-1851), inventor
- Luther Ely Smith (1873-1951), founder of Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
- Theodore Spiering (1871-1925), violinist, conductor, and teacher
- Edwin O. Stanard (1832-1914), Lieutenant Governor of Missouri and U.S. Representative
- George Strother (1783-1840), Virginia congressman and lawyer, collector of public money in St. Louis (reinterment)
- Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
- Charlotte Dickson Wainwright, within architect Louis Sullivan’s 1892 Wainwright Tomb
- Erastus Wells (1823-1893), U.S. Representative and businessman
Impressive! Interestingly a few hours before I had a massive stroke on 2/1/2008 I called Bellefontaine for information on plots. The information arrived in my mail just days later while I was sedated in ICU. I’ve since decided on cremation.
– Steve Patterson
I heard people are just dying to get into that place!
No Tennessee Williams?
Never mind. He's across the street at Calvary.
Nonsectarian, but segregated, both economically and racially?
As for the “the old cemeteries located along Jefferson Avenue [that] would soon have to be abandoned”, what happened to those folks? I assume that they were relocated elsewhere . . .
Kate Chopin is actually buried in Calvary – I visited her gravesite while looking for some of my ancestors' gravesites there. She is listed incorrectly on the Wikipedia article. You neglected to mention the religious segregation that necessitated two cemeteries in north St. Louis – Calvary is the historic Catholic cemetery, while Bellefontaine is the Protestant one. You won't see any Veiled Prophets buried in Calvary, or any Knights of Columbus in Bellefontaine — and no stars of David in either. The city's old (and continue) religious segregation continued after death.