Last week, I introduced you to Nashville’s Mount Olivet Cemetery. Today we’re going to meet some more people who influenced the Music City’s history.

When someone’s face is emblazoned on their monument, you can bet they were usually someone important. So I knew William Brimage Bate had likely distinguished himself and made a mental note to look him up when I got home.

Lawyer, Confederate general, governor, and U.S. senator are all words that describe General William Brimage Bate. Born at Castalian Springs in Sumner County, Tenn. in 1826, his education was limited to a few years in a log schoolhouse known as the Rural Academy. When the Mexican War began in 1846, Bate volunteered for service in a Louisiana regiment. He re-enlisted and served as lieutenant of Company I, Third Tennessee Infantry.

After the war, Bate returned to the family farm and established a newspaper, the Gallatin Tenth Legion. In 1849, he was elected to the Tennessee General Assembly. After graduation from the Cumberland Law School in Lebanon, Tenn. in 1852, Bate opened a law practice in Gallatin, serving a term as district attorney general.

In 1856, Bate married Julia Peete, daughter of Colonel Samuel Peete of Huntsville, Ala. Col. Peete is buried at Mount Olivet near his daughter. Bate declined the Democratic nomination for Congress in 1859.

A strong believer in states’ rights and secession, Bate volunteered as a private in the Second Tennessee Infantry of the Confederacy. Elected colonel, he served with his regiment, first in Virginia and later in campaigns which included Stones River, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Franklin, and Nashville. Before the end of the war, he attained the rank of major general.

Bate was wounded on three different occasions, most severely at Shiloh. When a surgeon suggested amputating his leg, Bate refused. He walked with a limp for the rest of his life. One report I read said he was shot out from under his horse more than once. While with the army at Wartrace in 1863, he declined the Tennessee gubernatorial nomination.

After the Civil War, Bate started his law practice in Nashville and continued to be involved in Democratic Party politics. Elected governor in 1882, he was re-elected two years later. In 1886, he was elected to the U.S. Senate to succeed Washington C. Whitthorne, and Bate remained in that office until his death on March 9, 1905.

William and Julia had four children during their marriage. Their first two daughters, Mary and Suzanne, lived well into adulthood. But daughters Jennie and Amanda would die before they were 15.

Julia Peete Bate was well educated and musically talented. Because she lost her mother at the age of three, she was used to running her widowed father’s household. It came in handy when her husband climbed the military and political ranks.

Julia joined her husband in Washington and enjoyed being a member of the Washington Ladies’ Literary Club. She was passionate about supporting causes that supported veterans. She died in 1910 and is buried beside her husband and her two eldest daughters. I especially like the inscription on the back of her marker, taken from Proberbs 31:26.

The life of Benjamin Joseph McCarthy was not as distinguished as that of General Bate. But his family monument, which is close to that of the Bate family, is one of those you tend to notice.

Born in 1842 in Warren County, Ga., McCarthy spent most of his life in Nashville. He married Annie Elizabeth Hood sometime prior to 1871. They had several children. Much of McCarthy’s career was helping run the foundry of Phillips & Buttorff Manufacturing Co., which created many cast iron items from skillets to stoves. The company operated from 1858 to the mid 1900s.

The cube is said to represent the earth and earthly existence. Some monuments have a cube or square inverted to point the corners downward and upward. This is meant to illustrate the directions of earth and heaven.

One of the largest monuments in Mount Olivet is for the Furman family. A native of Pennsylvania, Francis Furman owned Furman & Co. Wholesale Dry Goods and Notions on Nashville’s public square from 1870 until around 1890. His death certificate lists his occupation as “capitalist.” He died in 1898 at the age of 80.

Furman Hall on the campus of Vanderbilt University is named in his honor as a result of a $100,000 donation by his widow after his death. Furman never attended the university but his funeral was conducted by Vanderbilt co-founder Alexander Little Page Green. Inside the building is a sculpture of Francis Furman by Danish artist Johannes Gelert.

Gelert also designed the Furman’s monument at Mount Olivet. I was curious to know how the Furmans were connected to Gelert and learned that won top honors for “Wounded American Soldier” at the 1897 Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition in Nashville.

The roof of the monument is born up by caryatids, female figures in Greek dress like those on the porch of the maidens standing on the Athenian Acropolis.

The last story I’m going to share is about a tomb we caught sight of on our way out of the cemetery. Pyramid tombs are not common in the Southeast so when I see one, I pull over to look! The tomb for “Major” Eugene Castner Lewis is indeed impressive.

The entrance to the walkway is guarded by a pair of Sphinx, symbolic of the Memphis Rite, a Masonic order. Lewis was an active Mason during his lifetime. The two heavy aluminum doors once opened to reveal steps that lead down into the crypt. Because of vandalism, the doors are now welded shut.

When I looked into the past of Major Eugene Castner Lewis, I learned why an ancient theme went beyond his Masonic ties. Among his many accomplishments, he was the director of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Lewis was the one who suggested that a reproduction of the Parthenon be built in Nashville to serve as the centerpiece of Tennessee’s Centennial Celebration in 1897. It’s the only building that survived.

Born in 1845, Eugene Lewis’ parents were George T. and Margaretta Barnes Lewis. George Lewis was the general manager of the Cumberland Iron Works and knew many of Nashville’s movers and shakers.

During the Civil War, Eugene Lewis attended the Pennsylvania Military Academy. Although he never served in the military, he was referred to as “Major Lewis”. After he graduated in 1865, he served as an assistant engineer with the Memphis, Clarksville and Louisville Railroad. He would be involved in the railroad industry all of his life.

Lewis served as the president of Sycamore Mills (a gunpowder maker) and designed at least two bridges over Sycamore Creek in Nashville. Lewis also joined the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway as an industrial engineer. He was elected to its board of directors in 1896, and he served as its chairman from 1900 to 1917. He and his wife, Pauline, had several children. Pauline died at the age of 40 in 1902.

Lewis died in 1917 of stomach cancer.

Had the weather been better that day, I would have spent more time at Mount Olivet but January is not the greatest time for any cemetery visit. Still, I’m glad I got to see what I did and spend some time with a good friend.

Next week, I’ll be stopping by next door at Nashville’s Calvary Cemetery.

 

Two weeks ago, I shared my memories of Chicago’s suburban Roselle and Trinity Lutheran Cemetery, a visit from summer 2015.

Earlier that year, I visited Nashville, Tenn. It’s close to my heart because it was my home for almost the first two years of my marriage. My husband, Chris, was in law school at Vanderbilt University at the time but I hadn’t yet been bitten by the cemetery bug.

During this visit, I was catching up with high school friend Melissa, who was living in nearby Murfreesboro. I was itching to see some Nashville cemeteries and she was kind enough to oblige me.

On a rather dreary January day, we ventured to Calvary Cemetery and Mount Olivet Cemetery. They’re right next to each other so it’s difficult to know where one ends and one begins at times. Today, I’m focusing on Mount Olivet.

Mount Olivet is on the National Register of Historic Places, which is always a bonus because I can sometimes find information in the application made for that designation.

According to the application, Mount Olivet was established in 1855 and covers about 206 acres with around 192,000 graves (as of 2005). That includes a whopping 200,000 monuments, mausoleums and markers. It was modeled after Cambridge, Mass.’s Mount Auburn Cemetery. The design of the mausoleums ranges from Greco/Roman and Egyptian Revival to Victorian Gothic. At least 40 percent of the monuments at Mount Olivet are classic Victorian era funerary art.

The application contradicted itself in one respect. In one place, it says “Blacks could be buried anywhere in the cemetery up to circa 1889.” And yet in another, it says “After the Civil War and Reconstruction, the interment of persons of color was prohibited until the 1960s.” I’m not sure which statement is accurate.

Another part of the application states, “Some [blacks] were buried with the families they served, either as free persons of color or as slaves. Others were buried in the single and/or strangers sections located at the rear of the cemetery. There are other apparently ‘unused’ areas that may hold the remains of persons of color.”

If you were a wealthy resident of Nashville, Section One was where you were buried. Mount Oliver founders Van Sinderen Lindsley (1814-1885) and John Buddeke (1808-1887) are among them.

Unfortunately, Mount Olivet experienced a tragedy only a few days before my visit. It’s Gothic chapel/office nearly burned to the ground.

The original structure was built in 1872 by Hugh Cathcart Thompson, best known as the architect of Nashville’s famous Ryman Auditorium. Additions were made in 1890 and 1930. The building was unused since 1996 so it was in poor condition. It also had no electricity so the cause of fire was suspicious.

Historic Nashville Inc. put the Mt. Olivet Cemetery chapel/office on its inaugural list of the city’s most threatened historic places. The non-profit advocacy group launched the Nashville Nine list in 2009.

I tried to look online to see what had happened to the remains of the building since the fire but could find no updates.

One of the most beautiful monuments I’ve ever seen is at Mount Olivet. I didn’t know at the time that I’d see another version of it a year later in Denver, Colo. Andrew Marshall’s monument alone, which represents he, his wife and two daughters, makes a visit to this cemetery worthwhile. His own life was affected greatly by a fire as well.

A native of Connecticut, Andrew Marshall made a name for himself when he formed Marshall & Bruce Co. with J.H. Bruce. The company opened its doors on Oct. 25, 1865 as a book bindery with the “value of equipment not exceeding $300.” In 1869, they bought a small printing office. Over the next several decades, the company grew steadily.

However, in 1895 Marshall and Bruce faced an uncertain future when a fire destroyed everything. Within seven months, they rebuilt a four-story building on the same site.

In 1904, Marshall & Bruce Co. secured the printing contract for the Southern Baptist Convention (based in Nashville) and a year later, moved the business to a big new building on 4th Avenue North, adopting the slogan “We print anything.” For the next 35 years, the company’s business centered largely on supplying the Baptist Sunday School Board. When the Baptist contract was terminated in 1938, Marshall & Bruce suffered quite a setback.

Despite this loss and the onset of World War II, Marshall and Bruce survived. In 1952, P.M. French and Associates bought the company and later moved to its current location at 689 Davidson Street. Bob Smith, current owner of Marshall & Bruce, acquired the company from P.M. French and Associates in 1983.

Andrew Marshall died in 1912. His wife, Harriet, died in 1930. Daughter Mary Louise died in 1873, only two years old. Daughter Harriett died in 1896 at the age of 30 from kidney disease.

Nearby are the graves of the Grubbs sisters. It’s unusual for me to see a pair of actual children’s statues beside each other. One is considerably larger than the other.

A native of Alabama, Hartwell B. Grubbs married Elizabeth “Bettie” Cartwright in 1875. He wore a number of career hats in Nashville over the years, from working as a travel agent to helping start the Grubbs Cracker Company in 1885. He appears to have clashed with his brother-in-law during the business’ operation and I found some legal cases pertaining to this.

He and Elizabeth would have five children. Sons Thomas, Hartwell and Peter would all live well into adulthood. But daughters Myra Lou (born in 1883) and Bettie (born in 1887) would both die before reaching the age of three.

Unfortunately, Hartwell’s cracker company also endured a fire in 1890. He was working for a different company by 1900, and the Grubbs moved to St. Louis. By 1910, they had moved on to New York City where Hartwell and Bettie spent the rest of their lives. Bettie died in 1922 and is buried beside her daughters in Mount Olivet. Hartwell died in 1934 at the Hotel Carteret in New York City. His burial site is unknown.

The last family I’m featuring was not affected by fire (that I am aware of) but Robert William Jennings knew tragedy in his life. A native of South Carolina, he married Mary Wyche Evans in 1861 in Nashville. His background was in bookkeeping and he was quite good at it. At one time he operated a wholesale manufacturing company with Andrew J. Goodbar (also buried at Mount Olivet). He would eventually found Jennings Business College in Nashville in 1884.

Robert and Mary had six children between 1862 and 1871: Thomas, Robert, Mary, David, Louisa and Tyre. David died at the age of 27 but four of the children lived to adulthood.

On July 18, 1871, Mary gave birth to Tyre, who was named after one of Robert’s brothers who died in 1862 serving in the Confederacy during the Civil War. She died that day at the age of 28. Tyre died 11 days later on July 29, 1871.

Robert remarried the following year to Sarah Ellen “Nellie” Robertson. They had three children, two of whom lived to adulthood. Robert died in 1922 and is buried with both of his wives (Nellie died in 1925) at Mount Olivet.

I’ll be back next week to share more stories from Mount Olivet Cemetery.

Having spent the last several years cemetery hopping, I’ve visited more final resting places than I can count. The pictures pile up over time and sometimes I forget the names of some of them.

In 2015, my family visited Chicago for our summer vacation and to attend a wedding. I wrote about several of the cemeteries (Rose Hill, Bohemian, Graceland) I visited. But as I went through those photos recently, I realized I’d overlooked a few small ones I went to on that trip.

Big cemeteries are great. Writing a multi-part series is a challenge I relish. But what about the small neighborhood cemeteries we drive past every day? Those are much more common. And yet we often ignore them.

My mother-in-law, Sue, grew up in Roselle, Ill. It’s a bustling Northwestern suburb of Chicago. But it began as a village settled by German immigrants in the 1800s. My in-laws moved to Knoxville, Tenn. in the 1970s, but the rest of the my husband’s relatives still live in the Chicago area.

Oddly enough, I visited Roselle to be a bridesmaid in a college friend’s wedding back in 1990. I had no idea that I’d return there several years later.

Trinity Lutheran Cemetery is situated on busy West Irving Park Road. Blink and you’ll miss it. There are only about 300 marked graves there and plenty of room exists for future burials. But it is well cared for and is a quiet haven amid the suburban rush.

I didn’t photograph a lot of the cemetery. There were a few Find a Grave photo requests and locating those graves was easy. Sometimes it’s more important to walk around and simply soak in the quiet of a cemetery than take a lot of pictures.

I did notice the grave of Joseph Mastny. Only one date is on it, indicating he died the same day he was born. Several figures of cherubs surround his stone, including a little boy carrying a golf bag with a dog. It tells me his family has not forgotten him and still visits when they can.

Something moved me to photograph the gravestone of Dee Hildebrandt. I think it was the fact she was only 22 when she died. Those who die so young always move me, for reasons I can’t explain.

Later that week, I mentioned to my husband’s Aunt Beth that we’d visited Trinity Lutheran Cemetery. When I told her about seeing Dee’s grave, she knew who it was at once. Beth went to school with Dee and remembered her fondly. Dee died in a car accident in 1982. I think this is the first time I’d ever photographed a grave only to have someone tell me later they knew the deceased personally.

I mentioned earlier that Roselle was settled by German immigrants. One of them was J. Henry Hattendorf. I didn’t know anything about him when I visited this cemetery but his name was on a unique bench that I photographed. He played a major role in the history of Roselle and Trinity Lutheran Cemetery.

I’ve seen these tree-style benches in a number of cemeteries. The motif was much beloved at one time. But this is one of the few I’ve encountered that has a person’s name on it.

Brothers Henry and John C. Hattendorft were born in Illinois but their parents Henry Hattendorf and Maria Gervecke Hattendorf were among the German immigrants that came to the area in the 1840s. They farmed with their father in nearby Schaumburg until the railroad came to Roselle. The Hattendorf brothers knew that would bring new business opportunities and wanted to be a part of it.

Henry partnered with John Bagge in 1880 to buy out the stock of Roselle Hough’s general store. The city of Roselle was named after Hough. The men also maintained a post office with Henry acting as Roselle’s postmaster. They operated the McCormick farm machinery franchise at Chicago Street and Prospect, selling a variety of items from farm implements to kerosene to furniture.

They also claimed they sold “everything from cradle to grave, including coffins to undertaking services.” This was not unusual during this era, when funeral hones were not common.

The Hattendorf families, along with others, were keen to start a Lutheran school for their children to attend. They helped establish Roselle’s Lutheran School in 1899, located at Prospect and Elm. Later in 1910, many of the same families would establish Trinity Lutheran Church.

In June 1902, Henry dissolved his partnership with Bagge and took over the business. He and four directors applied for and received a charter from the State of Illinois to open the Roselle State Bank in 1903. It later became Harris Bank Roselle, another long-standing business in the town.

Henry donated the land on which Trinity Lutheran Cemetery was established in 1911. The first burial, in 1912, was for William Benhart. His was one of the few monuments I photographed during my visit. He was in his 40s when he died of blood poisoning following an appendectomy. He and his wife, Lena, operated a tavern in Roselle.

In the 1920s, Henry operated a clothing store on the corner of Prospect and Irving Park Road. On Feb. 8, 1920, a train derailed and sent over 20 train cars in all directions. One of those cars hit the corner of Hattendorf’s store, dumping a full load of grain into the basement.

Henry and his family lived in a fine home close by the bank. The estate is said to have had a winery in the basement.

Sadly, the Hattendorf house was demolished to make room for more parking for the Roselle State Bank in the 1960s. However, the accompanying coach house was saved and moved to 39 Elm Street. It now serves as the offices of the Roselle Historical Foundation.

Henry married Dora Meyer in June 1878 and the following year, their eldest daughter Alvina was born. I photographed Alvina’s grave, which is beside her parents’ graves. Dora died in 1934 and Henry died in 1942.

I learned later that Alvina married Henry Langhorst in 1907. He was part of a similarly prosperous merchant family in Palatine, Ill. They would have one daughter, Mildred. Sadly, their marriage ended tragically in 1910.

Looking up Henry’s Find a Grave memorial, I learned that he and another man, William Mess, were working on a barn together on a farm in Palatine. Jack screws had been placed around the barn but none in the center where Henry happened to be. The weight of the building caused the center beam to give way and the barn collapsed on top of Henry. He was killed instantly. William Mess, located at one of the corners, barely survived but died a few days later.

According to his obituary, the Palatine Lutheran Church where Henry’s funeral was held could not hold all of the mourners that came. It also stated, “He was loved and respected, not in his own set alone, but by all people.” He is buried with his family at Union Cemetery in Palatine, Ill.

Alvina and Mildred went to live with her parents after Henry died. Alvina never remarried and died in 1940. Mildred married contractor Charles Rees in 1929. She died in 1993.

We probably spent maybe 30 minutes total at Trinity Lutheran Church Cemetery but I was glad we did. It isn’t very big. And there are no stunning monuments to photograph. But it’s a prime example of the kind of cemetery that exists everywhere. They are special to the families with loved ones buried there who come to honor their memories.

And that’s a good enough reason for me to stop, too.