We’re back at Riverside Cemetery in Marshalltown, Iowa.

One of the town’s beloved sons was Sergeant Charles Willard Peckham, who created magic in the skies when he flew. The following details and photos came from research done by Riverside’s staff. They told me where his stone was located but because we were in a bit of a rush that day, I didn’t find it. But his story is still worth sharing.

Born on August 4, 1897, Peckham graduated from Marshalltown High School in 1916. After a year at the state university, he enlisted in the American Expeditionary Forces in May 1917 during World War I and went to France later that summer. He joined the 103rd Aero Squadron of the Lafayette Escadrille, part of the WW I French Air Service, which consisted of mostly of volunteer American pilots flying fighter planes.

During this time, Peckham was cited for bravery three times and promoted to first class sergeant. At one point, it was feared he was captured but the rumors were fortunately untrue. He sent home to his father a fabric Iron Cross he’d cut from a downed German airplane.

Peckham was the lone pilot in the Lafayette Escadrille to be chosen by his commanding officer for appointment to West Point. But when the war ended, Peckham was done with military life. He came back to America and joined a “flying circus,” touring the country promoting victory loans (bonds issued to help pay for the war).

Peckham joined the Iowa Aero Company of Des Moines, which performed at an event on Friday, August 22, 1919 in Des Moines, with 100 or so people present. He and another pilot gave rides to spectators that day. Later, despite earlier engine problems, the pilot managed to get the plane started and up in the air, and Peckham stepped out onto the wing.

The plane began to tailspin and Peckham dropped 1,000 feet to the earth, enduring fractures below the knees of both legs and a fracture of the base of his skull. He was moved to the Methodist Hospital, where he died on Sunday, August 26, 1919, with his parents beside him.

A local newspaper article reported that two members of the Iowa Aero Company who were also servicemen would fly over the grave and “drop flowers as was done in France when a member of the air service was laid to rest.” The photo above the grave marker photo is believed to be of Peckham’s funeral at Riverside Cemetery, part of a cache of photos from the The Gold Star Museum at Camp Dodge in Des Moines.

I also want to mention James Christopher “Sunny Jim” Dunn and his wife, Edith Dunn. Both were trailblazers of a sort, although for different reasons.

Born in Marshalltown in 1864, Dunn met Henry Anson (whose son “Cap” was a Major League Baseball player in its infancy) when he went to work for the A. E. Shorthill Company, where the elder Anson was also employed. He convinced Anson to lend him money to start his own business, first in the coal industry, then in railroad contracting.

It was Dunn’s partnership in a railroad construction firm that sent his fortunes rising and he eventually became a millionaire. He and his wife, Edith Forney Dunn, lived in a mansion in Chicago. They had no children.

In 1916, Dunn was recruited by American League president Ban Johnson to head up a syndicate to buy the Cleveland Indians baseball team from Charles Somers for $500,000. During his tenure, the team’s ballpark League Park was renamed Dunn Field, although the name reverted back to League Park in 1927. In 1920, the Indians won their first World Series.

When Dunn died of influenza in 1922 at the age of 57, he left his entire estate worth $390,000 to Edith. That included control of the Cleveland Indians, making her one of the first women to own a MLB team.

That alone might have made Edith a unique woman of her time but there was something else that caught my attention. Edith remarried a man named George Pross. A native of New York, Pross was 24 years Edith’s junior. He worked as a policeman in New York City before moving to California to become a private detective for the Burns Detective Agency. His name pops up in several issues of “True Detective” magazine in the 1920s.

In 1927, ownership of the Indians changed hands when Edith sold the franchise for $1 million to a group headed by Alva Bradley. By 1930, Edith and George were living in a fine home in Pasadena, Calif. before moving to Los Angeles. A year after Edith died in 1946, George remarried. He died in 1967 and is buried in California with his second wife.

Jim and Edith (despite her remarriage) are buried beside each other in Riverside. Despite becoming a wealthy man who had moved away, Dunn always considered Marshalltown “my hometown” and wished to be buried there.

I was delighted to see a large white bronze monument representing the Shetler family. It looks like the woman, holding a laurel wreath (which can mean victory, distinction, eternity or immortality) beside an anchor, is unfortunately missing a hand.

A native of Germany, George H. Shetler arrived in America in 1833. He married Ohio native Martha Smith in 1838 in Kentucky. They had several children. In 1857, they moved to Marshalltown where George Sr. farmed. Later, he and his two sons, George Jr. and James, operated a successful harness business. Martha died in 1886 and George Senior died in 1901.

Unfortunately, George H. Shetler, Sr. died without a will. This caused much angst concerning how his estate would be divided up, especially some land tracts. It went as far as the Iowa State Supreme Court before it was all sorted out and by that time (1906), son James had died as well in 1904.

You don’t see these with every white bronze monument, but the Shetlers had individual plates featuring the first names of the deceased. George Sr. and wife Martha are “Father” and “Mother.”

This marker is for Waverly Shetler, the son of George Jr. and grandson of George Sr. . He attended pharmacy school at then-State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa) in the 1880s and was a practicing pharmacist for a few years. Then in 1895 he graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo. Why he switched careers midstream is a mystery. He died in 1901 at the age of 33 in El Paso, Texas.

One last footnote about this cemetery. I didn’t learn until after my visit that Riverside Cemetery is supposed to have a “death chair” on the premises. I did not see it while I was there but if you Google it, you can see pictures of it.

I’ve seen stone chairs like it before (some are called “the Devil’s Chair”) and many of them have legends attached to them. The story with this one goes that if you sit on Riverside’s “death chair” at midnight, you will die within the year. So if you’re into that kind of thing, you can keep an eye out for it.

Next time, we’ll visit nearby Timber Creek Cemetery. It’s much smaller than Riverside but still has some stories to share.

After Woodland Cemetery, Christi and I headed northeast for Marshalltown. Our primary goal was to visit a dear friend of her late mother’s who lives there. But I knew that we’d be stopping by a few cemeteries as well.

Henry Anson, whose statue is in front of the Marshall County courthouse, is thought to be the first white settler in what is now called Marshalltown. He donated the land that the courthouse sits on. In April 1851, Anson described Marshalltown as “the prettiest place in Iowa.” Having seen the picturesque downtown, I can say that it is certainly one of them.

Anson’s son, Adrian Constantine “Cap” Anson, was a favorite son of Marshalltown, having made a name for himself as a Major League Baseball player. Cap spent most of his career with the Chicago Cubs (then known as the “White Stockings” and later the “Colts”), serving as the club’s manager, first baseman and later, minority owner. He led the team to five National League pennants in the 1880s.

While writing this post, I was saddened to learn that on July 19, 2018, an EF-3 tornado roared through Marshalltown. This was about 10 months after my visit. Fortunately, there were no deaths. But a preliminary count of homes showed 89 destroyed; 525 with major damage; 94 with minor damage; and 54 classified as affected. Seven businesses were destroyed and four received major damage.

It will take a long time to rebuild what was lost. But this town of about 26,000 is already on its way back, working hard to make repairs and put things right.

Before meeting Jacqueline for lunch, we headed to Riverside Cemetery. I didn’t know much about it but there were a few graves I wanted to photograph.

Riverside was the vision of two men, Presbyterian minister Rev. Louis DeLos and Dr. George Glick. After incorporating as the Marshall Cemetery Association in April 1863, the board purchased a little over 13 acres acres from Rueben Webster for the purpose of creating a cemetery. It has expanded since then to its present 95 acres. According to Find a Grave, there are close to 25,000 burials recorded.

The St. Mary’s Cemetery Association purchased land east of what is now Lake Woodmere (in front of the cemetery office) and established a church cemetery, currently maintained by the Marshall Cemetery Association as a Catholic cemetery. The Congregation of the Sons of Israel also has their burial grounds within the perimeter of Riverside. In addition, the Volunteer Firemen of Marshall County, the Elks Lodge, and the Masonic Lodge have separate burial grounds for their members.

I don’t always stop in at a cemetery’s office because I don’t like bothering people who have work to do. But the folks at Riverside treated me like a welcome guest when I walked in. They pulled out files on the person I was looking for and suggested visiting the grave of another interesting person I hadn’t even heard of. If you check their Facebook page, they are always adding new stories about people buried at Riverside. I greatly appreciate Riverside’s staff for going the extra mile to share the rich history of their town and helping me in my research.

The most famous person buried at Riverside Cemetery is someone you have likely never heard of — magician Tommy Nelson “King of Koins” Downs. While unknown now, he had quite a following in his time.

Downs was born in Marshalltown in 1867 to teachers Thomas and Cordelia Downs, his father dying when he was only six months old. As a boy, he taught himself card and coin tricks. His first wife, Nellie Stone Downs, died in 1895, just a year after giving birth to their son, Raymond. That same year, after working for the telegraph company much of his life, he decided to perform in vaudeville full time. A few years in, he decided to concentrate solely on coin tricks.

So who looked after little Raymond while Downs was on the road? The 1900 Census shows him living in the household of none other than town founder, Henry Anson. Raymond is listed as his grandson but I don’t know if Nellie or Downs was actually related to him. According to a Des Moines Register article, Raymond said he was raised by housekeepers, had a distant relationship with his father, and that he personally had no interest in magic.

Downs soon became a sought after performer on the American vaudeville circuit, including Tony Pastor’s New York theater. He performed 26 consecutive weeks at London’s Palace Theater and 40 weeks at the Empire Theater, along with many performances at the Follies Bergere in Paris. King Edward VII, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm and Sultan Abdul Hamid of Turkey were entertained by Downs as well.

Downs’ skill at manipulating coins was just about impossible to imitate. Watching this old home movie of him in later years illustrates that. While performing his tricks, he could palm up to 60 coins at a time. One of his most famous tricks was “The Miser’s Dream”, in which he seemed to pull countless coins out of the thin air. His 1900 book “Modern Coin Manipulation” is still in print today.

In 1912, Downs decided to retire to Marshalltown with his second wife wife, Harriet Rockey Downs. Downs opened a vaudeville house on Main Street, where he also sold a line of magic equipment. Many visitors, especially other magicians, arrived at his home to share gossip and the latest tricks.

Downs was well acquainted with fellow magician Harry Houdini and they shared the stage on occasion. Some articles I read said they had an intense rivalry while others said they were close friends. I tend to think it was a rather benign rivalry amid a warm friendship. Downs’ career took off before Houdini’s and he advised him to head to Europe as he had done to boost his career, and Houdini did just that. Houdini’s widow came to visit Downs near the end of his life as well.

In the last two years of his life, Downs was confined to his bed. He died in 1938 and Harriet died in 1955. His great-grand nephew, Jim Downs, lives in Marshalltown today. He owns a large collection of Downs’ papers, books, and other personal items that he enjoys showing others so they can learn about the King of Koins.

Next week, I’ll have more memorable Marshalltown profiles to share, including a World War I flying ace and a MLB team owner.

You cannot talk about Iowa cemeteries without mentioning white bronze markers. They’re actually zinc but they were marketed as “white bronze” at the time to make them sound grander. You can get a refresher here in my post about Council Bluff’s Fairview Cemetery (which has several white bronze markers). The parents company, Monumental Bronze Company, was in Bridgeport, Conn. but had subsidiaries in other cities, too.

To get a white bronze marker, you usually placed an order with a salesman who had a catalog you could look at. The marker would be shipped to you in pieces that were held together by screws often grounded in a concrete base. As a result, they were hollow inside. Knock on one and you can here the metallic ring. Some were very small like the one below but others were quite grand.

White bronze is important to Iowa because Des Moines was home to the Western White Bronze Co. as one of Monumental Bronze’s subsidiaries, along with Chicago and Detroit. The Des Moines factory opened in 1886 and closed in 1908. In 1914, the government took over the plant to manufacture munitions during World War. I was pleased to see several white bronze monuments/markers at Woodland.

This marker is a nice example of a small white bronze while exhibiting a seal of a fraternal organization I’d never heard of. A native of Iowa, William S. Clark was a bricklayer/mason. He married Emma J. Sutton in 1878 and they had one daughter, Eva.

Prominently displayed on Clark’s marker is the seal of the Improved Order of Red Men (IORM). The TOTE stands for “Totem of the Eagle”. This fraternal organization traces its origin to certain secret patriotic societies founded before the American Revolution. They were established to promote liberty and defy the tyranny of the English Crown. Among the early groups were: The Sons of Liberty, the Sons of St. Tammany, and later the Society of Red Men. Originally called the Society of Red Men, the IORM traces its origins back to 1765. In 1834, they changed it to the Improved Order of Red Men.

IORM rituals and regalia are modeled after those used by Native Americans. The organization claimed a membership of about half a million in 1935, but has declined to less than 38,000. The ultimate irony is that the IORM did not allow any non-white members to join until 1974 and it’s doubtful any Native Americans have ever done so.

This small marker for Christina Wilhelmine Bacon is rather plain on the front.

But it has the image of a figure pointing Heavenward on the other side.

Herman and Julius Bleckmann’s monument is the most common type of white bronze I usually see. The broken chain can signify breaking the chain of death or the end of life. Born in Germany in 1852, Herman came to America with his parents Julius and Lisette Bleckmann as a child, and worked as a baker.

There’s something about the Bleckmann monument that puzzled me at first. I took a look on the base to see where it came from and was surprised to see this.

If Des Moines residents had access to white bronze monuments in their own city where a factory produced them, why did this family get one from far-away Michigan? Then I realized that Herman Bleckmann died in 1882. The Des Moines factory didn’t open until 1886, four years after his death. So it makes sense that it came from Detroit after all.

Julius, Herman’s father, whose name is also on the monument, died in 1879. It’s possible the monument was made for him first and Herman’s name was added later but I don’t know.

Herman’s life was abruptly cut short, I did discover. He and a friend, George Crane, were celebrating the Fourth of July when something went wrong. At Herman’s front gate, George Crane allegedly shot Herman and he died. Although Crane was arrested and went to trial, he was acquitted. Herman was only 30 and I found no evidence that he ever married.

This large white bronze was for Samuel Van Cleve and two of his children. A native of Pennsylvania, he married Ruth L. Cook (daughter of a Baptist minister) in Ohio in 1850. They moved to Iowa in 1855 and had three children. Two died in infancy that are listed on the marker (William and Lillie) but their daughter, Marie Louisa, lived to adulthood and married David (or Daniel on some census records) Bringolf.

Samuel had a number of jobs in public works, most notably as superintendent of the water department and later as an assessor for the city. Samuel died in 1886 at the age of 61. Thanks to Ancestry.com, I was able to pull up his voluminous will.

To my surprise, I found that Samuel owned stock in the Western White Bronze Co. From what I can tell, Ruth sold it after he died. The paperwork even included the bills for his casket ($125) and for the white bronze monument that you see above, which cost $465 at the time. You can also see a picture of the receipt for the monument, which she paid in 1888. If you adjust for inflation, the monument cost around $13,000. That’s not cheap!

Ruth lived with her daughter and her family in Des Moines after Samuel died. At some point after the turn of the century, the Bringolfs moved to Texas. Ruth died in 1910 and is buried in Myrtle Cemetery in Rock Hill, Texas. She was 93.

There’s another white bronze at Woodland worth mentioning because it is not the usual gray/blue color. It has a silver color and a decidedly militaristic flavor.

Born in 1834 to Samuel and Mary Myers Orwig in Pennsylvania, Thomas Gilbert Orwig was a patent lawyer and Civil War veteran. There is little information on him prior to the Civil War.  He owned and operated the Union County Star with his brother Reuben, which they sold after a year of ownership.

On June 20, 1861, Orwig mustered into service with the 43rd Regiment, First Artillery, Battery E as a first lieutenant. In 1862, he was promoted to captain, and, in this capacity, served in the peninsular campaign and in the Army of the James. After a three-year term, Orwig resigned with his regiment on September 21, 1864.

He married Mary E. Sipp in Middletown, N.Y. in February 1864. They lived together in Yorktown until the end of his service. They had two children — Mabel, who was adopted, and Mary Gilberta Orwig born Feb. 24, 1865 and died January 26, 1867.

After the Civil War, the Orwigs moved to Des Moines and opened a patent office. I found a patent of his online (he had several) for a type of barbed wire that would prevent animal injury. Thomas also established a newspaper in Iowa known as The Industrial Motor in 1872, which was mainly devoted to mechanics, patent rights, and new inventions.

Mary Orwig died on March 10, 1907 at the age of 67. One fact you can glean from the Orwig’s joint monument is that she was blind for 20 years of her life. I am guessing the monument was made when she died and that the information about Thomas was put on it at that time. His date of death is not on the monument anywhere but records confirm he died in 1910.

The last two monuments I wanted to mention are not white bronze but still stood out to me. The monument for the Rev. Ira Kenney is in the shape of a pulpit with a Bible on the top. A native of Truxton, N.Y., he was a graduate of Madison University and ordained the same year he graduated, 1849. He also married Mary E. Smith in the same year. I’m not sure when they moved to Iowa.

The Rev. Kennedy pastored several Baptist churches over the years. He also served as president of what was then known as the Des Moines University in the 1880s, which ultimately closed in 1929. The Rev. Kenney died in 1899.

Finally, let’s talk about Landon Hamilton’s imposing monument. It’s one of the tallest in the cemetery and features the deceased’s face.

Born in Virginia in 1816, Landon Hamilton was described as “the dead recluse” by the Des Moines Register in an article written about him. His friend, Judge William Phillips, was one of the few who knew him well but wasn’t sure how Hamilton came to be in Iowa. Hamilton’s love of nature took the place of any family he might have had, he never married or had children. He earned his living by hunting and trapping.

In later years, Hamilton catalogued his wide range of specimens, from animals to birds to fish to insects. When he died at the age of 81, his will instructed that his home and massive collection be left to the public for their enjoyment. Some articles claimed the state was going to do something with it, but it may very well have been auctioned off.

Hamilton also made specific plans for his monument at Woodland long before his death, down to the portrait etched on it. For a man who wasn’t known to enjoy mixing with people very much, he seemed to want to be remembered by them.

That brings my visit to Woodland Cemetery to an end. I’ll be moving on to other Iowa cemeteries in the weeks to come, but this one was definitely memorable.

Yes, it’s Part III! Woodland Cemetery has enough to keep any “hopper” interested. Today I’m featuring three Des Moines businessmen that each contributed to the city’s history in different ways: Hoyt Sherman, Marcus Younker, and Henry C. Hansen.

While the Sherman mausoleum is not spectacular, the family is. Born the youngest of 11 children in 1827 to Ohio Supreme Court Justice Charles Sherman and Mary Hoyt Sherman, Hoyt Sherman came from a notable family. Brother John Sherman was U.S. Secretary of Treasury (under President Rutherford B. Hayes) and Secretary of State (under President William McKinley). But most will remember his more infamous brother, Union Major General William T. Sherman.

Hoyt Sherman arrived in Iowa in 1848 and joined the Bar the following year. In 1850, he was appointed Postmaster and served until he resigned and was elected clerk of the the District Court in 1853. On Christmas day 1855, Sherman married Sara Moulton, an Ohio native. They had five children. President Abraham Lincoln appointed him the Army Paymaster at the start of the Civil War, with the rank of Major.

Sherman served as an organizer of the Des Moines Coal Company, the Des Moines Water Company, Equitable Life Insurance Company, and served on the board of directors for the Iowa and Minnesota Railroad, as well as the Narrow Gauge Railroad. He was also a pioneer member of many organizations and societies.

In 1877, Hoyt Sherman Place, the family home, was completed with the help of architect William Foster. Almost immediately, it was noted to be, “a society showplace of the grandest scale.” After Hoyt Sherman’s death in 1904, it served as the first location of Mercy Hospital. In 1907, it became the clubhouse of the Des Moines Women’s Club, who added an art gallery, the first public art museum in the city. In 1923, a 1400-seat auditorium was completed for Club programs.

Today, Hoyt Sherman Place hosts everything from Ballet Des Moines performances to rock concerts. In 2003, the facility underwent a large renovation project to restore the spaces to their original grandeur and add present-day amenities including state-of-the-art electrical fixtures and heating/air conditioning systems.

If you’ve visited the Iowa/Nebraska area at all, you’re probably familiar with Younker’s Department Stores. They got their start when three brothers (Marcus, Samuel, and Lipman) from Poland arrived in New York City then settled in Keokuk, Iowa (about three hours east of Des Moines) in 1856.

Soon after they arrived, the brothers opened Younker & Brothers, a dry goods store that sold a variety of items. Marcus managed the store while his brothers strapped packs of merchandise on their backs that they carried into the countryside to farmers too busy or far away to come to town to shop. The store was closed on the Sabbath and Jewish Holidays.

As Keokuk declined and Des Moines’ star rose, half-brother Herman opened a 1,320-square-foot dry goods store in the capital city. When Samuel died unexpectedly in 1879, the Keokuk store was permanently closed and headquarters moved to Des Moines. The store then became Younker Brothers. In 1899, the Des Moines store at Seventh and Walnut Streets became the flagship store and remained open until 2005.

Lipman Younker eventually moved to New York City and was involved in the garment trade until his death in 1902. Herman also moved to New York City to handle the company’s purchasing office there. That left Marcus to run things in Des Moines.

Over the years, Younker’s locations multiplied over seven states. But the Des Moines flagship store was special. Women lunched at the elegant Tea Room upstairs, hosting bridal showers and other important events. Teenagers took their dates there for dinner and dancing. The store even had a knitting classroom. Younker’s boasted Iowa’s first escalator in 1939 and was the first department store in the U.S. to air condition its entire building.

For many decades, it was a mainstay for shoppers until new parent company Bon-Ton announced in April 2018 that it was liquidating its Younker’s stores. Sadly, the last Younker’s stores closed on August 29, 2018.

Although he officially retired in 1895, Marcus Younker remained close to help his successors. He balanced commercial interests with religious duties, serving several times as president of the B’nai Jeshurun congregation. When he died in 1926, Younker’s lost the last of its original founders. He is interred in the Emmauel Jewish Cemetery area of Woodland with his wife, Annie, and all four of his children (who all lived to adulthood).

Despite a 2014 fire at the old Younker’s building on Seventh and Walnut Streets, it is now known as the Wilkins Building and was turned into apartments. The famous Younker’s Tea Room (now known as just “The Tea Room”) was renovated and re-opened in September 2017 as an event space.

Thanks to helpful Facebook friends with access to Newspapers.com, I was able to uncover the history of the Henry C. Hansen family. A native of Norway born in 1853, Hansen came to America with his parents Christopher and Martha Hansen in 1856. The family lived in Chicago before buying a farm in Wisconsin. After working for an uncle in the paint business, Hansen attended a Chicago pharmaceutical college and became a druggist. He arrived in Des Moines in 1876 and established the Hansen Drug Co.

His fortunes rose with his store and he eventually moved it into the Wellington Hotel, which he had built earlier himself. Over the years, he expanded and improved the hotel drastically. In addition, he started the Garfield Clothing Company in 1883 and was president of the Home Savings Bank for 17 years. Needless to say he was a busy man!

At age 46, Henry married Rose Welton in 1899. She was 25 at the time, 21 years his junior. They had at four children together — Henry Jr., Marthareen, Rose Marie, and Emerett. Henry Jr. assisted his father with the Garfield Clothing Co. while Marthareen worked at the hotel. Emerett became an attorney and had an office in his father’s hotel.

Rose Marie also worked for her father until she married Herbert Hauge in 1936, who soon after served as an Iowa State Representative for one term. She and Herbert are buried together at Resthaven Cemetery.

Unfortunately, the senior Hansen did not always see eye to eye with his eldest son. A 1927 Des Moines Register article reported that Henry Sr. requested a restraining order against Henry Jr., claiming that his son was trying to taken over both the clothing company and the hotel after Henry St. suffered a slight stroke earlier that year. Henry Sr. went so far as to allege Henry Jr. had threatened to kill him.

Despite the issues noted in the 1927 article, after Henry Sr. died in 1935 of a cerebral hemorrhage, Henry Jr. took over the Garfield Clothing Co., selling it to Emerett in 1957. Henry Jr. married in 1939 but his wife, Ruth, sought to divorce him in 1943 under charges of cruel and inhumane treatment. She also asked for a restraining order.

When Rose Welton Hansen died in 1962, Henry Jr. appeared to no longer have any ties with the family businesses. But when he learned that his mother left the bulk of her estate worth well over $100,000 to his siblings Marthareen and Emerett, he contested her will in court.

I’m not sure how that was resolved but Henry Jr. died in 1968 in a nursing home. Despite the turmoil over the years, he is interred with his parents in the Hansen mausoleum at Woodland. Later, he was joined by siblings Marthareen (who died in 1972) and Emerett (who died in 1989).

The Hansen mausoleum did not grab my attention until I was looking at my pictures from Woodland this week. To the left above the pillars and to the center are two Masonic symbols, the “G” and the double eagle representing the Scottish Rite.

However, if you look at the upper right hand corner above the pillars, you can see what I recently learned was the “death’s head” version of the insignia of the Knights of Pythias. Many American fraternal organizations, including the Masons, use the skull and crossbones in their symbolism. For the Masons, it signifies mortality.

Founded in 1864, the Knights of Pythias was the first fraternal organization to receive a charter under an act of Congress. Its founder was Justus H. Rathbone, who was inspired by a play by Irish poet John Banim about the legend of Damon and Pythias. This legend illustrates the ideals of loyalty, honor, and friendship at the center of the order. On this seal, the FCB stand for “Friendship, Charity, and Benevolence”, the Pythian motto.

As a prominent businessman, it’s not surprising Henry C. Hansen belonged to several fraternal organizations like the Masons and the Knights of Pythias. And it’s true that you can find memento mori (Latin for “remember, you will die”) skulls decorating many a slate gravestone from the late 1700s to mid-1800s. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen a skull on an American mausoleum.

Next week, I’ll wrap up my series on Woodland Cemetery by featuring a few more eye-catching markers and monuments.