Milwaukee County

Calvary Cemetery in Milwaukee is one of the city’s most famous cemeteries. Though, I have no family buried there, Laura Ann at “Dreaming About Home” wrote up a nice post about her trip to Calvary Cemetery.

Calvary Cemetery

I chose to do a multiple tombstone post. This is a view across part of Holy Cross Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A lot of my Polish ancestors are buried here including my ZALEWSKI, TROKA and SZULTA family. It literally looks like a “City of the Dead” as it goes on and on.

Click for larger

Ran across an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel this morning about new burial options at some of the area’s largest cemeteries, Natural (or Green) Burials.

According to the article:

All burials in this area will include a biodegradable coffin, or a shroud and other container, and no toxic embalming or concrete vaults. No individual markers will be used, but names and dates will be engraved on large boulders in the 3-acre cemetery, planted in native prairie flowers and grasses.

Currently, it’s being offered at Forest Home Cemetery (which I posted about earlier) and Prairie Home Cemetery in Waukesha, Wisconsin. For us genealogists, don’t worry about not being able to find a loved one.

There’s one other new twist on age-old burial practices: Anyone visiting the prairie cemetery will get a GPS device and help finding the grave.

As a genealogist, I would miss the headstone and other things that are so helpful to photograph for your research, but you can get a photo of the engraved stone.

I do find it interesting and I love that it’s better for the environment. I’ll have to keep an eye on it around this area. I know they’ve been doing it around the country for awhile now.

[ Article Link ]

I thought I’d do my first post on my favorite cemetery, Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee. Just the sheer size and history behind this cemetery makes it a great place. It’s an unusual peaceful place within the Milwaukee city limits and is full of Milwaukee history. The photo at the top of the site is also from Forest Home.

Soon after the city was founded in 1846, civic leaders began searching for a place where area residents could count on eternal peace. They found 72 gently rolling and forested acres that, although “far” from town, were accessible by the new Janesville Plank Road. The land was acquired, and the cemetery was named Forest Home.

In 1850, the first burial took place. A few years later, as more cherished memories were entrusted to this special place, the road that led from the growing city was renamed Forest Home Avenue.

Forest Home is the final resting place of many of Milwaukee and Wisconsin’s most famous individuals. Ranging from Fred Usinger (Milwaukee’s Sausage King) to Increase Allen Lapham (Father of the Weather Bureau.) Forest Home even has a building called “The Halls of History” which they say “serves not only as a temperature-controlled indoor mausoleum, but also as a community-education center where people of all ages can learn, and honor, the history of Milwaukee.”

Their website even has a page that allows you to run a self-guided historical tour, including maps and information. I plan to hopefully take the tour this coming spring or summer. Here are some photos I took there a few years ago.