Post by wicked on May 16, 2008 11:34:43 GMT -5
Location name- Crown Hill Cemetery (section 37)
City/Town/County- Indianapolis,IN
Legend: There really isn't much of a legend to this place as far as I know, but it's a pretty big cemetery about 15 minutes from my house. Has some sad history to it.
History:Crown Hill Cemetery lies just north of downtown Indianapolis, and for nearly 150 years it has been both a place of rest and refuge for the city’s residents. Across more than 500 acres, the sprawling hills and lush landscape have provided a quiet oasis of forgotten beauty for both the living and the dead since its dedication in June of 1864.
Over the past century and a half, the graves of poets, presidents, playwrights and gangsters have given the cemetery its caché as a symbol of Indiana’s historic past, especially those buried atop the now prestigious “Crown Hill,” the highest geographic point in the city and the county. With its panoramic views and its social prestige, it seems the closer an individual is buried to the peak of Crown Hill, the closer he or she is to immortality — if not closer to heaven. The large headstones will at least guarantee the living go on remembering these lives and their legacies for countless generations to come.
In sharp contrast to the names of Riley, Harrison, Tarkington, Ayres, Eiteljorg, Kittle, Tutweiller and Irsay that mark the most impressive tombs on Crown Hill proper, there is a much smaller, much easier to overlook plot of land known as “Community Hill.” These graves tell a different type of story about our Hoosier past — one of poverty, neglect and social amnesia; stories most of us don’t know or don’t want to know. Community Hill is where the city’s indigents, widows and orphans have been unceremoniously buried for more than a century. In most cases, these lives and histories have been omitted from history, if not erased.
Among those buried on Community Hill are nearly 700 children in unmarked graves. These are the city’s orphans — the children no one wanted. They were abandoned and neglected by their parents, social services and the community at large while they were alive. The circumstances that led to their deaths have been and continue to be ignored, meaning they have also been abandoned and neglected by subsequent generations.
The children buried in the community plot at Crown Hill died while in the care of the city’s three public orphanages — the Indianapolis Children’s Asylum, the Board of Children’s Guardians Home and the Asylum for Friendless Colored Children — between 1892 and 1980. Slightly more than half of the 699 buried on the hill were boys, two-thirds of the children were white and their ages ranged from only a few months to 15 years old.
An alarming number of children did not survive their stays at the city’s orphanages. While most were certainly brought to the institutions in ill health, many more died from neglect, maltreatment and poor nutrition during their stay.
In 1909, during a conference in Washington, D.C., on the social responsibility towards these dependent children, the Indianapolis Orphan’s Asylum reported that of the 882 infants that had been admitted over the previous 10 years, 345 had died while in custody (nearly 40 percent). In the records from the conference, someone wrote in the margins “formaldehyde in the milk is presumed to have been the cause of high death rates during the early years.”
Directions: Take I-65 to 38th st. exit. Follow 38th st. east to Boulevard Place (2nd stop light) and turn right (south). Proceed south on Boulevard Place to 34th Street (stop sign) and turn right (west). Enter Crown Hill through the large stone gate.
GPS coordinates: N39°49’20.87 W86°10’36.05
City/Town/County- Indianapolis,IN
Legend: There really isn't much of a legend to this place as far as I know, but it's a pretty big cemetery about 15 minutes from my house. Has some sad history to it.
History:Crown Hill Cemetery lies just north of downtown Indianapolis, and for nearly 150 years it has been both a place of rest and refuge for the city’s residents. Across more than 500 acres, the sprawling hills and lush landscape have provided a quiet oasis of forgotten beauty for both the living and the dead since its dedication in June of 1864.
Over the past century and a half, the graves of poets, presidents, playwrights and gangsters have given the cemetery its caché as a symbol of Indiana’s historic past, especially those buried atop the now prestigious “Crown Hill,” the highest geographic point in the city and the county. With its panoramic views and its social prestige, it seems the closer an individual is buried to the peak of Crown Hill, the closer he or she is to immortality — if not closer to heaven. The large headstones will at least guarantee the living go on remembering these lives and their legacies for countless generations to come.
In sharp contrast to the names of Riley, Harrison, Tarkington, Ayres, Eiteljorg, Kittle, Tutweiller and Irsay that mark the most impressive tombs on Crown Hill proper, there is a much smaller, much easier to overlook plot of land known as “Community Hill.” These graves tell a different type of story about our Hoosier past — one of poverty, neglect and social amnesia; stories most of us don’t know or don’t want to know. Community Hill is where the city’s indigents, widows and orphans have been unceremoniously buried for more than a century. In most cases, these lives and histories have been omitted from history, if not erased.
Among those buried on Community Hill are nearly 700 children in unmarked graves. These are the city’s orphans — the children no one wanted. They were abandoned and neglected by their parents, social services and the community at large while they were alive. The circumstances that led to their deaths have been and continue to be ignored, meaning they have also been abandoned and neglected by subsequent generations.
The children buried in the community plot at Crown Hill died while in the care of the city’s three public orphanages — the Indianapolis Children’s Asylum, the Board of Children’s Guardians Home and the Asylum for Friendless Colored Children — between 1892 and 1980. Slightly more than half of the 699 buried on the hill were boys, two-thirds of the children were white and their ages ranged from only a few months to 15 years old.
An alarming number of children did not survive their stays at the city’s orphanages. While most were certainly brought to the institutions in ill health, many more died from neglect, maltreatment and poor nutrition during their stay.
In 1909, during a conference in Washington, D.C., on the social responsibility towards these dependent children, the Indianapolis Orphan’s Asylum reported that of the 882 infants that had been admitted over the previous 10 years, 345 had died while in custody (nearly 40 percent). In the records from the conference, someone wrote in the margins “formaldehyde in the milk is presumed to have been the cause of high death rates during the early years.”
Directions: Take I-65 to 38th st. exit. Follow 38th st. east to Boulevard Place (2nd stop light) and turn right (south). Proceed south on Boulevard Place to 34th Street (stop sign) and turn right (west). Enter Crown Hill through the large stone gate.
GPS coordinates: N39°49’20.87 W86°10’36.05