As October drew to a close, we decided to head to New England to photograph two of our remaining four state capitol buildings. After a hearty breakfast along the route and a stop at one of the very informative Wisconsin rest areas where we brushed up on the Wisconsin Sphagnum Moss industry and the Karner Blue Butterfly, our first stop was on the northwest outskirts of Chicago.
St. Adelbert's cemetery is the resting place for many of Chicago's early Polish residence including my grandfather's brother. The Kolkowski brothers had come to the United States in the mid 1880s with older brother, Constantine, settling in Chicago and Grandpa Frank going to Buffalo, NY. I knew that Constantine's wife was buried at St. Adelbert's but had not made an effort to trace Constantine.
St. Adelbert's is a very large cemetery but has a nice front office with help available in Polish an well as in English. (Note the Polish on the mask sign.)
Alas, Constantine was buried in the "cheap graves" which only lasted for twenty years before being covered over with another layer of deceased. But his wife and two of the children are buried in marked graves and the office gave us directions (including QR codes with geographic coordinates) to the general area.
We didn't find the stones but can return another time for that.
We left the cemetery and proceeded around the metropolitan area, through Gary, Indiana, and on toward Ohio.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment