Greenwood Cemetery, St. Louis, MO

Giving Tuesday is almost here and as always I am looking for financial support for the continued restoration of Greenwood Cemetery. COVID-19 has had a profound ...effect on all of our lives and so many wonderful organizations could use your support during this campaign. The work that we are doing is so vital to not only the 50,000 souls interred in this historic space but also to a community that is painfully unaware of its story and importance. Even with these difficult times, we have been able to host a number of volunteers whose generosity and hard work have been truly appreciated. Your continued support is still needed to allow us to continue our great progress. Thank you in advance for the assistance, and if not Greenwood Cemetery, do show some love for your favorite non-profit. Visit our website to see how you can help support the cause: http://www.greenwoodstl.org/donate #givingtuesday2020 #GivingTuesday #greenwoodcemetery

A few photos taken during the past year.

Remembering the victims of the 1959 Tornado in St. Louis, Missouri During the early morning hours of Thursday, February 10th, 1959, while most of the city slept..., a devesting tornado cut through the city of St. Louis without warning. No one saw it coming. The warning sirens that we are so familiar with now were not used as weather alerts at that time and would not be used for that purpose until 1967. The storm started just before 2am south west of the city in rural Glenco, Mo near the Meramec River and traveled northeast toward the city of St. Louis. It produced high winds in the Brentwood and Maplewood areas damaging roofs and trees. Moving on, the tornado hit the old St. Louis Arena, Forest Park Highlands and smashed windows at Children’s Hospital. A police officer alerted authorities to the rapidly escalating situation at 2:14 am when he frantically used his radio mike to report that a tree had just crashed through his windshield. That was the first official storm report. By 2:20am the storm had reached the area of Olive and Boyle streets. In that small area 11 died and 34 were injured. The storm continued, gaining strength. At 4202 Delmar, a three-story rooming house collapsed killing 6 people. Still moving north east through a neighborhood near North Grand and Page Ave, five more were killed and 31 injured. Two more died in the 2700 block of Bacon near the Hyde Park neighborhood. The tornado weakened as it crossed the Mississippi river into St. Clair County Illinois doing damage to factory buildings before dissipating near Granite City, Il. At 2:38am the Weather Bureau office at Lambert Airport began to receive reports of serious damage, but fire and police officials did not call in the city Civil Defense agency until about 4am. In the end the storm was on the ground in St. Louis about 35 minutes. During that time there were 21 deaths, 345 injuries and over 2000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Many streets were made impassable. Automobiles parked on streets in affected areas were buried in brick and mortar and would remain in place for days. Property damage was estimated at over 12 million dollars and St. Louis was declared a disaster area. As the St. Louis Post Dispatch newspaper would report in the days following the disaster, The storm hit some streets where people are the poorest and the houses are the weakest. The area most affected by the tornado consisted chiefly of large residences that had been converted into boarding and rooming houses. Residences that were already old and dilapidated. In other words, neighborhoods primarily occupied by black people. Some of the buildings such as the dwelling at 4202 Delmar totally collapsed, burying residents in the debris and making it necessary for Firefighters and volunteers to dig for bodies and hopefully survivors. At 4202 Delmar Firefighters dug through the wreck all night beneath floodlights. They recovered 2 survivors and six corpses. The week following the tornado was a week of mourning for St. Louis as funeral services and burials of victims took place. Of the 21 deaths reported, 11 were buried at Greenwood Cemetery. Mildred Campbell of 4202 Delmar and five of her children Michael age 8, Carl age 6, Rosemary age 4, Carrin age 3 and Theresa age 1. Alma P, Womack of 3864 Page Ave. Harry S, Martin of 3862 Page Ave, his wife Harriett and their son Johnie age 3 Fannie Ivory of 2758 Bacon The devastation of the 1959 tornado helped to spur the development of the Gaslight Square entertainment district but did little for creating housing opportunities. Nor did it convince the Weather Bureau to develop a weather warning system using sirens already in place. That would not happen until May 1967 when another devastating storm killed 3 people in St. Louis county.

Benjamin Parram (1877-1942) In Section D of Greenwood Cemetery is an oak tree, many have come to hold dear. As the tree has matured, it slowly encompassed WWI veteran Sgt. Benjamin Parram's grave and headstone. Born and raised in St. Louis, Benjamin Parram spent much of his professional life as a varnisher. Around that same time, Europe was in turmoil as WWI raged on. After the sinking of seven US merchant ships by submarines, President Woodrow Wilson called for war on Germa...Continue reading

Excerpts taken from a n interview from the St Louis Post-Distpatch on November 25, 1894. She was described as a small, stout, dark-skinned woman with gray hair. She was easy to be around with her laugh good-natured, mild-mannered, that made one feel like you were with a family member. She was Aunt Ruth. Margaret Ruth Burns was born to free parents in 1836 in Madison, IL. However, the couple was bound out to General Semple and his family. Meaning they were indentured a...nd were bound to work for a specified period to someone else without pay. The family moved to Vandalia when Gen. Semple became a Senator. It was then that Ruth was sent to Springfield, IL, to live with the Senator’s sister, Adaline, who was married to Illinois Assemblyman John Bradford. Through Adaline’s friendship with Mary Todd Lincoln, Ruth came to know the Lincoln family. Every Saturday in 1849, at the age of 14, Ruth was sent to help with the housework. Every Saturday turned into her living with the Lincolns for a year. The Lincolns were poor and lived in a frame house with six rooms. Bobby and Willie often wore patched clothing. Ruth and Mary would share in the chores. Mary cleaned the up-stairs work and cooked the meals, while Ruth scrubbed the floors and waited on the table. She described Mrs. Lincoln as a very nice lady that worked hard and was a good church member. Mr. Lincoln was a good and kind man who worked all day in his law practice. She never expected to see him as President of the United States. After a year, Ruth returned to the Semple family in Jersey County, IL, and later came to live with Henry Semple Ames and his family in St Louis. During the Civil War, she met and married William Stanton. Corporal Stanton was a sharpshooter in the 8th Reg, U.S. Colored Infantry. After the war, Ruth and William Stanton worked as janitors in the Fruin Building at the northeast corner of Broadway and Pine in St. Louis until their deaths; William in 1885 and Ruth in 1900. Both are buried in Greenwood Cemetery. See more

Lest We Forget. Luella Lewis (1889-1914) In the early 1900’s the Funston Nut Company was the largest single employer of black women in the city of St. Louis. Pecans which grew naturally along areas of the Mississippi river were shipped by boat to St. Louis, making the city a center for the nut shelling industry. Funston had 16 processing plants in the St. Louis metro area and averaged a quarter of a million dollars in annual profit before the great depression. The product...ion lines inside the plants were strictly segregated. The process started with black women pickers who were given 25-pound bags of pecans at a time. The women’s job was to shell the nuts and separate the meat from the shells with a knife. Pecan halves were placed in one pile, broken pieces in another. The shells were placed in third pile so that when a bag of pecans had been worked, the nut meats and shells could be weighed once again to make sure that it all added up to the original 25 pounds and no nuts had been stolen. Workers were paid by the pound. Black women got 2 cents per pound for broken nuts and 3 cents per pound for halves. White women, who were hired as sorters rather than pickers were paid 2 cents more per pound. Black women averaged $1.80 per week and white women averaged $2.75 per week. The pickers worked in poorly lit, unventilated basements where the air was so full of dust that breathing was difficult. Their hands were cracked and cut by the work they performed and many developed chronic respiratory conditions like those experienced by men working in coal mines. But even with the dirty and unsanitary conditions, in 1910 black women comprised 85-90% of the work force of the Funston Nut company because for the most part better jobs were not available for women of color. Luella Lewis was one of these workers. Luella was born in Arkansas in (approx.) 1889. She was the third of six daughters of Jane Lewis. After moving to St. Louis in the early 1900’s, Luella was able to attend school long enough to learn to read and write but eventually went to work in the nut factory to help keep her mother and her younger sisters alive. Her death certificate indicates that she sought medical treatment on Feb. 2, 1914 and died of Pulmonary Tuberculosis eight days later. She was 22 years old. The sad plight of the nut factory workers was so much a part of the folk story of the black community that nearly 15 years after Luella’s death, with working conditions no better than they had been in her day, St. Louis blues man Hi Henry Brown wrote and recorded The Nut Factory Blues. See more