Bellefontaine and Calvary Cemeteries
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Bellefontaine Cemetery (established in 1849) and the Roman Catholic Calvary Cemetery (established in 1857) in St. Louis, Missouri are adjacent burial grounds, home to a number of historic and extravagant graves and mausoleums. Although they are the necropolis for a number of prominent local and state politicians and soldiers of the American Civil War, the neighborhoods around the cemeteries are among the roughest in St. Louis, particularly to the immediate west and south. The cemeteries were established after the cholera epidemic of 1849; burials in what is now downtown Saint Louis were relocated here. Burials from an African-American cemetery at Lambert-Saint Louis International Airport were reinterred here in the 1990s.
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[edit] Bellefontaine
Bellefontaine Cemetery at 4947 W Florissant, St. Louis, is the burial grounds for prominent pioneers to the West. It is also the resting place for several victims of the 1855 railway accident known as the Gasconade Bridge train disaster. Also buried in the Bellefontaine Cemetery are a number of the famous Busch and Lemp family of brewers.
[edit] Notable Bellefontaine burials
- Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), artist
- Susan Blow (1843-1916), educator
- William Seward Burroughs (1914-1997), author
- Adolphus Busch (1838-1913), brewing magnate
- William Chauvenet (1820-1870), scholar, educator
- William Clark (1770-1838), explorer
- Charles B. Clarke (1836-1899), prominent architect, designer of the Fagin Building (1888)
- Alban Jasper Conant (1821-1915), artist, author, educator
- Phoebe Wilson Couzins (1842-1913) pioneer suffragette
- James Eads (1820-1887) important steel product maker
- Aaron W. Fagin (1812-1896), milling magnate, millionaire, and builder of the Fagin Building (1888)
- Della May Fox (1870-1913), actress, singer
- David R. Francis (1850-1927), statesman, United States Secretary of the Interior
- Jessie L. Gaynor (1863-1921), composer of children's music
- Benjamin Howard (1760-1814), first governor of Missouri Territory
- Caroline Janis (1864-1952), painter and sculptor, member of "The Potters"
- James Smith McDonnell (1899-1980), founder of McDonnell Aircraft Corporation
- Charles Nagel, last United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor, lawyer
- Trusten Polk (1811-1876), elected both governor and U.S. senator in 1856
- Sterling Price (1809-1867), Civil War general
- Mary Marshall Rexford (1915-1996), Red Cross worker and the first woman to land on Utah Beach on D-Day
- James McIlvaine Riley (1849–1911), Co-founder of Sigma Nu International Fraternity
- Irma S. Rombauer (1877-1962), author of The Joy of Cooking
- James Semple (1798-1866), Illinois state senator
- Henry Miller Shreve (1785-1854), inventor
- Theodore Spiering (1871-1925), violinist, conductor, and teacher
- George Strother (1783-1840), Virginia congressman and lawyer, collector of public money in St. Louis (reinterment)
- Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
- Charlotte Dickson Wainwright, within architect Louis Sullivan's 1892 Wainwright Tomb
- Carl Whitney (1919-1986), Negro League baseball player
[edit] Calvary
Calvary Cemetery, at 5239 W. Florissant Avenue, St. Louis is a 477 acre (1.9 km²) Roman Catholic cemetery established in 1857. It is the burial place for several members of the Chouteau family who were co-founders of the city of St. Louis and whose descendant was part of the ceremony for the Louisiana Purchase. Some of the old burials and tombstones were transferred to Calvary Cemetery from much older Catholic cemeteries originally existing in what is now the downtown area of the city.
[edit] Notable Calvary burials
- Mary Odilia Berger (1823-1880), founder of Franciscan Sisters of Mary which operates hospitals in Midwest
- Kate Chopin (1851-1904), author
- René Auguste Chouteau (1740-1829), fur trader, cofounder of the city of St. Louis
- Black Eagle (unknown-1831), Nez Perce leader
- Speaking Eagle (unknown-1831), Nez Perce leader
- Thomas Caute Reynolds (1821-1887), second Confederate governor of Missouri
- Dred Scott (1799-1858), freed slave, subject of important U.S. Supreme Court case
- William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), American Civil War general
- Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), playwright
