Union Ridge

While visiting my sister this week in Chicago, I decided to take a walk through the neighborhood to Union Ridge Cemetery. Union Ridge is one of the highest points in Cook County and is a part of Norwood Park. Originally organized in 1872 from adjacent townships (Jefferson, Leyden and Niles) as a village, and named after Henry Ward Beecher's novel Norwood, or Village Life in New England (1868), Norwood Park was annexed to the City of Chicago in 1893. Click here to read more about Norwood Park.

Union Ridge Cemetery is a beautiful place... well-shaded, and mostly well-kept. Quite a few of the headstones have begun to sink into the ground, obscuring the lower parts of the inscriptions. The cemetery is mostly surrounded by residential areas, which you would think would make it a peaceful place. And it was for the most part... except for the one lady who was outside in her backyard screaming the f-word at God-knows-who.

There were several large monuments, and a good number of military burials. Several of the (presumably) Civil War stones were gathered around a cannon.

There were many interesting names here. I'm not a linguist, so I'm not sure of the languages on all of them. But this is supposedly a heavily Polish area, so maybe they are Polish. Many of them seemed German to me.

When I got home to put these photos into Find-a-Grave, I found that many of them were not listed. In fact, I only found about half a dozen out of the 100 or so pictures I took that were already listed. this leads me to believe that this cemetery is not yet well-documented online. Maybe I'll have some time to return there and do some more picture-taking. If you would like to see the memorials I entered on Find-a-Grave, click here. I entered 163 names in all.