Forest Home Cemetery is a cemetery located at 863 S. DesPlaines Ave, Forest Park, Illinois, adjacent to the Eisenhower Expressway, straddling the Des Plaines River in Cook County, just west of Chicago.[1] The cemetery traces its history to two adjacent cemeteries, German Waldheim (1873) and Forest Home (1876), which merged in 1969.
The cemetery is known for its Haymarket Martyrs' Monument and surrounding gravesites.
Forest Home Cemetery was the site of a Potawatomi village and burial ground until 1835.[2] [3] Ferdinand Haase, founder of Forest Park, and other members of the Haase family are buried on what at one time also was a Haase family homestead. The cemetery was formally established and incorporated under the laws of the State of Illinois in 1876.
The German Waldheim Cemetery was organized by a group of German Masonic Lodges in 1873 with the first interment on May 9, 1873. The Waldheim Cemetery was established as a non-religion-specific cemetery, where Freemasons, Romani, and German-speaking immigrants to Chicago could be buried without regard for religious affiliation.
The two adjacent cemeteries merged on February 28, 1969, with the combined cemetery being called Forest Home (Waldheim means "forest home" in German).
Jewish Waldheim Cemetery, located across the street, is a separate cemetery and is not affiliated with Forest Home.
See main article: article and Haymarket Martyrs' Monument.
The "Haymarket martyrs", as the five defendants sentenced to death in the Haymarket affair came to be called among their sympathizers, were buried at Waldheim because since its establishment, it had a policy of not discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity, or politics, in addition to being open to any religion. It was also the only Chicago-area cemetery that would accept their remains.[4] After their burial, the cemetery became a place of pilgrimage for anarchists, leftists, and union members. In 1893, the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument, designed by sculptor Albert Weinert, was erected.
In homage to the Haymarket martyrs, other anarchists and socialists later chose to be buried at Waldheim, well into the 20th century, including:[5]
The cemetery also includes the graves of:
The cemetery is also the final resting place for 45 victims of the 1903 Iroquois Theater fire that killed over 600.