Strange Graves: Marconnot Mausoleum

October 23, 2020

Mount Olive Cemetery Lemay, Missouri

I don’t fear death, but I do fear what comes after death and would like to have my body preserved forever

When Joseph Marconnet died in December 1924 at the age of 64 he had lived a solitary life, preferring to live alone and keep only a small circle of friends and relatives. The Marconnet family were part of the early French settlement of Carondelet, best known for their sale of 21 acres of land to the City of St Louis for the creation of Carondelet Park.

During his illness with cancer, Joseph spent a great deal of time studying the ancient Egyptian mummification process, a popular topic after the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, and the preservation of Vladimir Lenin’s body in 1924. He left explicit directions in his will about the preservation of his own body. This task and a portion of his estate, the equivalent of around $52,000 today, was left to James J. Fitzgerald, president of Southern Undertaking Company. It was Joseph’s express wish to be laid to rest in a glass topped casket in his newly built mausoleum in Mount Olive Cemetery and that his body be on view to the public on the holy days of the Catholic Church.

He was placed in his tomb on January 3, 1925 after an intimate funeral at St Boniface Church with a few close friends and relatives in attendance. Prior to that his body was laid in state at the funeral parlor and later his home on Virginia Avenue in Carondelet where Joseph had lived the last 30 years of his life.

It took some time to decide exactly how the public would be allowed access to Joseph in the small space inside the mausoleum, but by April of 1925 the decision was made to install a glass panel in the door in order to allow the public to view him safely from the outside. With his family's approval the casket would remain open indefinitely. On Holy Thursday 1925 the lid of Joseph’s coffin was opened for the first time in his mausoleum for public view. There were few visitors that first day due to bad weather and no advance announcement in the papers, but as the weekend drew near more and more people arrived causing a back-up of several hours wait on the small road leading to the cemetery. Over time the crowds dwindled and in 1936, twelve years after his death, his family decided to finally close Joseph’s casket. Later a door with no window was installed out of concerns of vandalism.

Marconnet remained there until 2002 when a driver lost control of their truck while traveling the narrow cemetery road and struck the wall of his mausoleum. Joseph was taken to Southern Funeral Home, just as he had been 78 years earlier, where he remained for two months while his tomb was repaired. Later that year he was returned to his final resting place with family members and clergy in attendance.

Strange Graves is a series by the Mourning Society of St Louis featuring St Louis’ beautiful, strange and historic burials. Post contributed by Katherine Kozemczak.

Strange Graves: The Morrison Cradles

October 9, 2020

Calvary Cemetery St Louis, Missouri

He is seen no more. Because God hath taken him.

While wandering through the beauty of St. Louis’ Calvary Cemetery, gazing around at the rolling hills covered with trees and mausoleums and sculptures of angels and obelisks, you might be taken aback to suddenly come upon a stone monument of a baby girl in her crib holding a rattle, and alongside of that, a monument of a boy in a wheelchair. But when you know the story behind the stone, you may look at them in a very different way, maybe even through the eyes of their grieving mother.

The baby girl in her crib marks the grave of Julia Olivia Gill Morrison, known to her family as Olivia. In 1870 at age 14 months she contracted the measles. Then her two older sisters, Adele and Virginia, came down with whooping cough which she caught from them, and died. Her monument has her sitting upright in her crib wearing a baby bonnet tied in a neat bow under her chin and holding a toy rattle, a blanket draped around her, with a small lamb at the foot of her crib, representing the innocence and purity of childhood.

Next to Olivia is the grave of her brother John B. Sarpy Morrison, called Sarpy by his family. He contracted scarlet fever and was ill for some time before it finally claimed his life in 1876 at age 6 years. His monument is that of a young well dressed boy sitting up in a wheelchair with a blanket tucked around his legs which had become weakened from prolonged illness. The look on his face seems thoughtful and more knowing than that of a typical 6 year old boy. There are clusters of grapes and grape vines around the back of his beautifully carved wheelchair, symbolizing the Christian faith, and also symbolizing fruit ready for the harvest; death and rebirth. The wheels on his chair are broken, representing the end of his life on earth.

Behind these monuments rises a tall obelisk, marking the graves of their parents, James Lowery Donaldson Morrison (1816-1888), and Adele Sarpy Morrison (1842-1925). Adele wrote a fascinating 206 page memoir of her life, in which she gives us insight into the grief she experienced at losing two of her beloved children. She wrote the memoir to her two surviving daughters, Adele and Virginia, who were the eldest.

Of Olivia’s death she wrote, “When after 14 months she was called away, I felt my mother’s heart tried as it had never been before. I bethought that going before us all, she would be the star that would illumine our pathway and greet us at Heaven’s portal. Mine was a very lonely heart until God sent me little brother.”

That little brother was Sarpy, who then died 6 years later, and Adele was devastated. For 5 years she went only to the graveyard and the church, or to visit the older two daughters away at school, and she wore dresses of deep mourning. Adele said of this time, “Can you wonder that the sap was taken from my life, when this, the hardest of all blows, was sent to me?” She felt helpless, and feared that God might smite her again by taking another of her children. She could not swallow solid food, and could not even shed a tear, until her Uncle, knowing how she loved music, sent a zither player to her home, and listening to the music she wept for the first time. She came to love the zither so much that later in her life she said that if anyone wanted her back after she had died, a zither played over her grave would have that effect.

The sadness of the many years of Adele’s frequent visits to her children’s graves still hangs in the air at the Morrison plot, but it is softened by knowing that this family is now forever reunited.

Strange Graves is a series by the Mourning Society of St Louis featuring St Louis’ beautiful, strange and historic burials. Post contributed by Edna Dieterle.

Strange Graves: Biddle Mausoleum

October 2, 2020

Calvary Cemetery St Louis, Missouri

Pray for the souls of Thomas and Ann Biddle.

The couple buried within Calvary Cemetery’s oldest mausoleum, Ann Mullanphy and Major Thomas Biddle, were married in 1823. She was the well educated daughter of Missouri’s first millionaire and he was a dashing military hero who had distinguished himself during the War of 1812. Together they were a fashionable, well connected and seemingly happy couple until Thomas’ death in 1831.

Major Biddle was involved in a political argument with Congressman Spencer Pettis, which quickly turned to personal insults and led to Pettis challenging him to a duel. Biddle accepted readily and the ensuing duel on August 27, 1831 left both men dead within a few days. You can find a detailed post from the Missouri Historical Society about their famous duel on Bloody Island here.

After her husband’s death, Ann dedicated herself to charitable works in St Louis, even giving up her mansion on Broadway to the Sisters of Charity for use as an orphanage. She served as the president of the Ladies’ Catholic Association for Charitable Purposes, and in 1844 donated the lot on which the Church of St Joseph was built. In 1845 she made a gift towards a new orphanage for girls. including a lot worth $6,000 and an additional $3000 towards construction. In that same year she donated the land for the Biddle Market to the City of St Louis.

When Ann Biddle died in 1846 she made a final gift to Bishop Peter R Kenrick - a lot east of Tenth Street between Biddle and O’Fallon Streets for the purpose of founding an infant and widows asylum. In addition to that, she left $8,000 for the construction of a mausoleum for herself and her beloved husband Thomas, on that same site, surrounded by the institutions that were a result of her passion for charitable works in the city. George I. Barnett was commissioned to design the structure, and artist Leonard W. Volk was hired to sculpt the alto relievos for the tomb's interior.

Ann and Thomas remained in their temporary burial place at the Catholic Cemetery on Franklin Avenue until their Mausoleum was complete. Their undertaker George Lynch said later that, when reinterning the couple, he found the bullet that killed Major Bissell among his remains and turned it over to the family.

Professor C. M. Woodward recalled, in an account from the St. Louis Post Dispatch, that he last saw the Biddle monument at 10th and Biddle Street in 1867. The next trace of it can be found in The Pictorial St Louis 1875, already having been moved to Calvary Cemetery by the archdiocese. The five and a half mile journey between the original location and where the tomb and its occupants rest today likely took place in that eight year period. St Ann’s Asylum, the last of the institutions created through Ann’s philanthropy, remained in operation there until 1905 when it moved to a new facility at Page and Union. Not long after, the asylum buildings were demolished and work began on the Henry School which still stands today.

It appears there were some changes made in the overall design of the mausoleum when it was relocated. Almost all of the early reports include the inscription Pray for the souls of Thomas and Ann Biddle appearing on the monument but no trace of those words remain today. An engraving of the mausoleum by John Warner Barber in Our Whole Country, Or, The Past and Present of the United States in 1861 depicts a much more complex structure with a domed cupola and a set of exterior columns. The classical design and the beautiful marble interior remain today, albeit with a much smaller footprint and simpler profile than the one presented in the engraving.

The exterior of the tomb is constructed with buff sandstone and features two open arched entrances, directly across from each other, with a simple cross above each. Today visitors are unable to enter the mausoleum, both for its protection and theirs, but the interior is easy to view from the outside. A Corinthian column stands in each of the four corners drawing the eye up to the oculus in the tomb's domed ceiling which bathes the interior with light. The two marble effigies of Thomas and Ann face each other, their dates of death inscribed below.

Strange Graves is a series by the Mourning Society of St Louis featuring St Louis’ beautiful, strange and historic burials. Post contributed by Katherine Kozemczak.