Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio
The Lake View Cemetery was founded in 1869 and holds some impressive guest including President James A Garfield and his wife, John D. Rockefeller, Ernest Ball (Composer “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”), Alan Freed (Radio Disc Jockey who coined the term “rock and roll”), Garrett Morgan, Eliot Ness, Henry Alden Sherwin (co-founder of Sherwin-Williams), Jeptha Homer Wade , George Washington Crile (co-founder of the Cleveland Clinic and first surgeon to successfully perform a blood transfusion), several athletes, Senators, U.S. Ambassadors, Mayors, industrialist, and others famous people that you might know.
The grounds are open from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm November to March and an until 7:30 pm from April to October.
The James A. Garfield Memorial is open April 1st to November 19 from 9 am to 4 pm and the first place that you will want to visit which has a free map of the Lake View Cemetery but leave a donation. If you are able to go to the top of the memorial, take a walk on the balcony which has life size figures depicting Garfield and you can see downtown Cleveland and Lake Erie.
I was not able to as the Memorial is under a reconstruction but under all that is a wonderful looking building. As you get closer you can see the detailed work.
The map has 12 famous sites and/or graves with the section and lot number. (Note: The memorial is closed intermittently in 2019 to 2020 for restorations work. Check the website to see if it will be open the day you visit.)
The Cemetery is very hilly with lots of side roads but it has wonderful signs to point you in the right direction. The Cemetery also has Walks, Talks, and Tours starting in April. They also have a run through the Cemetery hosted in September for all you runners.
The Haserot Angel or Angel of Death Victorious or the Weeping Angel is one of the most visited and photographed of the grave sites in the Lake View Cemetery which has over 100,000 graves.
The sculptor, Herman Matzen, completed it in 1924. But look around because he did a lot of sculptors in the Cleveland area. In 1938, he was buried in the same cemetery as his creation.
The life-size bronze angel holds an extinguished torch upside down to symbolize the extinguishing of life as she sits on her marble seat with her wing spread out and looks to be weeping tears.
It is one of the most moving monuments within the cemetery. She asks you to respect that what you are seeing during your stay while she guards over Francis Haserot and his family that lay before her with the sadness of lose.
Each different area of the Cemetery has wonderful little things about them. Some very sad, other over the top, and some just completely peaceful. Lake View Cemetery has a bit of each.
The Newman Crypt is next to the Haserot Angel. But I liked how simple and yet so elegant.
About half way up the hill from the Haserot Angel and tucked into the back of this walkway, Marcus Hanna crypt. Hanna was founder of a mining company and helped fund both President Garfield’s and President McKinley’s elections.
On top of the hill from the Haserot Angel, the pillar with an angel on top looks down on the Wade Family. Jeptha Homer Wade was an industrialist, philanthropist, and a founding member of Western Union Telegraph. But check the grave dates closely, there are a lot of Jeptha Wades buried here, i.e. grandson and great great grandson and other family members.
The Jeptha Wade used his wealth to establish schools, served as the first President of the Board of Trustees for the Cemetery, and Wade Park. Wade Park is surrounded by the the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Western Reserve Historical Society, and the Cleveland Botanical Garden.
Jeptha Homer Wade II, grandson to Wade, would bequeath the Cleveland Museum of Natural History a gem collection, check out the Jeptha Homer Wade II Gallery of Gems and Jewels when you visit.
Jeptha Homer Wade III, grandson to Wade II, worked under the Kennedy Administration to help form the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He also married Emily Vanderbilt.
John D. Rockerfeller has been considered the wealthiest American of all time and founder of Standard Oil Company. He choose Cleveland as his home but had properties in several other state.
He lived from July 1839 to May 1937. Almost a hundred year. During the Civil War, he hired a substitute soldier and gave money to the Union cause and he left so many places with his name on them behind.
Garrett Morgan was an African and Native American inventor who patents include a hair-straightening product, a revamp of the sewing machine, a breathing device that would later become the blueprint for WWI gas masks, and something that most of us use every time we get into the car, the three light traffic signal.
Dr. Andrew C. Novick was a help develop urological techniques for complex Kidney Disorders. He now over looks this calming man made lake in the cemetery.
Eliot Ness was the leading member of an elite group of Federal Agents during Prohibition who set up to take down the Chicago Gangster Al Capone. Kevin Costner plays him in the movie Untouchables. It is a great movie if you have a chance to see it. His is just around the corner from the doctors and easily missed.
There are so many others that are in the Lake View Cemetery but I will leave you with pictures of other graves that I liked and a few stories below.
William J Morgan and his brother where born in Wales but moved to Pittsburgh as young boys. Both served in the Civil War and are in the Lake View Cemetery.
The brothers used the stone lithographic process to create advertising materials. By 1887, they renamed their company, Morgan Lithographic Company, and focused mostly on the entertainment business.
The Ringling Brothers Circus was one of their main clients and claimed to create the first billboard size posters. By the 1913, motion picture companies across the country used their work.
They are now called Morgan Litho and still work in lots of different mediums of printing and digital services.
In 1908, one of the deadliest school disaster in U.S. History told place killing 172 students, 2 teachers, and 1 rescuer. The fire took less then an hour to collapse the three floor building into the basement and just under half the students died.
