Just a few days after Found St. Louis posted about Charles Hermann and his stately house in Compton Heights, we walked right up to his columbarium in Bellefontaine Cemetery. How’s that for luck? But this is a columbarium? It sure is small, isn’t it? As far as we can tell, the remains of the family…
Tag: Cemeteries
Cemetery, Sancta Maria in Ripa, Lemay, and San Francesco in Ripa, Rome
Word has come down in the news media that Sancta Maria in Ripa has been put on the market for sale by the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Lemay. I’ve looked at the majestic buildings twice, first in October of 2008, and then in December of 2020. The high school buildings are not for…
Kimmswick, Revisited
Founded in 1859 by German Theodore Kimm, we thought that Kimmswick was worth a second look recently since we were in the area after having looked at it back in August of 2020. I had forgotten how many log cabins there were in the town. And judging from the National Register nomination, which does not…
Old Walker Burying Ground
Heading west in St. Charles County, we arrive in Wentzville, where a small but critically important cemetery lies surrounded by the current campus of Holt High School. As can be read here, it holds some of the oldest European burials in the county, including some names that we have seen at other cemeteries, such as…
Sage Chapel Cemetery
Thanks to a tip from Found St. Louis, we learned about the historic Sage Chapel Cemetery, a historic African American burial ground located in O’Fallon in St. Charles County. Read about the history of the cemetery here. Located on land once owned by slaveowners, the church known as Sage Chapel is long gone, like much…
Bellefontaine Cemetery, Snow in January 2025
I usually try and make it up to Bellefontaine Cemetery after it snows, and the roads were in great condition inside its gates, so I drove around and took a few photos.
Heck-Roth Cemetery, Weldon Spring
The Heck-Roth Cemetery was located just off the road we looked at yesterday. Like many of the old cemeteries we’ve looked at in the Weldon Spring area, it was for family, and relatively small, though this one is even smaller than usual. The easiest gravestone to read was that of Mathilda Roth, wife of William.
Northern Reaches, Bellefontaine Cemetery, Late December 2025
Up near the northern fence line, we came across some of the oldest clusters of graves with a large number of limestone grave stones. We were very interested. We also saw some iconography we had never seen before, of a spirit floating over an opened gate, surely representing a soul passing through the gates of…
Mausolea and Tumuli, Bellefontaine Cemetery, Late December 2025
The Busch Mausoleum was looking beautiful with a cloudless sky framing it as we looked at some mausolea. The Farrar “mausoleum” actually holds a crypt below the floor of the colonnade. If you move the stone back, it slides on these tracks. Very nice. This is one of the oldest large-scale monuments in the cemetery….
Obelisks, Bellefontaine Cemetery, Late December 2025
Let’s look at some obelisks, which go all the way back to Egyptian architecture and religion. You can read about their religious significance in ancient Egypt here. The Romans were famous for stealing Egyptian obelisks and setting them up in temples in Rome, particularly at the Iseum in the Campus Martius. This obelisk group of…