Glencoe Historical Society
at the
Eklund History Center & Garden

Ellen Shubart leads the cemetery walk.

Residents braved the cooler-than-normal temperatures Sunday (May 18, 2008) to learn about early Glencoe history at a historical society-sponsored walk through the Daggitt Cemetery.

Leaving the Eklund History Center and traveling on bikes, the group joined others at the site. Twenty people trooped through the cemetery, on land first owned by Robert Daggitt, that sits along Lake-Cook (formerly County Line) Road in Highland Park.

Daggitt, a large landowner farmer in the area, began the cemetery in 1847 when two of his daughters died of tuberculosis. He allowed his neighbors to inter their children, too, for a fee of $1. Many children died in the early decades of settlement—1850s through the 1890s—due to illness and accidents such as falling out of a tree. The lifespan of children, as seen by the ages of those buried in the cemetery, was often quite short. Daggitt later chartered the cemetery from the State of Illinois.

In 1862, he turned the cemetery over to the Lutheran Church, which at the time was located along Green Bay Rd. near Lake-Cook. The church later split into two, Trinity Lutheran in Glencoe and Grace Lutheran in Highland Park. The latter has given its name to the cemetery as well. Lutherans in the area were predominately of German ancestry, which is why so many of the gravestones are written in German, noted Ellen Shubart, tour guide.

The largest area in the cemetery belongs to the Daggitt plot, with a cenotaph in the center, topped by a draped globe. Other Daggitt graves are in the northern end of the one-acre cemetery. Other families have their plots near one another, with the areas for the families set off by stones marked with the family initial in the four corners of the plots.

Many of the cemetery graves incorporate traditional Victorian symbols, including clasped hands for marriage, flowers that symbolized purity, or tree trunks that symbolized the brevity of life.

Following the tour—and a short scavenger hunt looking for symbols, grave shapes and indications that some graves made of materials such as granite last far better in the weather than the early grave markers made of soft sandstone—the group welcomed hot drinks and cookies.

The cemetery today is owned and maintained by Lake County’s Deerfield Township, which took control in the mid-1990s.

The Glencoe Historical Society sponsors many activities throughout the year. The next free event is the Strawberry Sociable on June 8, in the Eklund Garden at 377 Park Avenue. Join us in welcoming in summer with a menu that will consist of “everything strawberries.”