Bellefontaine Cemetery, Part Four

BIG NEWS! In honor of passing the 150,000 lifetime pageviews mark, the 5 year anniversary of this site, and our first actual dollars in hand, we decided to have a party! This blog would not be what it is today if it weren't for my husband's reddit addiction, so as something of a thank you *cough* to the good people of r/stlouis, we're going to have a City Museum meetup! You love the City Museum, right? Everyone loves to recommend it to tourists, and yet I've never done a proper blog on it. Since it's about the farthest thing from "lesser known" in St Louis, other than the Arch, I want to add a challenge. I've always wanted to do a collaborative blog post, and I always said that if I got around to a City Museum post, I'd have to do something different, like extreme closeups. So for this project, I want to see what kind of twist you put on City Museum pictures, and I'll post 25 of them here (with credit, of course). We're going to meet up at 7pm on June 1 on the roof, ok? Admission for the museum + roof after 5 pm is $15. Mark your calendar and tell your friends!

Since there was a lot of chatter about Bellefontaine Cemetery yesterday, it reminded me that I kind of left my walking tour project in the dust after parts one, two, and three. How about some more learnin' about famous dead people? I left off at #10, the Busch mausoleum. Above is #11, Captain Isaiah Sellers, who piloted riverboats on the Mississippi for 40 years. Samuel Clemens got his pseudonym Mark Twain from Sellers, who used it first.

#12 - Henry T Blow's parents were the first owners of the famous slave Dred Scott (in Virginia, later selling him to Dr John Emerson), but Henry Blow helped pay for Scott's lawyers when he sued for his freedom. Blow made his fortune in mining, and his daughter Susan Blow founded the first public kindergarten in the country. Fun Fact: Henry Blow moved to the city of Carondelet after the Great Fire of 1849, and Franceth Manor is located on what was once Blow farmland. Des Peres School, home of the first kindergarten, is now the Carondelet Historical Society, down the street from our house.

#13 is William Clark, which I covered in part 3. #14, above, is the original Hempstead family burial ground. Bellefontaine Cemetery's original acreage included the Hempstead farm and graveyard, purchased in 1849.

#15, Brigadier General Richard Mason, was also covered in part 3. Above is #16, the mausoleum of George Taylor, once president of the Pacific Railroad. The mausoleum is architecturally significant because it was designed by George I Barnett, the first licensed architect in the United States. He designed many famous buildings in St Louis, including Henry Shaw's Tower Grove House (now part of the Missouri Botanical Garden) and the Old Courthouse.

#17 is General Sterling Price, governor of Missouri from 1852-1857.

#18 Samuel Gaty's plot is architecturally significant because the stones surrounding the circular plot, represent the life of man, and the monument in the center has a carvings on each side representing the four seasons.

#19 is one of the most iconic monuments in Bellefontaine Cemetery. You've probably seen it in photos before. Kate Brewington Bennett was the wife of one of the original trustees of the cemetery and a renowned pale-skinned beauty of the day. She died suddenly at age 37 of arsenic poisoning, a beauty treatment at the time that killed many women.

#20 William Sublette, fur trader and mountain man, partner of Robert Campbell (#5 - see part two) in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trading Company and Sublette & Campbell.

#21 shows me that I learned some things about photography since 2011, despite my best efforts to remain ignorant and let my husband handle the fancy camera. Ouch. You can't tell without zooming in, but this is the plot of Edgar Ames, a St Louis civic leader of the mid-1800s.

And on that note, I'm going to wrap up this round. The photos only get worse from here, so I think I'll make it a point to visit again sometime soon for a fresh batch or a new tour. I know some Bellefontaine people read the blog, so maybe someone can tell us what's new in April!