Almost Wordless Wednesday

Danker and Duntemann women on the Danker Farm.
Riverview, Illinois (Now Des Plaines, Illinois)
Henrietta Danker is wearing the plaid dress.
Her mother, Julia, has a hat on.
about 1915

Christian and Millizena Duntemann

On Thursday, November 10, 2011, Johann Carl Christian Duntemann and Millizena Duntemann nee Erdmann and an unknown angel were re-interred. Burial took place at the Town of Maine Cemetery, Park Ridge, Illinois. Representatives of the City of Chicago were present. Pastor Virginia Ericson of Christ Church, Des Plaines, Illinois led the family in prayer.

While my first choice would have been to keep the cemetery in place, I must admit that everything was done respectfully.

You Can't Stop Progress

St. Johannes Cemetery has been front and center in the battle over the 

O’Hare International Airport Expansion Project. This 160 year-old cemetery is home to 1,200 graves. [1]

German immigrants settled the lands of Du Page County just northwest of the City of Chicago. They were farmers. My great, great, great grandparents were part of this immigrant group.  As this small community grew so did the need for a place of worship. St. Johannes Church was built.  Soon the need for a cemetery presented itself and St. Johannes Cemetery was created.

You can’t stop progress! A small airport, Orchard Place, was in need of expansion. The church sold land to the City of Chicago for the airport expansion. In 1952 St. Johannes Church was picked up and moved to the community of Bensenville. Orchard Place Airport received a new name. O’Hare Airport had arrived! The cross in the cemetery marks the location of the original church.[2]

This is a very long and complicated story involving many court battles. The airport continued growing and eventually surrounded this tiny cemetery. Today O’Hare International Airport is in the final stages of its expansion project. On October 28, 2011 Chicago’s ABC News reported the exhumation of the 900 graves. [3]

Johann Carl Christian Duntemann passed away on 13 June 1863. His wife, Millizena Duntemann nee Erdmann,  passed away on 30 December 1896. It is likely their remains are not intact. Christian and Millizena Duntemann will be reinterred November 10, 2011. I wonder where my great, great, great grandparents graves are right now.

You just can’t stop progress!

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[1] Johnson, Geoffrey, “Dead Reckoning,” Chicago, October 2009, 58-65.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Report: 900 Graves exhumed for O’Hare Runway,” WLS-TV/DT, 28 October 2011; e-news

(http://www.abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8409281 : accessed 6 November 2011.)