Gone and All but Forgotten: An Overview of St Henry’s Cemetery (11S1742), East St. Louis, IL, 1866–1908

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

St. Henry’s Catholic Cemetery (11S1742) in East St. Louis, IL, was interring largely German and Irish individuals from 1866 to 1908. As part of growing urbanization and societal sanitation concerns, the cemetery was closed and buried individuals were supposedly relocated by 1926. By 1951, the Illinois National Guard Armory was constructed on the site and is still in use today. Despite historical testimony otherwise, test excavations carried out in 2018 by Wagner et al. (2019), revealed that not only did burials remain, but they were in various states of exhumation. Utility line replacement involving Phase III excavation on the site began in November of 2021. By the end of January 2022, a total of 71 features were identified through mechanical stripping, with 47 features excavated and 32 analyzed in the lab. Of the 47 excavated features, 36 were found to have human remains present (77%), suggesting a great number of burials persists despite claims of relocation. This presentation highlights the 32 burials analyzed to provide information on the burial status, burial container, demographics (age, sex, trauma, pathology), incidental, mortuary, and cultural artifacts associated with each grave. This cemetery provides a glimpse into mortuary practices during Victorian times in St. Louis.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36806.0