I didn't plan for it to happen, but, this summer, my fairly new interest in visiting famous gravesites combined with my fairly old interest in the beauty of old cemeteries, and I found myself, on roadtrips, investigating which famous people were buried nearby. It might be a macabre interest, but I also think it's a healthy one: it allows these people to still be in our consciousness, by honoring them by visiting their graves. It's kind of a reason to learn about their lives and reflect about them.
I've enjoyed the things that I have learned. This summer,
I discovered that Babe Ruth's mom is buried just steps from my house, and lived a tough life and was buried in an unmarked grave until decades after she died, even though she was the mother of one of the most famous men in the world. I was able to visit the unkempt grave of a personal hero of mine, as well as a literary allusion in one of my favorite works of literature to teach,
Fences,
when I visited Josh Gibson's grave in Pittsburgh. I learned that Mark Twain and Harriet Tubman, both associated more with the south, are buried in upstate New York; I learned that Kirsten Pfaff and Rick James are neighbors in an old, beautiful cemetery in Buffalo.
I was perhaps most surprised by the grave of Sojourner Truth. I've taught her "Ain't I a Woman?" speech before, a brilliant and powerful extemporaneous speech delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention, but I did not know much beyond that. I certainly did not know that she spent the last few decades of her life only an hour from where I grew up, in Battle Creek, MI, a city that I've driven through my whole life. I don't know if I've ever actually stopped there, in my treks from southwest Michigan to Detroit, but I always knew that Battle Creek meant I was about an hour away from home, and, of course, that it was the Cereal Capital of the world (Kellogg's cereal was founded there, and is still manufactured there).
It turns out that Sojourner Truth lived in Battle Creek from 1857 (she would have been about 60 years old) until her death in 1883. Besides giving the famous speech in Ohio (which, ironically, is known by a phrase which Sojourner never used... it was re-written to give her a southern dialect, but she was from the north), she worked tirelessly for years, traveling the country fighting for abolition of slavery, for women's suffrage, and against capital punishment. I've been reading about her (want to read more), but various accounts of her was that she was fierce and funny, always speaking truth to power and consistently playing games with her audience about her age, which is one reason her memorial marker says she was aged around 105 (when actually she was around 86 at the time of her death).
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| Gates to Oak Hill Cemetery |
Sojourner Truth is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Battle Creek, MI, only about 5 minutes off I-94 (so it worked out that I could visit, even on a particularly rushed trip home to Baltimore from southwest Michigan). The other famous residents of this cemetery are the inventors of breakfast cereal, the Kelloggs, who are buried about 100 yards from Ms. Truth. This is kind of cool, because one of the co-inventors of cereal, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, was a doctor who reportedly grafted
his own skin onto Sojourner Truth's legs when she was suffering from painful ulcers during the last year of her life, in 1887. Later, Dr. Kellogg invented breakfast cereal with his brother, Will Keith Kellogg.
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| Sojourner Truth: Renowned Lecturer and Reformer who campaigned Anti-Slavery, Rights of Women, and the Freedmen, rests here. Beside her lie two of her five children: Elizabeth Banks Boyd, Died, Jan. 6, 1893. Diana Corbin. Died, Oct. 23, 2004 and two grandsons. Samuel Banks. Died Feb. 24, 1875. William F. Boyd. Died: Nov. 3, 1987. |
I arrived at Oak Hill Cemetery shortly after it opened, and was the only one around. I found the Sojourner Truth marker fairly easily; it is near the entrance, and features both a sign and a large headstone. The headstone reads, "In Memoriam, Sojourner Truth, Born a Slave in Ulster co. NY, Died in Battle Creek, Mich, Nov. 26 1883, Aged About 105 Years 'Is God Dead'" The quote comes from a confrontation between Sojourner and Frederick Douglass; Douglass was in the middle of a despondent speech about the plight of slaves not being saved by God. Sojourner jumped up, interrupted his speech, and asked him, "Frederick, is God dead?" This rescued him from his despair.
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| Older headstones around Sojourner Truth's |
About 100 yards from the Sojourner Truth burial site is the site of the Kellogg family's burial plot. Theirs is slightly quirky, with the Kellogg's logo engraved into the fence around the graves, and a sundial with the quote "The early bird gets the worm" in the middle of the plots.
Overall, Oak Hill Cemetery is a nicely maintained cemetery, shady and peaceful, and I'm glad to learn more about my home state. Next time I'm around, I hope to visit more of the Sojourner Truth sites they have in town, including her house and a statue monument in town.
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| Sojourner Truth memorial |
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| The Kellogg family plot. |
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| Note the K logo for Kellogg Cereal. |
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| The inventor of breakfast cereal. |
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| Sundial in the middle of the Kellogg graves. |
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| Crying Mary, which is a famous gravemarker here. Apparently local teens say it cries at midnight. (That's my puppy. She jumped out of the car and did not go to the bathroom, I swear.) |
from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2aPJX2m Visiting the Final Resting Spots of Sojourner Truth and the Kellogg family in Battle Creek, MI -
Entrepreneur Generations
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