Disappearing gravestones
How trees are slowly overtaking two headstones in cemeteries.
People sometimes wind up dead and buried in anonymity. For August and Paulina Wichman, it’s more like anonymi-tree.
A maple tree planted between their graves a century ago has all but swallowed the large upright markers and left them unreadable.
The massive tree at St. Adalbert Cemetery on Milwaukee’s south side was cut down several years ago, but the rotting stump still encases the two red granite stones, one on each end.
Linda Jardee recently posted a photo of the unusual resting place on the Facebook page Old Milwaukee, hoping to learn more about it.
“I found this bizarre in such an interesting way,” she wrote.
I accepted the challenge and went over to St. Adalbert to take a look. If you enter on the 13th Street side a little north of Howard Avenue, the stump is slightly to the right and about six rows in from the fence in section E. You can’t miss it.
It’s the only one eating two gravestones.
“It’s one of our more original ones,” said Mike Myers, who runs maintenance at the cemetery. “Those stones and that tree grew together quite a few years ago.”
I also ran into grounds foreman Richard Reinhardt, who said, “It was that way ever since I started in 1987,” though the whole tree was still standing then. A large limb fell off, and the tree was taken down about five years ago.
But the stump could not be removed without damaging the monuments. Cemetery location manager Wayne Haase said he learned that from a tree expert.
“He said you might just have to let nature take its course,” Haase told me.
We dug into the cemetery records and looked up the names on the readable stones surrounding the tree graves. That led to the identities of the dearly departed under the stump stones.
August Wichman was buried June 27, 1914, and his wife, Paulina, joined him on July 26, 1924. A sketch of the plot indicates the opportunistic tree between them.
City directories from way back then show August, a laborer, and Paulina living in what’s now the area of S. 13th and W. Becher streets,
not far from the cemetery. The 1915 directory says August was 69 when he died on June 24, 1914.
They are buried in a lot purchased in 1894 by Leon Czapiewski. He was buried there in 1942, followed by his wife, Anna, in 1969. Presumably, they are relatives of the Wichmans. Leon paid $200 for perpetual care and would be shocked to see the tree gone wild today.
Haase said he’s unaware of anyone from the family ever calling the cemetery to complain about the tree or ask that it be removed. The years passed and the great maple kept slowly devouring the stones.
Facebook users mentioned a similar stone-tree mashup at Forest Home Cemetery, also on Milwaukee’s south side. With this one, you can read part of George Dittmar’s name on the portion of the marker not inside the tree trunk.
“It’s actually pretty cool looking. He’s been there for a long, long time,” said Garen Morris, a counselor at Forest Home who was kind enough to stop what he was doing, walk over to Section 17 to photograph the stone, and send it to me.
Bob Giese, who gives tours at Forest Home, said the Dittmar grave is part of the Halloween tour. George became ill and died in 1913 at age 4. Members of his family have been moved to another section of the cemetery, but George’s grave and stone were too tangled up with the tree to be relocated.
What have we learned today? You can’t take it with you, even in a large trunk. And when it comes time to decorate a grave, consider a nice geranium.