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Book Cover
E-book
Author Lillie, Robin M

Title Dubuque's forgotten cemetery : excavating a nineteenth century burial ground in a twenty-first century city / Robin M. Lillie and Jennifer E. Mack
Published Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, 2015

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Description 1 online resource
Series Iowa and the Midwest Experience
Iowa and the Midwest experience.
Contents The story unravels -- Lead in the bluffs, 1833/1880 -- Slumbering on the bluff -- Abandoned to desecration, 1880/2013 -- The untold story -- The things they took with them -- Humanizing the people of Third Street -- The kind-hearted gunsmith's family -- The brickmaker's unfortunate family -- Conjured from paper and stone -- Forgetting and remembering the dead -- Mediating for the dead -- Continuity of care -- The persistence of myth
Summary Atop a scenic bluff overlooking the Mississippi River and downtown Dubuque there once lay a graveyard dating to the 1830s, the earliest days of American settlement in Iowa. Though many local residents knew the property had once been a Catholic burial ground, they believed the graves had been moved to a new cemetery in the late nineteenth century in response to overcrowding and changing burial customs. But in 2007, when a developer broke ground for a new condominium complex here, the heavy machinery unearthed human bones. Clearly, some of Dubuque's early settlers still rested there-in fact, more than anyone expected. For the next four years, staff with the Burials Program of the University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist excavated the site so that development could proceed. The excavation fieldwork was just the beginning. Once the digging was done each summer, skeletal biologist Robin M. Lillie and archaeologist Jennifer E. Mack still faced the enormous task of teasing out life histories from fragile bones, disintegrating artifacts, and the decaying wooden coffins the families had chosen for the deceased. Poring over scant documents and sifting through old newspapers, they pieced together the story of the cemetery and its residents, a story often surprising and poignant. Weaving together science, history, and local mythology, the tale of the Third Street Cemetery provides a fascinating glimpse into Dubuque's early years, the hardships its settlers endured, and the difficulties they did not survive. While they worked, Lillie and Mack also grappled with the legal and ethical obligations of the living to the dead. These issues are increasingly urgent as more and more of America's unmarked (and marked) cemeteries are removed in the name of progress. Fans of forensic crime shows and novels will find here a real-world example of what can be
Learned from the fragments left in time's wake
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Third Street Cemetery (Dubuque, Iowa) -- History
SUBJECT Third Street Cemetery (Dubuque, Iowa) fast
Subject Excavations (Archaeology) -- Iowa -- Dubuque
Human remains (Archaeology) -- Iowa -- Dubuque
Catholics -- Iowa -- Dubuque -- History -- 19th century
Catholics -- Iowa -- Dubuque -- Social conditions -- 19th century
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Infrastructure.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- General.
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI)
Antiquities
Catholics
Catholics -- Social conditions
Excavations (Archaeology)
Human remains (Archaeology)
Social conditions
SUBJECT Dubuque (Iowa) -- Antiquities
Dubuque (Iowa) -- History -- 19th century
Dubuque (Iowa) -- Social conditions -- 19th century
Subject Iowa -- Dubuque
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
Author Mack, Jennifer E
ISBN 9781609383220
1609383222