Calvary Cemetery St Louis, Missouri
He is seen no more. Because God hath taken him.
_
While wandering through the beauty of St. Louis’ Calvary Cemetery, gazing around at the rolling hills covered with trees and mausoleums and sculptures of angels and obelisks, you might be taken aback to suddenly come upon a stone monument of a baby girl in her crib holding a rattle, and alongside of that, a monument of a boy in a wheelchair. But when you know the story behind the stone, you may look at them in a very different way, maybe even through the eyes of their grieving mother.
The baby girl in her crib marks the grave of Julia Olivia Gill Morrison, known to her family as Olivia. In 1870 at age 14 months she contracted the measles. Then her two older sisters, Adele and Virginia, came down with whooping cough which she caught from them, and died. Her monument has her sitting upright in her crib wearing a baby bonnet tied in a neat bow under her chin and holding a toy rattle, a blanket draped around her, with a small lamb at the foot of her crib, representing the innocence and purity of childhood.
Next to Olivia is the grave of her brother John B. Sarpy Morrison, called Sarpy by his family. He contracted scarlet fever and was ill for some time before it finally claimed his life in 1876 at age 6 years. His monument is that of a young well dressed boy sitting up in a wheelchair with a blanket tucked around his legs which had become weakened from prolonged illness. The look on his face seems thoughtful and more knowing than that of a typical 6 year old boy. There are clusters of grapes and grape vines around the back of his beautifully carved wheelchair, symbolizing the Christian faith, and also symbolizing fruit ready for the harvest; death and rebirth. The wheels on his chair are broken, representing the end of his life on earth.
Behind these monuments rises a tall obelisk, marking the graves of their parents, James Lowery Donaldson Morrison (1816-1888), and Adele Sarpy Morrison (1842-1925). Adele wrote a fascinating 206 page memoir of her life, in which she gives us insight into the grief she experienced at losing two of her beloved children. She wrote the memoir to her two surviving daughters, Adele and Virginia, who were the eldest.
Of Olivia’s death she wrote, “When after 14 months she was called away, I felt my mother’s heart tried as it had never been before. I bethought that going before us all, she would be the star that would illumine our pathway and greet us at Heaven’s portal. Mine was a very lonely heart until God sent me little brother.”
That little brother was Sarpy, who then died 6 years later, and Adele was devastated. For 5 years she went only to the graveyard and the church, or to visit the older two daughters away at school, and she wore dresses of deep mourning. Adele said of this time, “Can you wonder that the sap was taken from my life, when this, the hardest of all blows, was sent to me?” She felt helpless, and feared that God might smite her again by taking another of her children. She could not swallow solid food, and could not even shed a tear, until her Uncle, knowing how she loved music, sent a zither player to her home, and listening to the music she wept for the first time. She came to love the zither so much that later in her life she said that if anyone wanted her back after she had died, a zither played over her grave would have that effect.
The sadness of the many years of Adele’s frequent visits to her children’s graves still hangs in the air at the Morrison plot, but it is softened by knowing that this family is now forever reunited.
Strange Graves is a series by the Mourning Society of St Louis featuring St Louis’ beautiful, strange and historic burials. Post contributed by Edna Dieterle.