George Baseleon, “Salty Sam”, of the 1960s television program, “The Salty Sam Show”, are among the well-known Peorians interred in Springdale Cemetery. Stanley Lonergan, “Captain Jinks”, was not buried with Baseleon, though he was memorialized with him. In the background is the obelisk of Moses Pettengill, d. 1883, who is most remembered for his involvement in the Underground Railroad network.  (Photo by Holly Eitenmiller / for Chronicle Media)

When Elizabeth Shippe was 22, she embarked on a multistate crime spree that ended after a high-speed police chase on April 4, 1961. She, her infant daughter Rhonda Lee and her teen lover, Ronald Coates, died in Tennessee when their car struck a tree and burst into flames.

Shippe is among more than 70,000 people buried, inurned or memorialized at Springdale Cemetery and Mausoleum. Burials began in May 1857, when, first, bodies from a small Peoria cemetery were moved there. Infant Lucy McReynolds Pyng, June 5, 1857, was among those first buried at the cemetery after the bodies were moved.

“Shippe was living in Peoria and married to an older man. She met Richwoods High School student Ronald Coates and fell in love. He was 17,” Laurel Ellis of Prairie Folklore Theatre said. “They went on a spree all the way down to Florida, robbing gas stations, jewelry stores. They didn’t kill anyone, but they were armed.”

Ellis produces the theater’s annual Historic Springdale Cemetery Walk, where actors portray Peoria’s departed. Her father, storyteller Brian Fox Ellis, began hosting cemetery walks in 2002 and passed its production to her in 2015. The walks are scheduled each year for the first two full weekends in October.

“We’ve done Lydia Moss Bradley, Judge Purple, Jane Flanagin,” said Ellis, who, once portrayed Margaret Bradley, one of Lydia Moss Bradley’s six children, all of whom died before the age of 21. “But every year we have at least a few people who tell us about someone buried in the cemetery, they’ll share tidbits about that person, then we follow up by going through old newspapers and books.”

That’s how Ellis discovered the story of Shippe, and many others who are not necessarily well known people from Peoria’s past. This year, actor Sam Lin portrayed Jay Larry Daniels, a boy who drowned, along with his father, in the Illinois River on Memorial Day 1941.

“He couldn’t swim, his father tried to save him, but he couldn’t swim either.  Around 100 people witnessed the accident, and they couldn’t swim,” Ellis explained. “When they found them, his father had him wrapped in his arms.”

Not all of the Springdale stories are as tragic as that of Shippe and Daniels. Lucille “Sid” Eslinger, 1922 – 2011, played by Clare Zell, was the lead pitcher for the Caterpillar Dieselettes baseball team in the 1940s.

Among those portrayed this year during the 15th annual Historic Springdale Cemetery Tour were Dr. Ward Eastman, Mary Trefzger Hurd and Lucille “Sid” Eslinger, who played baseball nationally in the early 1940s with the Caterpillar Dieselettes. Top left to right; Bill Homel, Sam Lin, Monica Lin, Chip Joyce. Bottom left to right; Amanda Maddalozzo, producer Laurel Ellis, co-producer Ben Abbott, and Clare Zell. (Photo by Laurel Ellis)

Actor Chip Joyce portrayed U.S. Navy veteran Dr. Philip Weinberg, 1925 – 2012, who was responsible for bringing public broadcasting to Peoria. He later served as dean at Bradley University.
“Most of the time, you can’t just use Google to look up the people in Springdale, you really have to do research and talk to people who really know the cemetery,” Ellis said. “Linda Aylward at the Peoria Public Library, she knows the cemetery like the back of her hand.”

Former Springdale Cemetery manager Pat Lewis is another who has dedicated years of research to the historic burial grounds.

“The cemetery is a laboratory of learning,” Lewis said. “The history that she has, it’s the history of Peoria and our world. We have veterans of the Revolutionary War there, and, within 150 paces there’s the place for Charles Chan, who was killed in the World Trade centers on Sept. 11 2001).”

Mormon missionaries often visit the grave of former Illinois governor Thomas Ford, 1800-50. Interred in the Rose Hill graveyard. Ford, he said, made a deal with the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, to surrender to officials in Carthage, and is considered the “Pontius Pilot of the Mormon church.”

“I’m writing a book on the history of Springdale. There’s around 72,000 people there and every one of those people could be a chapter in a book,” he said. “I’d like to see the stories of these people digitized and put on a computer system. They’re not just a part of the cemetery, they’re a part of history.

The 239-acre cemetery features more than 50 burial areas with names like “Sermon on the Mount”, “Spring Point” and “Soldier’s Hill”.

During the summer of 2016, Peoria artist Don Kettleborough volunteered to paint the Zotz mausoleum, one of Springdale Cemetery’s oldest private mausoleums. His work so impressed the cemetery foundation board of directors, they commissioned the artist to paint the Hall and Winkelmeyer mausoleums. Kettleborough employs trompe-l’oeil, a painting technique that creates a three-dimensional illusion. (Photo by Holly Eitenmiller / for Chronicle Media)

There also is a special place for infants called “Babyland”, and many beloved pets have been laid to rest in Whispering Woods Pet Cemetery. When lions Boomer and Leah died in 2006, Peoria Zoo officials had them interred in Whispering Woods.

Springdale Cemetery is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, and is also casually considered a museum, game preserve, park and library. Weekly, hundreds of visitors walk the cemetery’s six miles of roadways, which wind through hillsides, valleys and flatlands, some of which overlook the Illinois River.

A comprehensive map of the grounds is available at the cemetery offices, located through the main gate at 3014 N. Prospect Road. The map also features vignettes of many of the well-known people buried there, and a brief history of the cemetery.

The map and additional information is also available at www.springdalecemetery.com. To learn more about Prairie Folklore Theatre, as well as a calendar of events, visit www.prairiefolkloretheater.com/.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Show me first the graveyards of a country, and I will tell you the true character of the people.”

— Peoria area Springdale Cemetery holds stories about community’s history —