For centuries, historians have examined the tombs of ancient rulers–such as Egypt’s pyramids–for clues to the past. But the cemeteries of the less exalted also tell tales.
In Lake County, the Grayslake Cemetery reveals facts about life in that small community in the mid-19th Century. Writing in the winter 1995 issue of The Historian, the newsletter of the Lake County Museum Association, Charlotte K. Renehan and Kathleen Starzec of the Grayslake Historical Society tell the story of that burial ground.
Inscriptions on many a headstone recount migration patterns of settlers, announce their deaths from epidemics, childbirth and the premature deaths of their children, probably from diseases that today are easily cured with a week of antibiotics.
Land for the cemetery was donated in 1863 to Grayslake by Lawrence and Maria Lease Fovor. One of the community’s earliest pioneers, Fovor came from Elyria, Ohio, to Grayslake in 1837. Fovor’s land holdings, some 400 acres, encompassed much of Grayslake.
In 1985, after many years during which care of the Grayslake Cemetery was neglected, the Grayslake Historical Society began a restoration program at the site. Fovor, who died in 1897, is buried in the cemetery he donated to his Grayslake friends and neighbors.
