Saturday, September 10, 10 a.m.

(Rain date: 10 a.m. Sunday, September 11)

Northern portion of Oakdale Cemetery from Hall St.

Tour Guide, Thomas R. Dilley

During September, your first opportunity to walk for history will be in Oakhill Cemetery. More than 150 years old, Oakhill is the grandest of the city's historic cemeteries and includes elaborate monuments built for many of the city's important citizens. Tour guide Thomas R. Dilley says that the stories behind these memorials feature several remarkable women who commissioned monuments in an Egyptian Revival style considered pagan and inappropriate for Christian burial by the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries religious establishment (nearly all male). This style in burial settings arose and briefly flowered on the East Coast, but it was uncommon in the Midwest and unknown in the conservative South. Yet, of the four actual Egyptian Revival structures in Grand Rapids, three were commissioned by women.

Hayden Mausoleum

On his tour of their final resting places, Mr. Dilley will theorize about why these women commissioned their monuments. One, Alice Hayden, was the driving force behind her family's Egyptian Revival mausoleum located near the center of Oakhill. She was a litigant in the fascinating and famous Jockey Brown trial of 1892, in which two sisters fought over their father's legacy. The money Alice won eventually built the Brown Home for Aged Women, now the Abney Academy, on Fulton Street.

Another story features Mrs. Amasa B. Watson, widow of a Civil War colonel, who also built a massive Egyptian Revival structure at the cemetery. She survived her husband by more than a decade and was much beloved by many local veterans who made up the Watson Post of the Grand Army of the Republic. Mrs. Watson and her husband now repose in the largest mausoleum in the city, one of the largest in the state.

In the case of severe weather, the rain date is Sunday, September 11^th at 10 a.m. Postponement or cancellation will be announced on the GRHS Facebook page. Their webpage is at www.grhistory.org