A Family Outing

Tom and I met Sister Sharon and Brother Jim at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois the other day. Armed with a list of the names of almost 50 deceased family members, a lawn edger, broom, brush and  bucket we began our quest. Our purpose was to find, spruce up and photograph as many gravestones as possible and to fill in some information that was missing on the list. Our first stop was the kiosk in the office that contains a database of burials in the Chicago Archdiocese, where we looked up the names of individuals that had blanks on the list.  There were only four names that were not on the database, however, we came up with three more that were not on the list and now have their information.  We then prioritized the graves to find and plotted those on maps of Queen of Heaven and neighboring Mt. Carmel. 

We set out with maps in hand first to find the “easy” graves, in Mt. Carmel, the ones we remembered visiting on yearly Memorial Day treks to the cemeteries. We found our Grandparents, Domenico and Pearl, Mom’s Uncle Jimmy and her sister Julia (both in the same grave) and our Uncle Jimmy in the military section.  Jim edged the gravestones, Sharon and I brushed the stones and then Jim and I took photos of each one. “Chauffeur,” Tom, took us from section to section and moved the van as we meandered around.

 

 

 

 

 

Now things got tough. There were only three more we wanted to find, but with difficulties finding block and lot markers and deteriorated or lack of gravestones, we had limited success.  We did find Grandmother Pearl’s sister, Mary (Marchese).  She wasn’t on our list but while looking for one of her uncles we came across the Marchese monument one row in from the road.  It was nice to see a pot of flowers placed near the monument.  However, we never did find the uncle we were looking for.  

Moving on to another section, we spread out to cover more ground, checking gravestones and searching for markers, but no luck finding our great-great-Grandfather Francesco Scolaro or his son Frank C. (in same grave) or baby James Giunta or his sister Jenny (in same grave).

We did find great-great Uncle Antonino Scolaro, his wife Rose, their son Anthony T. and his wife, Gloria and another son, Frank all in one plot under a large “Scolaro” monument.  Antonino was a fruit peddler and his sons Anthony and Michael continued the business,expanding it into Scolaro Brothers Produce, South Water Street Market.

At Queen of Heaven we trimmed and scrubbed the graves of our parents Leo and Julia Studlo and those of our aunt and uncle, Mildred and Dominick “Dutch” Columbatto.

So while we didn’t find everyone we were looking for, we did fill in many blanks on the list, we were able to fill in 15 grave locations, eight burial dates and confirmed that James Giunta born in 1910 and died at one month and Jenny Giunta were, in fact, siblings as they were buried in the same grave.  Not a bad day.