‘Truly history’: Restoration breathes new life into final resting place of Cook County’s only Revolutionary War veterans

Tucked in between one of the busiest Illinois tollways, a heavily traveled main street and a Nicor gas pipeline is the final resting place of some of the earliest settlers to what would become the Northwest suburbs.

“I call it a street-name cemetery, because you walk in the cemetery, and, ‘Oh, there’s Busses. Oh, there’s Cosmans,’” said Mary Arvidson, a genealogist and historian who has so far chronicled the life stories of about two-thirds of the 450 people interred at Elk Grove Cemetery.

Buried alongside German farmers of the early 19th century, former fire chiefs, police constables and other notable locals are two people Arvidson refers to as “patriots.” Indeed, Eli Skinner and Aaron Miner are the only two known Revolutionary War veterans buried in Cook County.

“You would think Cook County would have tons of them, and it doesn’t,” said Arvidson, a member of the Arlington Heights-based chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution, which is named for Skinner.

The Daughters — those who can trace their lineage to the early Americans who contributed to the Revolutionary War effort — have been marking the graves of Skinner and Miner at Elk Grove Cemetery at least since the 1930s. That’s the date of the earliest honorary plaques still there.

But Arvidson and fellow chapter member Jane Gregga’s efforts in more recent years — placing wreaths on the graves of all veterans and first responders in the wintertime — caught the attention of Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson, a former high school history teacher.

“When (Mary) started talking about the history of it, that got my thoughts going,” said Johnson, who about five years earlier purchased plots at the cemetery. “The more I went out there and looked at it, the more I thought, we got to fix this up, because this is truly history.”

With the OK of the private cemetery’s board of directors, village officials last year annexed the less-than-an-acre graveyard, gave it an address — 92 N. Arlington Heights Road — and launched a private fundraising campaign to pay for some $740,000 in renovations. The project included cleaning and repairing gravestones, new wrought iron fencing, signage, a fresh asphalt driveway entrance, landscaping, lights, benches and the cemetery’s first flagpole.

The flag that will be raised during a rededication ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday on the nation’s 250th anniversary is the classic Betsy Ross version, with 13 stars for the first 13 states.

Hailing from Massachusetts, Skinner was 14 when he enlisted in the local militia. Because of his young age, he was given the task of playing the flute-like fife instrument as soldiers marched into battle. He came to Illinois years after the war for its good farmland and died in 1851 at the age of 90.

Miner, from Connecticut, also served in a militia, and some records indicate his unit was under the command of George Washington at Long Island and White Plains, New York. He died in 1849 at the age of 92.

“It’s such history. And you don’t have that anywhere else,” said Johnson, who led the fundraising effort for the cemetery upgrades. “Think about it. All the city of Chicago — the millions of people that have lived there — not one Revolutionary War veteran is buried there. There’s two in all of Cook County — both in Elk Grove Village. Who would have ever thought that was possible? But it is. And that’s why it’s so historical.”

What may explain the rarity of Revolutionary War veterans’ grave sites in northeastern Illinois — there’s only a handful in Lake, DuPage and Kane counties — is that most of those who came westward after the war settled downstate, Arvidson said.

That’s where it’s more common to see gravestones and markers of patriots, she said.

Elk Grove Cemetery also is the final resting place of seven Civil War veterans, and two unknown soldiers, who Arvidson suspects also served in the Civil War.

She’s spent years digging into online databases, library records and newspaper archives to find out as much as she can about everyone buried there.

“Right now, I’m at two, 3-inch binders that are completely full, and I’m going to have to go to another one soon,” said Arvidson, who will talk more about the famous locals during the ceremony Saturday.

Mike Scharringhausen, board president of the Elk Grove Cemetery Association, has about 60 relatives buried there, and represents the sixth generation of his family that has called the Elk Grove area home. He remembers cutting the grass at the cemetery with his grandfather in the 1970s, but admits the historical significance of the place didn’t dawn on him in his youth.

The volunteer cemetery board — composed of other descendants of some of the area’s original farming families — didn’t have the funds for as large of an undertaking as the one envisioned by village officials and the Daughters.

“This was a little cemetery in the middle of a clover leaf. You wouldn’t expect to see anything going on with it,” Scharringhausen said. “What you see now is incredible from where it was a year and a half ago.”

For the rehab of the burial markers, Gregga recommended Stonehugger Cemetery Restoration, a Nashville, Indiana-based company that has repaired more than 42,000 gravestones, markers and monuments within dozens of pioneer cemeteries throughout the Midwest.

A five-person crew spent four weeks cleaning and repairing some 200 tombstones in Elk Grove last year, turning what was gray or black into a shining, bright white.

To wash the marble and limestone graves of centuries of dirt, lichen, algae, mold and mildew, they went grave by grave and sprayed on D/2 Biological Solution, then scrubbed with soft bristle brushes.

“Sometimes, it doesn’t look clean right away, but over time it does,” said Brittany Martinez, the company’s office manager whose husband, Raul, was foreman on the project. “It brightens up.”

The crew also discovered more than 20 submerged headstones, and epoxied others that were broken and fallen over.

About $70,000 is leftover from the fundraising campaign, and will be kept in reserve for future cemetery needs, Johnson said. He and Village Manager Matt Roan secured the donations from civic groups and businesses, including data centers and manufacturers in the town’s sprawling industrial park.

“The cemetery was in rough shape,” Johnson said. “We needed to take care of this because this is truly village history. … That is the history of this region. We owe our debt of gratitude for establishing what we enjoy today.”