Inez Briggs/Clark/???
The Sinking of the Lady Elgin & A Forgotten Cemetery in Highwood, IL
by E. Smith
In January 1855, land along the bluffs of Port Clinton, Illinois was deeded for the purpose of building a lighthouse. This lighthouse, manned by Owen Monahan, had a brief life. By 1860, the light was turned off, despite Monahan's continued residency and protests to keep it lit. Perhaps, if it had illuminated the dark lake, two ships could have passed in the night without initiating the greatest maritime lost of life on Lake Michigan.
During the dead of night on 7 September 1860 a group of around 400 passengers were headed to Milwaukee aboard the steamer Lady Elgin. Several passengers had been on a military exercise, and many others had come down to Chicago to see Senator Stephen A. Douglas debate Abraham Lincoln. The ship’s log included firemen and police, a member of the British Parliament and his son, the proprietor of the London paper Illustrated News, military officers, the Milwaukee City Band, and many families and their children.
It was a rough night out on Lake Michigan with strong winds and large swells. While a handful of people were still awake, many had gone to sleep in the crowded cabins aboard the ship. Just around 2:30 a.m. passengers were awoken by the startling sound of a crash. The crew was shocked to see a schooner abreast to the Lady Elgin, but they could not tell if the schooner was in need of assistance or if anything else had happened to her. The schooner disappear into the dark waves just as quickly as it has appeared; without ever communicating with the steamer. One of the Lady Elgin’s fire crew notified the Captain Jack Wilson of a leak; which was then stopped up and presumed safe. A porter was going through the ship to check for further damage and noticed water flooding into the engine room within feet of the furnaces. He ran to tell Captain Wilson, who ordered they lower a boat to come around the outside of steamer and further assess the damage. As they entered the water, some alarmed passengers jumped from the steamer and scrambled aboard the small boat. Due to the swells, instead of coming alongside the Lady Elgin, they were pushed towards shore; this proved to be their salvation. As they drifted off, they saw the ship listing and rolling before it sinking below the angry waters.
The small boat came ashore in Winnetka, soon followed by individuals on makeshift rafts or at the mercy of the lake’s current; though most were no longer alive. The schooner which had collided with the Lady Elgin, the Augusta, reached Chicago only to be met with shock when hearing the fate of the steamer they had “passed by”. Nearly all lives from the Lady Elgin had been lost in the early hours of 8 September 1860. Teams of men and women had assembled on the shores of the Winnetka bluffs, pulling people and bodies in from the waves. A make-shift hospital was set up in the houses of John Gage and Artemas Carter to care for the wounded passengers. According to one source from 1941, a number of bodies were allegedly buried in hastily-dug graves on the properties of the two men; though, this is highly unlikely given the logistics and need to identify the bodies. The dead were taken to the City Hall and laid out in order to be identified; the majority of whom were returned home to Wisconsin and interred in Milwaukee.
Over the next several weeks and months into at least November, some 269 bodies of lost passengers would come ashore around the coast of the lake from Sheboygan, Wisconsin around the lake to near Grand Haven, Michigan. By then, many could not be identified, and were buried in cemeteries nearby as unknowns. Upwards of 100 others were never found.
While many of the unfortunate passengers came ashore in Winnetka, even more drifted to the bluffs near the extinguished lighthouse in Port Clinton. Most of the bodies were claimed; except for a younger woman clad in black silk and gold jewelry, an infant girl (romanticized to be the daughter of the woman in black), and three men. This group of five—though there may have been more—was buried in an old graveyard of early settlers by local carpenter and trapper, Henry Mowers. By 1899, the graves of early pioneers had been removed to another cemetery and the location had become a cow pasture covered in rubbish. Still, the five graves of the unknown from the Lady Elgin remained.
Whether or not they were ever disinterred is a mystery. The exact location is also not certain, but it was located in section of a somewhat developed, but forgotten part of Port Clinton amidst a wooded area and pastures; today part of north Highland Park and south Highwood. From the location of the graveyard, "due east as the crow flies, within the half mile" was the old lighthouse. The image included here of the graveyard's location today is approximate, based on the best-known location of the long-gone lighthouse and a diagram from a local historical society.
Today the last remnants of the wreck of the Lady Elgin sit at the bottom of Lake Michigan off Highwood. The site has been privately owned since being discovered in 1989; 129 years after that fateful night. Of the many graves of unknown passengers scatted in cemeteries around the bend of the lake, this small graveyard in Highwood, like the ship herself, has faded from thought and sight. Though precious few historical artifacts of this place remain, those five whose names were lost to the lake are remembered here.
Sources Used:
● "Graves of Lady Elgin Dead Desecrated", Chicago Sunday Tribune (26 Mar. 1899)
● "Illustrated atlas of Lake County", map (Chicago: H.R. Page & Co., 1885)
● Lora Townsend Dickinson, The Story of Winnetka (Winnetka: Winnetka Historical Society, 1956)
● "Loss of the Steamer Lady Elgin", The Press Tribune (8 Sept. 1860)
● "Part of Highland Park & Fort Sheridan and Environs", map (Chicago: George A. Ogle & Co., 1907)
● Scott Bundschuh, "Port Clinton Lighthouse Story", found on blog "Great Lakes Lighthouse Historian"
● Terry Pepper, "Port Clinton Lighthouse", found on blog "Seeing the Light: Lighthouses of the western Great Lakes" (2012)
Photograph Descriptions:
Top: "Wreck of the Lady Elgin" painting by Gary Sheahan; located at the Winnetka Historical Society
Middle: A view looking northeast at Lake Michigan where the initial collision would have occurred; picture taken nearby the site of the former Port Clinton lighthouse
Bottom: A photograph of the graveyard from the The Chicago Sunday Tribune, 26 March 1899 (p. C1); below is a photograph of the approximate location of the forgotten graveyard today
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