October 2011
The Lexington Abbey
The following reprint is the article our volunteer John Colclasure wrote for the Lexingtonian newspaper this month. We decided to reprint it on the web page for those who may be too far away to read the Lexington weekly newspaper and to share a memory and mystery from log ago. Enjoy!
Standing upon the hallowed ground of the Lexington Cemetery, one could almost imagine the beautiful mausoleum that once stood in that very spot over nine decades ago. The year was 1914 and the Lexington Cemetery Association embarked upon a vision of erecting a building of beauty, elegance, strength, grandeur, and sacred purpose, fronting on a beautiful park with flowers and fragrant shrubs, fine walks, and drives.
The Lexington Journal recorded the announcement of the associations plan in its publication of March, 1914. The location where I stood earlier this week is a gentle elevation that once overlooked a “panorama of beautiful and picturesque scenery.” With its outer walls constructed of indestructible material consisting of granite-faced concrete block, the inner walls and catacombs of reinforced concrete and finished inside with polished marble, as nearly as pure white as possible, it must have been a sight to behold. The interior of the abbey leading to the right and the left of the chapel, like unto a marble palace, were two long corridors with a capacity of between 200 and 300 catacombs. The Elmwood Mausoleum Company promoted the sales of nearly 200 catacombs at $135 each, dependant somewhat on location, and the rest, as they say, is history.
But what became of this building, the contents, and “the heads” were questions put to me by Linda Lanzer, a volunteer with the Lexington Genealogical and Historical Society. Linda is a daily volunteer at “The Fort” and one of her many tasks is to encourage genealogy, promote local history, and assist others in gathering genealogical and historical information. So for a former detective, answers to Linda’s questions shouldn’t have been all that hard to answer, given modern technology and the internet.
However, in the process of scouring internet sites, most helpful was our own resource, “The Fort.” One of the newest volunteers at “The Fort” was Pati Pease, who provided a copy of the Lexington Unit Journal dated March 1914 and a photo regarding the “Lexington Abbey.”
The Lexington Cemetery Association of 1914 consisted of A. J. Scrogin. George W. Hiser, J.N. Franklin, W.R. Mahan, J.W. VanDolah, William McNaught, and L.S. VanDolah, trustees, thus a logical starting point seemed to be with the ancestors of Franklin and VanDolah. I met briefly with John Franklin and later with John Cheever, a current trustee of the Cemetery Association. He thought the abbey was torn down sometime in the 1960’s. He added that the location was on the hill at the far west side of the cemetery and that the mausoleum was deteriorating and in need of major repair and was torn down.
Later still, I had coffee with the “old codgers” and the consensus was that the abbey was torn down in 1967. John recalled that he had only been out there once when he was very little and has only limited memory of the building. John said that at one time there were two concrete steps that may have led up to the building and there was a partial border still there. Janice Elder related that she remembers being out to the cemetery for the funeral of a classmate and that there was the remnant of a foundation, but remembered more about how cold it was that day. One of the codgers told me that once upon a time during freshman initiation for the FFA, some of the boys were de-pantsed and locked inside the abbey, with their pants being hung on the flag pole. Unbeknownst to the boys, someone would be hiding in the back of the abbey and “scared the bejeebers” out of them. Bob Payne told me that he was one of those who had hidden in the back, with his green-hand and went BOOOOOOO…..
In the end the mausoleum was torn down because, as David VanDolah related, they never could make a go of it because the community didn’t use it. More often than not, folks were buried there, especially during the winter and the ground was frozen and then re-buried in the spring when the ground thawed. David said that he thought it was torn down in the 1960’s (confirmed by the “old codgers) as the building was looking bad with windows broken out, etc, but the structure was still very sturdy. So much so that Morris Tick was given an option to tear it down. The mausoleum was demolished with all of the re-bar and the steel separated and laid into piles on a Thursday. Apparently sometime on Sunday, person(s) unknown stole all of the piles and were never found out.
Yet some of the mystery remains after forty-four years. What became of the materials? What became of all the occupants of the catacombs? Who was the baby with no name? And what became of “the Heads?”