Indiana cemetery is a lively place

INDIANAPOLIS — Seven women stand reverently in front of the grave marker of Albertina Allen Forrest. The women do not know her — she died in 1904 — but they are learning a bit about her as part of an art and architecture tour at Crown Hill Cemetery.

Tour guide Tom Davis reads a passage from an Alfred Lloyd Tennyson poem that has faded from the face of Forrest's sprawling monument. The statue of a weeping female — a "perpetual mourner," Davis said — kneels at the grave of the woman who died in her early 30s.

Forrest is one of more than 190,000 people buried in the cemetery. Among them are Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger, and President Benjamin Harrison, whose grave is one of the top tourist destinations in the cemetery.

The mix of historic figures and lush grounds draws 2,000 to 3,000 people a year to Crown Hill's public tours, generally offered twice monthly from March through November, said Marty Davis, public relations coordinator for the cemetery and the tour guide's wife. Thousands others, like Monte Stevenson, come on their own.

"I've been here many times," Stevenson said, standing along his bicycle on the cemetery's crown — an 842-foot-high hill. "I like coming here to ride, especially the hill."

The cemetery was founded in 1863 at the site of a former tree farm and nursery. Its first burial was in 1864.

Today, Crown Hill is home to more than 100 species of trees. About 25 miles of road and 4,000 trees lie within Crown Hill, which, at 555 acres, is one of the largest cemeteries in the country.

The grounds feature a Gothic Chapel built in the late 1800s and a burial plot including the remains of more than 1,600 Confederate soldiers who died in Indianapolis as prisoners of war. Their names are inscribed on 10 bronze plaques that make up a monument to those fallen.

"Everyone has the right to have their name over their grave," said Indianapolis Police Sgt. Steve Staletovich, who led a three-year project to get the prisoners' names added to the markers.

Mike Dooley, the cemetery's vice president of operations, started working at Crown Hill 30 years ago as assistant grounds supervisor. Since then, he's learned a lot about the people buried there.

"There's 190,000 people buried out here," Dooley said. "Every one of them has a story — we just don't know them all."

But some of the stories are well-known.

There's Dillinger, the Indianapolis-born bank robber who was killed in a shootout with FBI agents in 1934.