Cemeteries, Obituaries and Dead Ends

On Tuesday, August 4, we headed over to Lincoln Cemetery in Cook County, IL. This was done to locate the grave sites of several Atlas Family members.

View Larger Map

We were lucky to come up with at least the following headstone that featured three family members: Alma (Atlas) Singleton, David George Carter and Beatrice Singleton.

We hit a lot of dead ends trying to find the graves of a number of other family members, but plan to go back there before the end of the reunion to give it another shot.

After Lincoln Cemetery, we headed over to Mount Glenwood Cemetery to locate the grave of Shurden Atlas.

View Larger Map

We were told that we would have to be contacted regarding his grave as it had to be flagged by the staff there. They said this process would take a couple of days.

Throughout our cemetery visits there was a consistent theme. Each of these cemeteries was fielding a number of inquiries from family members of the deceased buried there because of the recent scandal at Burr Oak Cemetery, one of the oldest African American cemeteries in the area. One Atlas family member, Burl Singleton, was buried at Burr Oak, but as of tonight, it's unclear whether or not his grave was disturbed. He died in 1943.

After visiting with family, we were able to retrieve about 7 additional obituaries to be added to the family archive. They were for the following people: Christine Singleton, James Clyde Singleton, Karen Chalice Atlas, Donna Lynn Atlas, Ruby (Singleton) Carter, Ethel Mae (Atlas) Sparrow and Regina (Singleton) Hillman-Durr.

Tomorrow is the first official day of the 2009 Atlas Family Reunion. It is hoped that a trip down to at least the Circuit Court or the Recorder of Deeds for Cook County, IL can be made before the end of the reunion.