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The Town of Maine Cemetery is located at the west edge of Park Ridge, IL almost adjacent to Des Plaines. It is bounded on the West by Dee Road and on the east by Rose Ave. Entrance is from the North on Touhy Avenue the south fence borders the side of a residential block. Ancient oak trees shade the 21 wooded acres. Town of Maine cemetery was officially chartered in 1858. Business partners Robert Meacham and John Penny purchased the first 5 acres, located in the northwest corner, in 1856 from a Mr. Miner of Des Plaines and donated them to the cemetery. Meacham and Penny ran the successful brickyard that was located in Park Ridge, which supplied much of the bricks used in the rebuilding of Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871. Park Ridge in those days was called Pennyville, much to the chagrin of George Penny who proposed the town’s next name of Brickton in honor to the brickyard. Penny and Meacham wrote a clause into every deed to property that they sold prohibiting to manufacture or sale of intoxicants on that piece of land. The Meacham and Penny families are buried here; the Penny family plot has 32 graves. It was common in the early days to have small family burial plots on one’s land but as the population of Maine Township started to grow it became necessary to form a public non-profit cemetery. Burials occurred on the site much earlier than 1858 and there are undoubtedly more burials there than are represented by the stones. There is evidence of an Indian Village nearby but no there are no signs of where they buried their dead and no Indian artifacts have been unearthed at the cemetery. There was a little Congregational church on Dee Rd near Talcott Rd (present day Touhy), built in the early 1840’s, and some settlers had already been buried on the land in the early 1830’s. The church was only there for a few years before it was sold to Colonel Robb and moved to the location of the Country Club. The cemetery was mostly used by the citizens of Park Ridge and Des Plaines and the rural residents of Maine Township who were predominantly German immigrants. Many of the early headstones are in German with titles like: “Mutter” “Vater” “Sohn” “Grossmutter” The first graves were sold for $1 each and owners were assessed 50 cents a year for maintenance. The maintenance fee continued until 1947 when the State of Illinois Perpetual Care Act took effect. The act ensures that a portion of the purchase fee for each grave goes into a fund to provide for the care of the cemetery. The earliest cemetery records were destroyed in a fire in 1915. The local artist Alfonso Ianelli who also designed the interior of the Pickwick Theater designed the present Office of the cemetery a beautiful brick and stone building with one stained glass window. Walking through the cemetery you will see the names from the past who were important enough in their time to lend their names to some of our local roads: Ballard, Talcott, Miner, Root, Higgins, Lee and Rand. At least six former Mayors of Park Ridge are buried at the cemetery:
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All Images Copyright 2006, Gail Pepin
Unless otherwise noted.