Hell's Gate Cemetery 1892-1939
In 1892 "Lost Souls Cemetery" was founded by Capt. John Flagg Moorstone, an immigrant from Europe who lost his wife and children on the sea voyage to America. Under an agreement with the state of Illinois, the Captain was to give a proper burial and final resting place to the unwanted persons the state had legal custody or possession of, upon their death. This new state cemetery was to replace the several smaller cemeteries at state run institutions, such as prisons, sanitariums, shelters for abused women, homes for the physically deformed, and orphanages. The Captain received a salary, a fifty acre piece of land, and a private home on the cemetery grounds as payment for his services.
Although the original name for the state cemetery was "Lost Souls", appropriately named for its inhabitants (who were forsaken or abandoned by their families) Governor John Altgeld nicknamed it "Hell's Gate". It was the Governor's belief that "anyone buried in that graveyard could not be a good Christian, so if they're all doomed to an eternity in Hell, then this is the front gate." The Captain did not share the Governor's judgement of these people. In fact, he displayed an exuberant reverence for each of his inhabitants, often decorating each grave with personal effects that arrived with the body, and writing personalized epitaphs to each person. Some have said that this respect for the dead was borderline infatuation, and unhealthy.
Instead of remarrying and starting a new family, the Captain filled his life with the lives of the dead, creating large tombs designed to replicate the deads' past lives, preserving their bodies, and posing them as if they hadn't died. It was noted in his personal diary, "as macabre the appearance may be, I simply want to provide a home and a peaceful resting place for my new family." Indeed, they were his new family. In 1920, the Captain was able to convince the governor to award him custody of the dead's children. Thirty eight children in all were removed from the orphanages and forced to live out their childhood on the cemetery grounds. Home-schooled by the Captain, these children lived an isolated life of forced mourning. It was the Captains wish that they dressed in mourning blacks until they became adults.
