MOUNT HOPE AND largest newspaper chain; Myron Holley, the BUFFALO BILL CODY constructor of the Erie Canal; Lewis Henry Morgan, founder of the science of By Milos Andjelic anthropology; Col. Nathaniel Rochester, founder of the city; Hiram Sibley, who Having the first of the great American founded Western Union and persuaded Czar Municipal Victorian cemeteries in the Alexander to sell Alaska to the U.S.; Margaret neighborhood gives an excellent opportunity Woodbury Strong, and many others. for examining gravestones and funerary architecture. With the current size of 196 acres What surprised me and attracted my attention and 14-and-a-half miles of road winding was the fact that Buffalo Bill’s children are through its unique and picturesque burial buried in Mount Hope Cemetery. How did it ground, Mount Hope is one of the most come to be that three children of the western beautiful and enchanting cemeteries in showman are buried there? The story begins America. When all the available plots in the Portrait of the young Buffalo Bill Cody, signed on February 26, 1846, in LeClaire, Iowa, old Buffalo Street burying ground were taken “Yours Truly, W. F. Cody, Buffalo Bill”. where William F. Cody was born. His family after a cholera epidemic in Rochester in 1832, soon moved west. In Fort Laramie, Wyoming, the city acquired 54 acres of thick woods and Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show 12-year-old William met the Indian scouts Kit inaccessible hills and valleys one-and-a-half complement of Indians in full dress on both Carson and Jim Bridger. Learning from them, miles from downtown. That became the adults and children. The tops of their conical Cody developed his riding and scouting skills. nucleus for the cemetery that is in front of us tepees appear above the crowd. During the building of the Kansas-Pacific today. Many citizens disliked the choice, but Railroad in 1867-1868, he was hired by the thanks to imaginative decisions on the railroad to provide meat for the workers. His placement of roads and sensitive clearing of and Frederick Douglass, a renowned skill as a buffalo hunter gained him the trees by Silas Cornell, the city’s surveyor, that antislavery movement leader are buried there. nickname “Buffalo Bill”. At 18, he joined the land became Mount Hope Cemetery in 1838. John Jacob Bausch and Henry Lomb, army and was assigned to work as a spy and founders of one of the greatest optical scout serving for a time with General George Maybe more impressive than architecture of companies in the world, too. The list also Custer. The Fifth Cavalry became convinced the cemetery is its permanent population. includes Dr. Hartwell Carver, the father of the that Bill Cody was their good luck charm. Some of the most prominent citizens are transcontinental railroad; Adelaide Crapsey, From 1868 to 1872 he was continuously among 350,000 people that are buried in the great imagist poet; George Ellwanger, who employed by the United States Army, a record Mount Hope. Susan B. Anthony, who led the built the largest horticultural nursery in the in the hazardous and uncertain scouting first women’s rights movement in America, world; Frank E. Gannet, founder of America’s profession. He also began to develop his career as an entertainer. Texas Jack and The white marble stones are heavily damaged Buffalo Bill created the traveling melodrama due to acid rains in the past decades. Both of that idealized the life of western cowboys. them are simple in design. First gravestone has the shape of a cube with the top side sloping. There are inscriptions on both front and back. The front has the name of Buffalo Bill’s son––Kit Carson (named after Buffalo Bill’s friend and mentor) and the back holds the following words: KIT CARSON CODY son of W.F. & L. Cody born Portrait of William Cody at age 19, when Fort McPherson, Nebraska he was in the U.S. Army, working as a spy died and scout for General George Custer. APRIL 20, 1876 Aged 5 Years Now married with Louisa Frederici, he was & 5 Mos. constantly moving with the entertainment circuit. In 1872, Henry A. Ward, geologist and Posed in a photographic studio in front of a Decorations are even simpler: tilted cross on University of Rochester professor, went on a backdrop of a western landscape, entertainer the “Book of Life” on the top, sloping side of buffalo hunt in Nebraska. His guide was Buffalo Bill grasps the barrel of his gun. the cube. The cross, once considered a Buffalo Bill. Ward was impressed by symbol of punishment and shame, has young Cody and encouraged him to become a symbol of victory for move to Rochester. Cody lived here Christians. It is tilted, the way it stood from 1873 until 1877 with his wife when Jesus Christ was carrying it. The Louisa, daughters Arta and Orra, and inscriptions on the gravestone of son Kit Carson in a frame house at 10 daughter Orra are unreadable but the New York Street. Unfortunately, his format seems to be the same as on the son died three years after the move to first stone. Decorations along the edges Rochester, at the age of five. Younger of the stone are destroyed as well. The daughter, Orra, did not live much third gravestone, of Arta Cody Thorp, longer. She died of fever, aged eleven, is made of granite and it survived in North Platt, Nebraska, where the almost a century without any family moved in 1883. Arta lived long significant damage. Along with name, enough to get married, but she didn’t it has years of birth and death, outlive her parents either. She died of 1866-1904, on the top of the stone. meningitis at the age of 28, in 1904. Seeing all your children die must be a Buffalo Bill experienced the Old West terrible experience for the parents. to its fullest. He herded cattle, worked Douglas J. Davies in his book, Death, on a wagon train, drove a stagecoach, Ritual and Belief, wrote: “While death mined for gold, rode in the Pony may be the annihilation of someone Express, scouted for the army, and else’s life, the memory of that dead even managed a hotel. He was one of individual still forms part of the life the most colorful figures of the Old and identity of the living. The loss of a West. Buffalo Bill’s famous Wild West child involves a partial loss of self, Show was produced and presented first which cannot be compensated for it in in Rochester at the Driving Park any simple way––like amputation, Racetrack before traveling to Omaha in parental bereavement is a permanent 1883 with real cowboys and real condition.” Indians portraying the “real West”. The show spent ten of its thirty years in This is a publicity shot made in Montreal, Three of his kids are buried in Range 2, Lot Europe. In 1887, Buffalo Bill was a feature Canada of Buffalo Bill with Indian Chief 215. I was not able to find the information attraction at Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Sitting Bull to promote the presentation of the about his fourth child, daughter Irma Louise, He used his fame and public attention for Wild West Show in that Canadian city. who was born in 1883. Two stones (his son’s western causes, for the rights of Indians and and younger daughter’s) are made of white women, and for conversation. He cautioned marble and the third one is made of granite. the government to “never make a single 2 promise to the Indians that is not fulfilled” I would play the first act, and making a and that “every Indian outbreak has resulted proper excuse to the audience, I would then from broken promises and broken treaties take the nine o’clock train that same by the government”. He once said, “If a evening for Rochester, leaving him to play woman can do the same work that a man out my part. This I did, and at ten o’clock can do and do it just as well, she should the next morning I arrived in Rochester, and was met at the depot by my intimate friend Moses Kerngood who at once drove me to my home. I found my little boy unable to speak but he seemed to recognize me and Kit Carson Cody died in 1876 at age 5 years. His marble tombstone depicts a scroll embellished with a Christian cross. It is in Range 2, Lot 215. Buffalo Bill Cody is rarely seen without a hat, even at his advanced age. He was 70 when he died. William Frederick (Buffalo Bill) Cody (1846-1917) is buried beneath this elaborate stone memorial at the top of have the same pay.” He had spoken out Lookout Mountain in Golden, Colorado. against the hide-hunters of the 1870s and He died on January 10, 1917 in Denver, 1880s for slaughtering the buffalo “cruelly, Colorado, of kidney failure. The town of recklessly”. In Wyoming and Colorado, he Cody, Wyoming is on part of his ranch. Orra Maude Cody died in 1883. worked to establish game preserves and Her marble monument is limited hunting seasons. Buffalo Bill put his next to her brother, Kit Carson Cody. wealth as well as his words to good use. putting his little arms around my neck he Because so few of his investments tried to kiss me. We did everything in our (ranching, mining, irrigation, publishing, power to save him, but it was of no avail.