History of Lincoln Park Chicago. This makes me wonder if the nail that I found was once a coffin nail to a confederate soldier???
Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994,[2] Lincoln Park began its existence as City Cemetery in 1843. This was subdivided into a Potter's Field, Catholic cemetery, Jewish cemetery, and the general City Cemetery. These cemeteries were the only cemeteries in the Chicago area until 1859. In 1852, David Kennison, who is said to have been born in 1736, died and was buried in City Cemetery. Another notable burial in the cemetery was Chicago Mayor James Curtiss, whose body was lost when the cemetery was turned into a park.[citation needed]
In 1864, the city council decided to turn the 120-acre (0.49 km2) cemetery into a park. To this day, the Couch mausoleum can still be seen as the most visible example of the history as a cemetery, standing amidst trees, behind the Chicago History Museum. Ira Couch, who is interred in the tomb, was one of Chicago's earliest innkeepers, opening the Tremont House in 1835. Couch is not the only person to still be interred in Lincoln Park. Partially due to the destruction of the Chicago Fire on tombstones, it was difficult to remove many of the remains. As recently as 1998, construction in the park has revealed more bodies left over from the nineteenth century.[3]
Another large and important group of graves relocated from the site of today's Lincoln Park was that of approximately 4,000 Confederate prisoners of war who died at Camp Douglas (located south of downtown Chicago near the stockyards). The prisoners held there in 1862-65 died largely as a result of the terrible conditions of hunger, disease and privation existing at that notorious Federal prison. Today their gravesite may be found at Oak Woods Cemetery in the southern part of Chicago. A one acre (4,000 m
