Driven out of their homes, many North Division residents looked for refuge near the lake in Lincoln Park. The park, which had acquired its name shortly after Lincoln’s assassination, was then only a fraction of its current expanse, much of which is filled land that did not exist at the time of the fire. Maps from 1871 show it extending from a little above Wisconsin Street to about Webster Street. But plans were afoot to enlarge it to both the north and the south.
Those approaching the park from the south and southwest had to pass through the city cemetery, which was located just below of the park and was subsequently integrated into it (see below). At the southeast corner of the cemetery was the potter’s field, where the indigent were buried. Another section was the location of what were called the “rebel graves,” the final resting place of Confederate prisoners of war who died (almost all from disease) while incarcerated in Fort Douglas near the lake at 35th Street, which was built on the grounds of the estate of Senator Stephen Douglas, who had died in 1861. The City’s Catholic Cemetery was located on what became prime Gold Coast residential property, along the lake between North Avenue and Schiller Street.
That the refugees fled from the fiery city in the deep of the night through this place of the dead made the whole situation seem all the more macabre and terrifying. "One of the saddest among the many scenes that met the eye after the conflagration had done its work," one fire history reflected, "was that in the old cemetery--the flames had even made havoc among the dead, burning down the wooden monuments, and shattering stone vaults to fragments, leaving exposed many scores of the remnants of mortality that had smoldered for years in oblivion."
In the 1860s public health official Dr. John Rauch led the movement to end burials within the city limits. He was especially critical of burials here, which risked contaminating Lake Michigan, Chicago’s water supply. Most but by no means all of the bodies were moved to Graceland, Rosehill, Oakwood, and other recently established cemeteries outside the city limits, making way for the expansion of Lincoln Park to the south.
