Third Street Cemetery

OTTING

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 9/16/2009 at 21:33:06

Dubuque Telegraph Herald, September 15, 2009
By Mary Nevans-Pederson

Who Was Buried in the Third Street Cemetery on Kelly’s Bluff?

Between 1839 and 1856, Dubuque archdiocesan records show 819 people buried in the cemetery, but it is likely that some families never notified officials of their children’s deaths. The dead were mostly poor immigrants-Irish, German, French and Czech.

“During the cholera epidemic, some parents buried their children in haste without telling their priest,” said the Rev. Loras Otting, director of archives and historical records for the archdiocese. That epidemic killed hundreds in Dubuque in the late 1840’s. Otting noted a typical day’s burial entry: “Burials N. 13, 14, 15, 17. Nota: four persons have been buried in the graveyard and no names were given. They were newcomers and they died by the cholera.”

Deaths from that epidemic filled the Kelly’s Bluff cemetery by 1856 and the Key West Burial Ground, now Mt. Olivet, also opened that year. The Third Street Cemetery was closed in 1867 and all known bodies were moved to Mount Olivet, Otting said.