This summer, our Friends of Mount Olivet membership group started a project to re-plant our collection of “cradle graves” throughout the cemetery. These unique funerary markers are also known as bedsteads. I wrote a Story in Stone article on these back in October of 2020 entitled “From Cradle to Grave.” A cradle grave consists of a gravestone, a footstone, and two low stone walls connecting them, creating a rectangle designed to hold plantings while memorializing the person buried below. It resembles a bed, with a headboard, footboard with bedrails on each side connecting them. Flowers planted resemble a lovely blanket of color and texture. We have several cradle graves in Mount Olivet, with some marking the graves of children. Popular in the Victorian era, cradle graves were first utilized as early as the 1840s, with most of ours ranging from the 1850s-1870s. Originally, most of these personalized gardens would have been planted and maintained by the family of the deceased. Over the last century, all have been abandoned, in many cases due to families moving away, or dying out. That said, I checked on a few of these cradle graves last month as we were preparing to feature them as part of our programming for Celebrate Frederick’s annual “Beyond the Garden Gates” garden tour. A little bit further out in the cemetery, a double cradle grave was under repair in Area H. It was for two young daughters of Perry Beall McCleery and wife Mary Jane (Doub) McCleery. Here, sisters, Ida Beall McCleery (January 31st, 1854-August 26th, 1854) and Esther Doub McCleery (Feb 25th, 1858-January 25th, 1859) are buried side by side with this twin version of a cradle grave placed above. After taking pictures of this site, I saw a few other monuments of interest just about 30 yards distant to the left and across the lane in neighboring Area G. I was struck by the design of two primary monuments at the front of this family lot belonging to the Bantz and Dukehart families in G/224. These were definitely not cradle graves, but a later “re-boot” on a bed-themed marker over the final resting places of Merle Bowman Bantz (July 3rd, 1850-March 14th, 1899) and Minnie Cecelia Dukehart (March 28th 1860-January 5th, 1906). I was perhaps just reading more into these monuments because I had “beds on my mind” thanks to the cradle grave exploration work I was conducting at the time. Upon closer inspection, these really seemed to “fit the bill” as the old expression goes. No flowers could grow out of these elevated granite markers, however, beautiful hand-carved plant-life is depicted on the face and sides of a faux slanted headboard. My next point of fascination came with the family names here. I was well-acquainted with the Bantz family of Frederick and patriarch Gideon Bantz, Jr.—grandfather of our subject Merle. Gideon Bantz, Sr. was the first president of the Farmers Club of Frederick County which eventually became known as the Frederick Agricultural Society. This is the same group that gives us the Great Frederick Fair each year. Mr. Bantz served as vice president for the first agricultural fair of the society which was held at the Frederick “Hessian Barracks” grounds in the fall of 1853. Gideon Ernest Bantz was born on February 9th, 1792, the son of Henry and Catherine Bantz. He owned farmland both inside, and outside, the town limits, plus a quarry east of Frederick on the National Pike. Bantz was best known for operating a tannery in downtown Frederick on “Brewer’s Alley.” It was positioned north of Carroll Creek along the west side of South Court Street (between the creek and West Patrick Street). Today this location is home to the Citizens Truck Company’s fire station, adjacent the Frederick County Courthouse and its parking lot. In October, 1854 Gideon Bantz found himself serving as acting president of the Frederick County Agricultural Society due to an illness to president Col. Lewis Kemp. This occurred when the Agricultural Society's Board of Trustees met on October 7th, just prior to the opening of their Exhibition on Wednesday, October 11th. Gideon Bantz attended opening day of the fair, but would travel to Baltimore on Thursday the 12th to represent Frederick County by attending the Maryland State Fair. While there, he contracted a sudden illness, blamed on oysters he ate for dinner. Mr. Bantz returned home, but died just 24 hours later stunning the community. Now this Gideon Bantz is buried in Area G, but further down the driveway to the west from Merle and Minnie who I am spotlighting here. He is buried under a very large obelisk across from Confederate Row. However, this plot (where I have found my later bed monument models) was bought by Gideon Bantz, Sr.’s son Gideon Ernest Bantz, Jr., born October 4th, 1813. After his father's death, Gideon Jr. carried on the tanyard and mill business, along with other civic roles in the community. He served as a bridge inspector and spent the American Civil War working with Col. Lewis Steiner (buried close by) under the United States Sanitary Commission. Gideon Ernest Bantz, Jr. apparently died quite suddenly like his father. This occurred on July 21st, 1887 here in Frederick. Heart disease, not oysters, was found as the culprit for his demise. That brings us to Merle Bowman Bantz and Minnie. At first glance, I assumed that Minnie was Merle's wife and this is what brought the Bantz and Dukehart families together in this burial plot. I would soon learn that I was mistaken. As stated earlier, Merle was born July 3rd, 1850. He grew up in Frederick, the son of the fore-mentioned Gideon Ernest Bantz, Jr. and wife Julia Ann (Hartman) Bantz. As a young man, Merle attended the Frederick Academy here in Frederick. Around the year 1869, he re-located to Winchester, Virginia to assist his brother Theodore Marion Bantz in a mercantile business. T. Marion was a free-lance journalist who was very interested in politics and ran what has been called the oldest shoe establishment in Winchester at 14 N. Loudoun Street. He was a very close friend of Charles Broadway Rouss, a Woodsboro (MD) native who spent his formative years in Winchester and made it big in New York City to become a wealthy merchant. Their personal friendship made the Bantz family very popular in Winchester. Another brother, Julius Alton Bantz (1853-1920), would also help with the shoe store. In Winchester, Merle would help grow the family shoe business while his older brother served in other civic and political capacities. Like that of his father and grandfather, Merle's death came as a surprise and shock to his community of Winchester, as well of his old hometown of Frederick. He was a victim of spinal meningitis and died an excruciating death at the age of of 48. This occurred on March 14th, 1899. Merle Bowman Bantz' body would be brought back to his father’s grave plot where he is buried near his parents and other relatives including his brother Julius. I learned that his brother Theodore Marion Bantz is buried about a hundred fifty yards away in Area R. The Dukeharts Until I read Merle Bantz' obituary, I thought he married Minnie C. Dukehart because the beautiful monuments are identical. I was also confused in figuring out family members because a neighboring gravestone in this plot belongs to Merle’s aunt Julia Ada (Bantz) Dukehart, sister to his father (Gideon, Jr.) and Gideon Sr.’s only daughter. Julia, born in Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania, married a fellow named Capt. John Peck Dukehart of Baltimore. (More on him later as he has an interesting story as well). Anyway, Minnie Cecelia Dukehart is the daughter of Capt. Dukehart and the former Julia Ada Bantz, making her Merle’s first cousin. As I’ve said before, I had no judgment if they had been married, as I know that kind of thing happened regularly back in the day, especially between prominent families. I didn't learn much about Minnie at all through my research attempt. However, I did find her in the 1870 and 1880 census records living in Baltimore. I double-checked our cemetery records and they state that both Merle and Minnie were single. She was living with her mother in the 1900 US Census. Both Merle and her father had passed the previous year (1899), and the 1890 census is not available to check her whereabouts, but it was likely that she was living at home with her folks her whole life. Our co-subject of a bed-like memorial died on January 5th, 1906. She was only 45, and succumbed at her residence in Baltimore at 1406 West Fayette Street. I found Minnie's scant obituary from 1906 with no mention of a husband or children. Julia A. Dukehart had her daughter's mortal remains interred in the family plot in Frederick adjacent her father and grandfather, but next to cousin Merle. I find it interesting that Minnie's mother, Julia Ada (Bantz) Dukehart, employed the same design as Merle's monument. I would even find his marker praised in a Frederick newspaper article a year before Minnie's death. Perhaps she requested or mentioned to her mother that she'd prefer the same for her own grave monument? Minnie’s sister, Julia Bantz Dukehart, died as an infant in 1858 at 2-months old. This child and Minnie's brother, Eugene, are both buried in this plot here as well. I said earlier, I wanted to explain further my findings regarding Capt. John Peck Dukehart, Minnie’s father. He was a native of Baltimore, born July 31st, 1824, the son of an early Baltimore insurance agent named John Dukehart. I found John and wife Ann Dukehart in the folds of Baltimore’s Quaker Church. Capt. Peck was raised in the Society of Friends, along with his sister Sarah. I noted that the family also made frequent trips to Columbiana, Ohio in his youth but I could not establish exactly why. In the 1850 census, I found 25 year-old John Peck Dukehart employed as a hose maker. In subsequent censuses he would work for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. As a conductor, he garnered the respect of both passengers and his colleagues by his actions on the job during a terrible blizzard in 1856. Capt. Dukehart continued working for the railroad until his death on September 27th, 1899. Instead of being buried with his parents in Baltimore, the decedent would be brought to Frederick for burial in the Bantz family plot. Thirty-one years later, Capt. Dukehart’s wife, Julia Ada (Bantz) Dukehart died in Baltimore in December, 1923. This woman had outlived her entire immediate family and had them buried in Frederick's Mount Olivet, all in the same family plot with her parents and siblings. She, too, would join them here in death and would be placed in a grave next to her husband. That pretty much wraps up my review of this plot, entirely influenced by me seeing those bed-shaped markers while observing a cradle grave a short distance away. After writing the piece, I found this article in a local newspaper from 1965 which sheds a little more light on this interesting family of Bantzes and Dukeharts.
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