Forest Home Cemetery

This weekend will not just be filled with Halloween celebrations and trick or treating around the city, but there will also be many celebrations for Dia de los Muertos, including a festival and display of community ofrendas at Milwaukee's Forest Home Cemetery.

The Spirits of the Silent City events at Forest Home Cemetery will offer guided tours by performers dressed and acting as some of the most notable people buried at the cemetery, like the beer barons.

Forest Home is Milwaukee’s oldest cemetery, and many remarkable women have been buried there over the years. Cemetery volunteer and guide Anita Pietrykowski shares the stories of a few of the cemetery’s notable women residents.

Sally Merrell, a volunteer tour guide at Forest Home Cemetery, talks about about a few of the cemetery’s notable Black residents that you can visit.

You may think of cemeteries as oases of peace for many who visit. But Forest Home Cemetery on Milwaukee’s near south side also wants to be known as a place whose tree canopy provides restorative power, especially for people who live nearby.

These last few years, COVID-19 has disproportionately affected the Latinx community on Milwaukee’s southside. This year, Forest Home Cemetery is hosting a Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) event to celebrate the lives that have been lost. The event will include a community ofrenda by Latinas Unitas en Las Artes (LUNA), community resources, local vendors, food trucks, arts and crafts, and music and entertainment.

For 160 years George Marshall Clark, Milwaukee’s only known lynching victim, lay in an unmarked grave in Forest Home Cemetery. Clark, who was Black, was killed in September of 1861, after being accused of a crime he did not commit. Last week, a headstone was finally placed at his burial site thanks to the efforts of a local activist.

While little can be done to undo damage or bring back original markings on an eroded gravestone, cleaning it can help stop further damage — but only if done correctly.

On Sep. 6, 1861, George Marshall Clark was lynched on the northwest corner of Buffalo and Water Streets in Milwaukee — becoming the only Black victim of…

Cemeteries are not just for dead bodies; they contain a wide range of art meant to symbolize both the feeling of mourning and grief but also to create a…