Published September 13, 2020
By Beth Lane
One upon a time, Quincy had a job entitled
Policeman for its City of the Dead, Woodland Cemetery. It sounds like it should
have been an uneventful position having little or no trouble from its
constituents. For Adam Thron things were sometimes far from peaceful. Job
requirements listed were a “sober, intelligent, industrious, even tempered man,
one not afraid of occasional manual labor and at times a good deal of it…,” according
to the
Quincy Daily Journal
of April
26, 1893.
Thron fit the bill. He was born in
Illinois of German parents, raised on a farm in Cass County until moving to
Quincy. He received the appointment to Woodland in June of 1893 and moved his
family into the cemetery gatehouse on South Fifth.
In August he got a hard initiation
into the realities of the position. In an ugly incident of mob violence in
Kingston, a man had been killed and later buried in Woodland. Unfortunately,
the inquest had been rushed and the bullet that killed him had been buried with
the body. The state’s attorney considered it necessary to open the grave after
three months to retrieve the only piece of evidence which would prove the
caliber of the gun that fired the fatal shot. It was as bad as you imagine.
It was also August of that year
when two of Thron’s mischievous children, Albert age nine and Arthur aged
seven, climbed into florist Gentemann’s buggy and rode with him to deliver
flowers to a grave. While they waited in the buggy the horse bolted, galloping
around the cemetery until it faced two gravestones lying on the ground. The
horse soared over the obstacle, but the buggy flipped, throwing Arthur free and
pinning Albert underneath dragging him until a woodpile halted the horse. Both
boys were treated by Dr. Knapheide and were severely injured but did recover.
It was also that August when the
murderer Jamison was hanged in the basement of the courthouse and buried in
Woodland. His case had created quite a sensation in Quincy, with hundreds
viewing the gallows and the body which was put on display afterwards. The sheriff held the burial ceremony an hour
earlier than advertised to thwart the crowd. Thron had to keep a careful eye on this grave
to stop body snatchers and souvenir hunters.
In November of that same year a
mystery came to light. In the Odd Fellows lot at Woodland, there was a body
buried in an unmarked grave and the Odd Fellows records held no mention of its
occupant. The club had agreed to have Thron dig down to the coffin in hope that
there would be something that could help them identify the occupant. This was
done revealing that the top of the wooden coffin had rotted away. At first
glance the corpse appeared in perfect preservation, but the air turned the black
suit coat and occupant to dust as the men watched. There were two emblems that
identified the man, one as a member of the Knights of Pythias and the other being
the clasped hands of the Odd Fellows. It was thus noted that he did belong
there, whoever he was.
Unfortunately, the most notable
thing about the occasion was that the coffin had been used as a “granary by the
cemetery squirrels.” They had burrowed from the surface to the side of the
coffin, chewed their way in and when the coffin was moved, “A full quart of the
nuts rolled from the brain pan and rattled to the bottom of the coffin,”
according the
Quincy Daily Herald
.
“It made the men shudder.” The man was reburied, this time with a tombstone
marked, “Unknown.”
1893 may have been the most
eventful year of his tenure. Much like today, quiet, semi-private places are in
demand for meetings between lovers. It was one of the on-going problems for
Thron to deal with as men and women, not necessarily married to each other, who
attempted to use the cemetery as a place for dalliance. The two would try to
evade the policeman and often try to bribe him to overlook the infraction. In
1895 the Quincy Daily Journal reports Thron on the stand as saying, “There
wasn’t money enough in Quincy to get me to let them go. I’m going to run that
place as it ought to be run.” In this
case, when the details unraveled it was found that the woman was not the man’s
wife, but rather his bookkeeper. The man paid both his fine and the lady’s. It
did not help that the man dallying with his bookkeeper was a prominent local
merchant.
Thron, as caretaker, was severely
chastised by the
Quincy Daily Herald
for not doing his duty in an appropriate manner. The paper condemned him for
following and watching the couple until they were in a compromising position.
Previously the paper had criticized him for rushing cases into the police court
which it felt should not be prosecuted. Thron defended himself in the same
newspaper on September 10, 1895, saying, “The only thing that I can do is to
wait until the wrongful act is committed and then make the arrest. I cannot act
on suspicion. And this is true whether it is a case of assignation or of
flower-stealing.”
And flower stealing was a problem.
But it was not less onerous to prosecute. In October of 1895, the
Daily Herald
reports that a Mrs. Bunte
was in court charged with removing rose bushes from a grave. She denied it
vociferously, charging that Thron had made indecent proposals to her four
times. When she refused to comply, he pulled up the rose bushes, arrested her
and marched her to the police station. She was sentenced to pay a five dollar
fine plus $2.10 in costs. She has six children, and the paper noted that, “In
her younger days, it is said, she was quite prepossessing in appearance.” Thron
remained at his post until 1911.
Sources
“Accommodating Policeman,”
Quincy Daily Journal
, 7 July, 1893.
“Aftermath of the Execution,” 19 August, 1893.
“Annual Meeting Made
Later,”
Quincy Daily Journal
, 26
April, 1893.
“The Appropriations.”
Quincy
Daily Herald
, 6 May, 1893.
“Found Dead on her
Babe’s Grave,”
Quincy Daily Whig
, 28
January, 1900.
“Gravedigging the last word in jobs,”
Quincy Daily Whig
, 21 November, 1982.
“A head full of Acorns,”
Quincy
Daily Herald
, 22 November, 1893.
“Hot Fight in the
Cemetery,”
Quincy Daily Whig
, 26 May,
1901.
“Is She His Wife,”
Quincy
Daily Journal
, 4 September, 1895.
“Mr. Thron is Called,”
Quincy
Daily Herald
, 28 September, 1911.
“Officer Thron’s Duty,”
Quincy
Daily Herald
, 7 September, 1895.
“People in Trouble,”
Quincy
Daily Whig
, 5 September, 1895.
“Referred to the Council,”
Quincy Daily Journal
, 11 May, 1896.
“Station News and Notes,”
Quincy Daily Herald
, 25 October, 1895.
“Their Silver Wedding
Day,”
Quincy Daily Journal
, 17 April,
1909.
“Thron Defends Thron,”
Quincy
Daily Herald
, 10 September, 1895.
“Two Boys have a Wild Ride,”
Quincy Daily Journal
, 30 August, 1893.
“Very Grave Suspicions,”
Quincy
Daily Journal
, 8 August, 1893.
“Vicious Hands of Vandals,”
Quincy Daily Whig
, 11 August, 1898.
“We’re Hunting Young Rabbits,”
Quincy Daily Journal
, 15 January, 1905.
