This is where the bodies are. Hoyt Sherman and George Hanawalt. Ebenezer J. Ingersoll and Richard Ashworth. All the great downtown retailers of yesteryear — the Younkers and the Ginsbergs and the Frankels. The founder of Drake University, George Thomas Carpenter, and the founder of Des Moines University, Summerfield S. Still. The great rabbi Eugene Mannheimer, and two of the city’s greatest mayors, John McVicar and Art Davis.

Scores of men who died fighting for the North in the Civil War. And three who died fighting for the South. Men who died in France but who, after the Great War, were brought back by their wives and mothers to spend eternity in their home state. Famous governors and faceless paupers. Men with great names and infants with no names. Names that today mean roads or schools but that once identified the prominent and successful. And men once well-known, now mostly forgotten.

Like James B. Weaver — Union General, United States Congressman, abolitionist, twice a candidate for President of the United States. He was the first man to “wave the bloody shirt” to arouse passions against the Confederacy. He died 100 years ago. Some distance away, in a grave marked by just a small stone similar to that of others who gave their lives for their country, rest the remains of Lt. Col. Emory Pike. On the 15th of September in 1918, Col. Pike, then in his early 40s, commanded U.S. Army advance infantry platoons that came under terrific bombardment near Vandieres, France, but with courage and cheerfulness he led his men in establishing outposts and holding their position despite extreme danger. As he was helping a soldier hit by a shell, a second shell burst, and it killed Pike. A year later, on Dec. 31, 1919, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the only Iowan to earn that honor in World War I.

Here they all are this Memorial Day weekend in Woodland Cemetery, a cemetery a few months older than the state itself. They are among the 31,000 or so Iowans who have come to rest among the 65 gently rolling, beautifully wooded acres near downtown Des Moines.

It would be a nice place to take a stroll this weekend, to walk the dog (that’s illegal, but no one is going to stop you), to recall the past, to nod in thanks to the fallen soldiers (and particularly to “Aunt Becky” Young, a once-famous Army nurse), and to try to imagine the despair and sadness of those who buried the newborn in the infants sections of the cemetery. Bring some flowers, or a flag or two.

The big mausoleum right there at the entrance belongs to the Hubbell family. It’s the only place in the whole cemetery that has electricity — the dead need no heat or lights — because the mausoleum has an elevator. It moves the caskets underground, where the Hubbells have been buried for generations. In all, cemetery officials say, there’s room down there for 48 Hubbells.

Not far away, almost in the shadow of the mausoleum, is the grave of the man who built the mansion the Hubbells lived in, the mansion that now is home to Iowa’s governors. The man is Benjamin Franklin Allen, once the wealthiest man in the Midwest, Iowa’s first millionaire, the man who spent $250,000 to build Terrace Hill — and then spent another $10,000 on the housewarming party on Jan. 27, 1869. Within a few years, living in Chicago, he lost nearly everything in the Panic of 1873. The house stood empty for 10 years until F.M. Hubbell bought it in 1884. B.F. Allen died in California in 1914, and his ashes rest under a handsome but not ostentatious monument in Woodland.

There are more than a dozen mausoleums in the cemetery, nearly all with names known to anyone who grew up in Des Moines or has lived in the city for a generation or two. Names like Casady. And Savery. And Sherman. And Younker. But the most intriguing vault is the “receiving vault,” the building where the bodies of those who died in the winter were stored until the spring thaw allowed the gravediggers to dig. The vault was built in the mid 1850s and is believed to be the oldest building in the city. It is being slowly restored.

It’s hard to get into Woodland as a permanent resident these days. It’s full, or at least cemetery officials — who can’t see underground but who have detailed maps — think it’s full. There are a dozen or so burials a year, mainly of old people with old names and old plots. The cemetery is in remarkably better shape than it was when Don Tripp became Des Moines Parks Director in 1991. It had often been vandalized, and it was a mess. He and his staff have done wonders. The roads still could use some work, and there still is the occasional headstone that has been worn away by time or turned over by winds, but it now wears its age well. The brutal storm last month that felled trees and closed the cemetery for a while caused amazingly little damage to headstones.

If you can tag along through the cemetery with an old-timer, or with one of the small but passionate crew that officially or unofficially oversee the city’s seven cemeteries, you can learn a lot. Over there, for instance, is the grave of Jefferson Scott Polk, an early partner of F.M. Hubbell and B.F. Allen and a pioneer in railroading and the law.

J.S. Polk (as in Boulevard) came to Des Moines from Kentucky in the 1850s. “His capital consisted of his diploma, a comprehensive knowledge of law and determination and ambition,” says an old history. He hung out his shingle — and waited three months for his first client, who paid him 75 cents. But eventually he joined in the practice of law with Hubbell (as in Avenue and School), with Phineas Casady (as in Drive and School) and Marcellus Crocker (as in Street and School). All went on to fame, all but Crocker to fortune, and all are together again now in Woodland Cemetery.

Crocker now rests under a small headstone, one of several Civil War generals buried in the cemetery. He commanded a brigade at Shiloh, fought valiantly at Vicksburg, contracted tuberculosis but kept on. He died Aug. 26, 1865 — 57 days after the last shot was fired in the war. He was 35 years old.

The other generals buried at Woodland are Weaver and Nathaniel Baker, James Tuttle, Josiah Given and — apparently — Samuel Merrill. Baker was a New Hampshire lawyer — he read law under Franklin Pierce, who went on to become President — and was governor of New Hampshire before deciding to pack it up and move to Iowa. Iowans elected him to Congress in 1859, and he was Adjutant General of Iowa during the Civil War and beyond. Tuttle commanded a brigade at Vicksburg and fought at Shiloh. After the war he ran for Congress and for Governor, but he lost both races. He died in 1892. Given was an Ohioan who after the war came to Iowa, where, among other things, he served on the Supreme Court for three years.

Most biographies list Samuel Merrill as a colonel, but a marker in the cemetery lists him as a general. Whatever the case, after his Civil War days, he twice was elected Governor, in 1867 and 1869, and he was governor when the cornerstone was laid for the new Capitol. His speech on that day “was replete with historical facts, showed patient research, was logical and argumentative, and at times eloquent with the fire and genius of American patriotism,” says one text. Eloquent, but only at times.

Finally, and wonderfully, over in Block 17, under a small marker, lies the body of Supreme Court Justice Chester Cicero Cole, who died at age 89 in 1913. In 1868, Cole wrote one of the greatest opinions ever handed down by the court, ruling that Susan Clark, a black girl in Muscatine, needn’t go to the town’s school for colored children but had just as much right as anyone else to go to her neighborhood school. That was 86 years before the United States Supreme Court outlawed school segregation.

“Now it is very clear,” he wrote, “that if the [school board members] are clothed with a discretion to exclude African children from our common schools, and require them to attend (if at all) a school composed wholly of children of that nationality, they would have the same power and right to exclude German children...and require them to attend (if at all) a school composed wholly of children of that nationality, and so of Irish, French, English and other nationalities....”

He added: “All the youths are equal before the law.”

That’s a nice thing for young and old to remember. So it might be a nice idea to take a younger person if you’re old — or an older person if you’re young — to visit the cemetery. This weekend, of course, would be a good time to wander around. It’s as fascinating as it is serene. And these days, remember, you can get in only if you’re alive. CV