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The Ghosts of Saxtown Road
by Suzanne Hutcherson
FATE :: January 2008
Walnut Hill Cemetery, first established during the early 19th century, serves as the final resting place for hundreds of St. Clair County, Illinois, residents. Located on the outskirts of Belleville, its oak and cedar trees border the gravesites of Civil War soldiers, parish priests, and one former governor of the state.
Among these weathered monuments, a plain, sandstone obelisk honors the memory of the Steltzenreide family. The name has been abbreviated to “Steltzriede,” a common practice among the frugal “Belleville Dutch” to reduce the cost of engraving the stone. Upon closer examination, the names of the deceased come into view. They include, Carl, age 66; Friederich, age 35; Anna, age 28; Carl, age 3; and Anna, age 7 months. An epitaph reads “Die Ermordete Familie den 19 Marz, 1874.”
It is a monument to murder.
The bodies of the murdered family do not lie under this obelisk. Their resting place is located some 15 miles away, in an unmarked plot at Freivogel Cemetery, a small, rural burial ground tucked along the winding parameters of Saxtown Road, outside the village of Millstadt. The reason for this remains one of several mysteries that continue to surround the most documented unsolved murder—and subsequent haunting—ever to occur in St. Clair County.......Read the rest of this article in the January 2008 issue of FATE!
