Keepers Of The Trees: Firewood From Father Dickson Cemetery
A fire pit is a backyard staple in St. Louis, generally lit with logs from in front of Schnucks or a convenience store. It is expensive to fuel your backyard fires with store-bought wood. For those who don’t have money in their budgets for buying seasoned wood, there are options that will save money.
One way residents can acquire firewood for free is by collecting wood from trees recently felledby the city’s Forestry Department. When the city cuts down a tree, they will generally chop the bulk of it down into moveable sections, leaving it on the street for a week or so. From there, all you need to do is split it up and let it sit to season.
Another option is collecting firewood from most public parks. After storms, many of our parks have volunteers from the community who clean up after storms. In most cases, these volunteers set out fallen wood for the taking, making it really easy for residents to collect the wood and take it home. This saves residents money and helps keep the parks clear of debris.
This is how I came across Father Dickson Cemetery. Located in Crestwood, Missouri, the entrance and visitor center can be found off of Sappington Road, two miles north of the Ulysess S Grant National Historic Site. While not as well known as the Greenwood Cemetery in Hillsdale, Father Dickson Cemetery is an important part of local history and is the final resting place for numerous notable figures.
Father Moses Dickson settled in Saint Louis as a free black man from Ohio sometime in the 1840’s. A true revolutionary, he is claimed to be an architect of the Underground Railroad, creating the Knights of Liberty, as well as being suspected of involvement with John Brown. With the onset of the Civil War, Dickson served in the Union Army. After the war, he settled back in Saint Louis with his wife, Mary, an ardent white abolitionist, and they spent years traveling throughout Missouri, fighting for the rights of the now freed African Americans settling in our state. A prominent citizen in Saint Louis until his death in 1901, Father Dickson was originally laid to rest in St. Peter’s Cemetery off Lucas and Hunt Road. However, not long after, his remains were moved to where they restto this day; in the cemetery that bears his name; one of the first in our region to allow black public burials.
Dickson is not the only notable figure buried in the cemetery. Also resting there are James Milton Turner, who served President Grant as the Minister to Liberia and helped found Missouri’s Lincoln University. Susan Paul Smith Vashon, a local educator and abolitionist, for whom a St. Louis Public Schools’ high school is named.
Father Dickson Cemetery has a volunteer group that comes out to clean up every Saturday morning to help maintain and preserve the grounds. After heavy storms, they cut fallen trees into manageable pieces and offer them free to anyone who will come pick them up, asking only if you can donate to help the Cemetery (without any pretense that you will). Without the help from these communities, it would be nearly impossible to protect and preserve such an important piece of Saint Louis’s, not to mention, Missouri’s, rich history.
If you have the time or money you can volunteer or donate to help the volunteer organization continue their work of preserving this important piece of local history for future generations.
Visit: https://fatherdicksoncemetery.org
