Sharing the following announcement and news story (with permission) by the Champaign County Historical Society that appears in their current May, 2014 newsletter:
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SOURCE: ChroniclingAmerica.loc.gov
URBANA UNION
Wednesday, August 16, 1871
Written for the
Urbana Union
"Cursed Be He
Who Disturbs My Bones."
—Shakspeare. [sic]
(Transcribed by Linda
Jean Limes Ellis – May 13, 2014
(Typed as written
with minor corrections)
*******
The
grave-yard to be plowed up. The bones of our citizens and the soldiers of 1812
to be desecrated. Shakspeare's [sic] anathama
[sic] "cursed be he who disturbs
my bones,” has lost its terror with our City Dads.
Shade of Frederic Gump (sp)! Rise in your revolutionary habilliments [sic] and shake your gory locks, whitened
by the frosts of 107 winters, in the face of him who first dares attempt the
cursed deed.
If
the tax payers of this city will supinely submit to be plucked to the sum of
nearly $50,000 a year, in support of a city government, it is no reason why all
the old inhabitants, who carved it out of a wilderness, should be shocked and
outraged by the acts of those who now claim to be the City Council.
Some
few weeks ago a petition signed by a few citizens living on Ward street, and
who are greatly mistaken as to its ultimate benefit to them, or the effect of
the measure upon the value of their property, presented it to the Council asking
the running of said street through the old town grave-yard, upon which appropriate
action was had, and reference made to the City Board of Public Improvements. The Board after advising themselves of the
merits of the proposition, very sensibly determined to report adversely. The ring watching the Movement suddenly
discovered danger, and changed their tactics, and procured and presented a new
petition against the remonstrance on file with the city Clerk, of all the land
owners east of Sycamore Street, and some in other localities, asking the extension
to East Lawn Avenue, and manipulated the Council into the belief that their
former reference was not lawful, and that the Council itself must act directly
in premises.
This
new phase of the proposition was promptly met by the presentation of a remonstrance,
signed by about 225 of our best citizens, obtained without any general canvass,
which no doubt would more than have doubled it. Instead of treating it with that due respect which
our City Government owes to its constituency. The people who signed it were insulted by a
prominent member, by the gross and burly remark that such an expression
amounted to nothing, that signatures to such papers were mere commonplace
things, that as many or more could be obtained favoring the petition, and it
was consigned without action as is usual
with the Council, to a pigeon-hole in the City Clerk's office, where I hope it
will remain without mutilation as a memento for the use of the Centennial
meeting to be held by an adjournment on the 15th of March, 1916, as dodge
number ONE.
The
opponents to the measure of running the street through the grave-yard, after
having been thus foiled and repulsed, obtained signatures of nearly all the old
settlers of the town to a memorial respectfully addressed to the Council, asking
it to submit the whole question to the people of all the Wards after 20 days
notice, and suspend further action until the people settled it by their votes,
which was also carefully read and shared the fate of it predecessor, after
refusing to even second the motion of one member to accept the reasonable
proposition, it was 4 to 1 ordered on FILE, to be used it is hoped, March 15th,
1916, as dodge number TWO.
On
the next meeting of the Council the member who was not present at the previous
meeting having the fear of the people before him, voluntarily called up the
memorial from its perch in the pigeon hole, and obtaining a second he elaborately
urged the reasonableness of the proposition and insisted upon a direct vote of
Ayes and Nays, which seemed to be waxing too hot to be any longer skulked by
some of them, and it became convenient to move an adjournment, which is always convenient
and in order, and of course the body dissolved into thin air as a City Council.
This was dodge number THREE, which is also
handed over to March 15th, 1916, to be reviewed by the great grand-children of
this redoubtable City Council, who no doubt will stare at each other and wonder
if they sprung from such *****, such an ancestry.
During
the progress of these interventions of the people to save the old time honored
grave-yard, an ordinance was dragging its slimy serpentine length through the
regular weekly sessions of the City Council to its third reading, which
occurred on the 31st of July 1871, and culminated in the hellish and damnable
act of passing the ordinance to decimate the old venerated grave-yard without
promoting any public benefit as to travel, transit or drainage.
Well
might Shakspeare [sic] be supposed to
have had a prophetic vision of the scenes enacted in our City Council Chamber
on the memorable night of July 31st, 1871, when applying his words to other
scenes he broke forth substantially in the language "clothed with a little
brief authority, they cut such high phantastic tricks before high Heaven, as made
angels weep!" If departed spirits
really take cognizance of the acts of men, it would not require any great draw
on the imagination to suppose that, that portion of the angelic hosts, whose
earthly tabernacles were reposing in the old Urbana grave-yard, would have good
reason to indulge in the weeping mood, in view of the bull-headed stubbornness
with which they resisted popular appeals of the people, both in the City and
the surrounding country. Can this monstrosity be submitted to by the great masses
of our population? Time will tell.
But
there is another phase to this uncalled for proceedings, besides the burkeing [sic] of the bones of the dead by
municipal hyenas. It destroys a
munificent grant entered of record, to the PEOPLE from the original proprietor
of the town which was intended to remain intact
for generation after generation, the whole of which as now inclosed, measures
in a square with avenues around it, not less than one and five eight [sic] acres of land now near the center of
the City, and which in the times to come, will be worth as I have said
elsewhere, not less than $20,000 and may at small expense be made a beautiful
place of resort and promenade for our people of the present day. Shall this all
be sacrificed to gratify the senseless whims of a few persons owning property
on Ward street? They invested their
money in it with a full knowledge of all the facts, they knew it abutted a
grave-yard, dating back a full half century. Have they any right to complain
and ask such a public sacritlee (sp?)? Certainly not.
I
will conclude by saying to the Urbana public, that I expect at another time to
lift the vail, and expose enormity of the measure upon them as tax payers, and
point out that element in the Council that should be held responsible for
it. I have taken notes “and faith I’ll
print ‘em.”
