Woodlawn Cemetery
in West Palm Beach, Florida
Added: Sunday April 17, 2011

Woodlawn Cemetery in West Palm Beach, Florida

The Inscription above the Arch at Woodlawn reads:
'That Which is So Universal as Death must be a Blessing.'

By AUGUSTUS MAYHEW - Special to the Daily News -

As heavenly as Palm Beach life may be, because of the town’s lack for a cemetery, residents can never contemplate spending eternity on the enchanted isle.

While many opt for the afterlife’s peace and quiet in Northern family plots,
some of the resort’s best-known pioneers and social families have made nearby Woodlawn Cemetery their permanent address, although admittedly, there are
some islanders who would never be caught dead in West Palm Beach.

“When Hiram Hammon developed his Midtown property, he set aside a parcel
for a cemetery,” historian James Ponce recalled. “But the town thought it too
small, so the departed from the East Side were carried over to Lakeside Cemetery, where the Norton Museum’s park now fronts,” Ponce said. “That is, of course, unless
you were buried in your own backyard, as was the custom at the time,” he laughed.

To the west of today’s Norton Museum of Art, Henry Flagler had bought a pineapple
farm, called a pinery, and donated the land for a cemetery. By 1904, there was
“no more attractive cemetery in Florida” than Woodlawn, most likely inspired in name
and design by New York’s Woodlawn Cemetery that had also utilized a spacious Landscape Lawn plan. After Woodlawn was deeded to the City of West Palm Beach,
the Lakeside Cemetery was closed.

Posted:. Saturday, June 5, 2010

Some of the Florida Homesteaders Found Here

Homesteaders Elisha Dimick and Family in Dec 20, 1882
Palm Beach County Township 42-S Range 43-E Plot 28

Homesteader Richard B. Potter and Family in April 17, 1891
Palm Beach County Township 44-S Range 43-E Plot 10

More will be added as I find them

Some of the Other Early Settlers Found Here

Robert B. Moore and Wife Ursula T. Soule
One of the First Burials in the new Cemetery in 1904

Pineapple Farmer George Matthams and his wife Elizabeth

Ad in the Newspaper May 21, 1897

In the mid to late 1890s there many devastating freezes that killed the
pineapples. Florida was a major Pineapple growing state because it took too
long to get pineapples from Hawaii which spoiled. During 1909, in places in
Palm Beach county it was also discovered that new plants were yellowing and
dying due to mealy worms and nematodes.

William M. Maughlin - 1847 - 1913
A West Palm Beach Architect

One of William M. Maughlins final designs

Capt Henry C. Winter, wife Mary Alice & daughter Gertrude

Dr. Hobart Warren and wife Mary
A Palm Beach Doctor who was the Head of Health and Housing,
directing the Emergency Ambulance Corps during the WWII times.

Gus Jordahn, came to the United States in 1904. He opened a salt water
Pool complex called "Gus' Baths" in 1910, later renamed The Lido Pools.

Captain Gus Jordahn, was a exceptional swimmer, a Lifeguard at the
Breakers Hotel, and founded the "Cow Boys of the Sea",
a lifeguard organization that saved hundreds of lives over the years.
He was a former Officer in the Danish Army. He became the first Police
Officer in Palm Beach and his first arrest was of two men bathing in
the nude. Gus and others rode out the great hurricane of 1928 in a cellar
behind one of the pools. He served as a Commissioner in Palm Beach
as well in Palm Beach County. He died of pneumonia in 1938 at age 56.

A Town of Palm Beach Monument and Plaques about Gus Jordahn,
and his "Cowboys of the Sea". It is located just south of Worth
Avenue on A1A, where his Palm Beach Pier once stood.

Just inside to the north of the main entrance is a section that has many
plots of US Servicemen, that died during the Spanish American War & WWI.

The Chillingworth Family

Judge Curtis Eigene Chillingworth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia plus more additions

Curtis Eugene Chillingworth (October 24, 1896 to presumably June 15, 1955) was a Florida attorney and state judge who disappeared from his Manalapan, Florida home, and was later murdered along with his wife, Marjorie Chillingworth.

Background

Curtis was the son of Richard J. and Eunice Chillingworth, who was born in England in 1833 and came to the Lake Worth area in 1892. He became a Deputy Sheriff and then Sheriff of Dade County, which later split into Dade and Palm Beach Counties
on July 1, 1909.

Curtis graduated from the University of Florida in 1917, and later that same year was admitted to the Florida Bar. After graduating, he served at the naval base in Key West, Florida, then attended the United States Naval Academy, where he received a commission to serve on the gunboat Annapolis. During World War I he served as an Ensign aboard the USS Minneapolis (C-13).

After the war, he returned to West Palm Beach to practice law with his father. He married Marjorie M. McKinley, a Cornell University student and daughter of old friends of the Chillingworth family.

In 1921, at the age of 24, Chillingworth began his career as county judge. In 1923, he became the newly elected circuit judge, a position he held for 32 years until his death in 1955.

He remained in the U.S. Naval Reserves and was recalled to active duty in 1942. During World War II, he was stationed in London and Plymouth, England, where he participated in planning the occupation and recovery of Germany. He was released from active duty in 1945 as a full Commander.

Sadly, On December 21, 1942, They lost their Daughter Carol, when she was hit
by train while crossing the FEC train tracks near her home.

Judge Chillingworth was widely regarded as an outstanding legal mind and as the conscience of the Palm Beach courts and legal community.

The City of West Palm Beach opened a 4.1-acre (17,000 m²) park to honor Judge Chillingworth. Chillingworth Park is a neighborhood park with street side parking has a playground, basketball court, tennis court, gazebo, walkways and benches. Chillingworth Park is located at Ware Drive & Erie Place between Okeechobee Boulevard & Palm Beach Lakes Blvd.

Their Disappearance was Big News in 1955

Chillingworth and his wife were last seen at a dinner party in West Palm Beach, Florida, on the evening of June 14, 1955. They left the dinner about 10 p.m. for their Manalapan home. They went to bed expecting a carpenter to arrive in the morning of June 15 to build a playground for their grandchildren.

The carpenter arrived at 8 a.m. (which was the appropriate time), but when he got to the Chillingworth's home, he noticed that the door had been left open and that their home appeared to be empty. Later that same day, Judge Chillingworth failed to appear at a previously scheduled 10 a.m. hearing at the courthouse in West Palm Beach.

The Police Investigation

When the police began their investigation, they arrived at the Chillingworth's home and found a shattered porch light, drops of blood on the walkway to the beach, and two used spools of adhesive tape (one in the sand and one in the living room).

An accidental drowning during a morning swim was quickly ruled out, and $40 found to be in Marjorie's pocketbook ruled out robbery. The keys were still in the ignition of Chillingworth's Plymouth. No further clues were obtained and (at that point) the case went cold. Later, in 1957, Curtis and Marjorie Chillingworth were declared legally dead.

The Peel Murder-for-hire theory

While no bodies were ever recovered (and so definitive proof of the couple's death was ever found), the most dominant theory about what happened to the Chillingworths begins with Judge Chillingworth's known previous association with a Florida municipal court judge named Joseph Peel. Peel, the theory proceeds, was protecting bolita operators and moonshiners. In 1953, Peel represented both sides in a divorce (something that was unethical by conventional legal standards of conduct). His superior at that time (Judge Curtis Eugene Chillingworth), gave him only a reprimand, with the warning that this was his last chance. This so angered Peel that he arranged for the Chillingworths to be killed.

Hired Murderers

By early June 1955, Peel was in a panic. He believed that his ethical lapses were about to be exposed by Judge Chillingworth (which would probably result in ending Peel's legal career). Peel then hired "Lucky" Holzapfel (a known criminal and a carpenter's apprentice) to murder the Chillingworths. On the night of June 14, Holzapfel (and an accomplice named Bobby Lincoln) went to Manalapan and landed on the beach behind the Chillingworth's house around 1 a.m. Bobby Lincoln crouched in the bushes as Lucky knocked on the door. The judge answered in his pajamas. Lucky pulled a pistol from under his shirt and forced the Judge and his wife into the boat. After the boat drifted for about an hour, the couple were thrown overboard with lead weights strapped to their legs.

Pleading Guilty to a Double Murder

In 1959, Holzapfel had bragged to a friend, James Yenzer, that he knew who had killed the Chillingworths, and in September 1960, Yenzer and a friend, ex-West Beach police officer Jim Wilber, lured Holzapfel to a hotel in Melbourne, Florida. Yenzer and Wilber managed to get Holzapfel drunk and discuss what he knew of the murders. Unbeknownst to Holzapfel, a member of the Florida Sheriff's Bureau, tipped off by Yenzer and Wilber, was in an adjacent room in the hotel capturing his comments on tape. Holzapfel was arrested on October 1, 1960, and on December 12, 1960, he pleaded guilty to both murders. He was sent to Death Row, but his death sentence was commuted in 1966, and he died in prison thirty years later. On March 30, 1961, Peel was found guilty of accessory to murder. He received two life sentences, but was paroled in 1982 while in seriously ill health, and died just nine days later. The accomplice to the murder, Bobby Lincoln, finished his federal prison term in Michigan in 1962.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia plus more additions