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Oak Woods Cemetery is located in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. It is a private cemetery owned and operated by Dignity Corporation, and is not affiliated with any church denomination. It is one of the more significant historic cemeteries on Chicago's south side with burial sites of renowned figures like Mayor Harold Washington, civil rights activist Ida B. Wells, and Olympian Jesse Owens. The cemetery was established in 1855 but burials did not take place until 1860.
At the time of its opening Oak Woods was beyond the city limits, but it is now part of a very urban neighborhood called Greater Grand Crossing. The cemetery is located at 1035 E. 67th Street and covers an area of 183 acres. Oak Woods is bound by the streets 67th to the north, Woodlawn / Dorchester to the east, 71st to the south and Cottage Grove to the west. Oak Woods is 1.5 miles east of Interstate 94 at the 63rd Street exit. The grounds are beautiful and include grassy hills, ponds, large trees.
Burial records have not been indexed and are not online. There are records at the cemetery office; however, unless you are a family member you are not allowed to look at the record due to privacy guidelines. The only information provided to the general public is the location of the grave. To obtain this information you must have the deceased's name and year of burial. The burial record contains: the person's name, year of burial, age at burial, owner of the grave, section, lot, and grave number. They will also tell you if there is a marker. However, they will in some cases say there is not one when there is, so always check. Maps of the cemetery, section and lot are provided.
If you call the office they will do a look-up for one or two burials. If you have more than that you must make a request in writing and there is a fee. The staff are great in assisting the public.
Camp Douglas, in Chicago, Illinois, was one of the largest Union Army prisoner-of-war camps for Confederate soldiers taken prisoner during the American Civil War. Based south of the city on the prairie, it was also used as a training and detention camp for Union soldiers. The Union Army first used the camp in 1861 as an organizational and training camp for volunteer regiments. It became a prisoner-of-war camp in early 1862. Later in 1862 the Union Army again used Camp Douglas as a training camp. In the fall of 1862, the Union Army used the facility as a detention camp for paroled Union Army prisoners pending their formal exchange for Confederate prisoners. Camp Douglas became a permanent prisoner-of-war camp from January 1863 to the end of the war in May 1865. In the summer and fall of 1865, the camp served as a mustering out point for Union Army volunteer regiments. The camp was dismantled and the movable property was sold off late in the year. In the aftermath of the war, Camp Douglas eventually came to be noted for its poor conditions and death rate of between seventeen and twenty-three percent. Some 4,275 Confederate prisoners were known to be re-interred from the camp cemetery to a mass grave at Oak Woods Cemetery after the war.