“Voices of Our Past” Will Bring Historic Edwardsville Citizens Back to Life at Woodlawn Cemetery

EDWARDSVILLE - The fifth annual “Voices of Our Past” historical re-enactment event at Woodlawn Cemetery in Edwardsville will be held on Saturday, Oct. 8. The one-day special event will feature portrayals of citizens from Edwardsville’s past and the connections they have to the town today - proceeds will benefit the maintenance of Woodlawn Cemetery.

Craig Becker, the creative director of this event, said Woodlawn Cemetery is “the oldest active cemetery in Edwardsville, and most of anybody who’s anybody is buried there.”

“Seven citizens were selected and researched and a brief biography was written for each one, and then members of Alumni Players! who are all Edwardsville High School graduates - mostly from long ago and far away - are going to be portraying these characters based on the historical facts, but then really developing characters that come to life,” Becker said.

With this year’s theme centering around professions, some of these citizens will include a Civil War battlefield physician, Edwardsville’s first telegraph operator, a librarian, a prize-winning equestrian, and more.

Multiple performances will be put on at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., plus a 7 p.m. evening candlelight presentation in the Woodlawn hillside chapel. While the cemetery has 40 acres to accommodate guests, chapel seating is limited and tickets tend to sell out quickly.

Tickets are $15 each and can be purchased in advance directly at this link.

Becker said the proceeds from this event will go directly towards maintaining the historic cemetery, including repaving the roads, taking care of trees that fall from lightning, enhancing monuments, and more. He said the cemetery is uniquely constructed.

“There’s about 40 acres, there’s a woodland area, a big meadow, and it is very European in style because it’s really built on a large hill that swoops down into a meadow, bordered by a creek on the long side,” he said. “It’s beautiful. It was built as a park as well as a cemetery … it’s not just a cornfield marked off in grids like most of our cemeteries are.”

Becker added that the event’s name has slightly changed from “Voices of the Past” to “Voices of Our Past” to better represent the connections these citizens have to the Edwardsville sites, names, and residents of today.

“The folks that are coming in to see our production will actually walk away knowing that all seven people they saw had something to do with their daily life in Edwardsville - whether it’s a reference to a site, a location, an artifact, an organization - something that is still in Edwardsville today 100 or 100+ years later,” Becker said. “We are a community and our community has a history - some of it is historical, and some of it is living today.”

For more information about this year’s Voices of Our Past event, visit the Woodlawn Cemetery website.

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