Delavan was the winter camp of circus back in the day and when the circus people died, they were buried in the cemetery in town. The graves were marked with elephant placards indicating that they were part of the circus.
When we got to Spring Grove Cemetery, all we knew that there were 100s of graves with these circus markers on them but after driving around the cemetery once, we didn’t find a single one. So after consulting the website again, we knew what we were at least looking for. The problem was there were all sorts of markers on the graves… mainly military ones.
Finally we got of the car and started to look at specific markers. After checking a bunch of markers, we finally found the elusive circus grave marker. We did eventually find several of them. Some of the graves were quite old and worn so you couldn’t make out the names or anything. One person was in the Mexican American War and in the circus.
It was fun exploring the graveyard looking for the circus graves and seeing the military graves as well. There were some graves that were from the Civil War. We actually had to look up what GAR stood for because we couldn’t figure out what war they were referring to.
After exploring the graveyards, we stopped downtown so I could get pictures of the circus statues. It’s not every day that you get your picture taken with a giant elephant or clown.
It is nice that Delavan embraces its circus history and honors the circus with the circus grave markers. If I didn’t read something somewhere about the circus graves, I would never had known about that part of Delavan’s history and never would have taken the time to explore the old graveyard and see the circus graves. If you are ever in Delavan, take a few minutes to pay respect to the circus people. It’s worth the side trip.
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