Fairmont Cemetery opened in 1921 at 1807 S Green Street.
BOYETT: Deceased man thwarted country club plans
Fairmont Cemetery would have been the Henderson Country Club if not for A. Herman Kockritz.
Kockritz had been dead a couple of years at the time he saved Fairmont, however, so that was a pretty neat trick.
This region doesn’t have a particularly good record when it comes to maintaining the sanctity of cemeteries. The city’s original one at the northwest corner of Fourth and Elm streets operated until Fernwood Cemetery opened in 1854.
The city of Henderson hired a contractor to move all the bodies to Fernwood, but the contractor — who happened to be Henderson’s first mayor — never completed the contract. Human bones were dug up at that site for at least 50 years.
And don’t get me started on all of the county’s small rural cemeteries that have been plowed over at one time or another. “Jesus wept,” as the Bible’s shortest verse says.
But back to Mr. Kockritz. Occasionally I’ve noticed while researching this column I sometimes get a little tap on the shoulder.
I hesitate to say exactly what it is, but it almost always involves a specific person — someone who almost seems to beg I do some digging and tell their full story.
I do my best to follow those hunches because they always seem to pay off. My entry into Kockritz’s story began with an article that appeared in the Feb. 24, 1915 edition of the Henderson Journal.
World War I was taking place at that time, although the United States had not yet gotten involved. The story was about how Kockritz had fought in the same unit with two top German generals, Alexander von Kluck and Paul von Hindenburg, during the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War.
“During his military career he received one wound, a saber slash, on the wrist and he bears the scar today,” the Journal noted, adding that he received two awards for bravery.
According to genealogical research done by his great-grandson, Arthur “Pete” Kockritz, he had been born March 13, 1848, in Saxony, Germany, and came to America not long after the end of the Franco-Prussian War. He married Emma Winkler in New Orleans in 1886 and they had a bunch of children.
Kockritz was a harness maker, according to census records, and had a shop at 318 Second St., but it burned about 1906. In the fall of that year he completed the current building on the same site, which is now the law offices of Dorsey, Gray, Norment and Hopgood.
He erected that building based on a promise made by the city of Henderson that it would waive property taxes for five years, which was what it usually did for new industry back then. The city was a pretty good customer for him, also.
But the city reneged on its pledge. That must have been a little embarrassing, since one of his sons was a city councilman at the time. So Kockritz filed suit against the city. He lost. The city maintained his harness production “is not of that quantity or quality that would dignify said establishment as being a manufactory,” and the judge agreed Feb. 5, 1908.
That was Herman’s only brush with the local legal system. At least while he was above ground. He died Aug. 24, 1921, and became the first person buried in Fairmont Cemetery.
Presumably he rested in peace for a couple of years. But in November 1923 the original Henderson Country Club across from Atkinson Park burned to the ground and the club was without a home.
The following month the Henderson City Commission decided to sell Fairmont Cemetery — or at least the bulk of it — to B.G. Witt of the Henderson Country Club.
In agreeing to sell 47.6 acres to the club, the city also agreed that it would sell, on the same terms as the earlier sale, the remaining 9.62 acres — once the bodies there had been removed.
Emma Kockritz and relatives of several other people buried there took offense. They filed suit against the city Feb. 22, 1924, alleging the city’s sale “completely destroys” the property’s use as a cemetery, and in essence was a conditional sale of the land where their relatives were buried.
The judge not only ruled against the city Oct. 14, 1924, he required the city to pay the plaintiffs’ legal costs.
Apparently it’s a pretty well settled legal principle that you’re not supposed to sell property once it’s been dedicated as a cemetery, at least not without permission of the next of kin.
The city got away with it once before, however, back when it decertified Oak Hill Cemetery in 1906 and later allowed the land to be divided into lots, despite the fact more than 500 people had been buried there.
The cemetery was on the south side of Pringle Street between Mill and Meadow streets and there are still some grave markers behind South Heights Elementary School.
Anyway, I thought Herman Kockritz deserved a tip of the hat for the role he played in saving Fairmont Cemetery. If you agree, and wish to pay your respects, you can find him in Lot 63 of Section A.
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