Southtown Star - Chicago Sun-Times
October 16, 2011
Jason Freeman
How did Bachelor’s Grove get its name?
Ask your friends and family to name the most haunted location in the Southland, and chances are they’ll finger Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery near Midlothian as the culprit.
If you’re a Southland native, I’ll wager that, like me, you’ve grown up on a steady diet of Bachelor’s Grove ghost stores. From eerie orbs to phantom houses to gray ladies, the graveyard is chockfull of ’em.
What you might not know, though, is how the ominous cemetery got its famous name. One story I heard and believed when I was younger was that it contained only the bodies of unmarried men. And at first, that seems like a logical explanation.
But it’s just not true.
According to Prairieghosts.com, the name Bachelor’s Grove “actually came from the name of a family who settled in the area … one family that moved into the area was called ‘Batchelder,’ and their name was given to the timberland where they settled.”
Guess what that timberland eventually became?
You guessed it: Bachelor’s Grove. Through the years, the family name went through several changes until it came to the common spelling we know today.
