James Abram Garfield
(1831-1881) Section 15
(Garfield Monument)
The 20th President of the United States. Taught at Hiram College and served as its president from 1857-1861. At the same time he served as a lay minister in the Disciple of Christ Church. In 1859 he was admitted to the bar and was elected to the Ohio Senate. Entering as a Lt. Col. in 1861, Garfield volunteered in the Union Army. During the Civil War, Garfield reached the rank of Major General. Garfield resigned his commission in the Army in 1863 after being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1880, Garfield was elected to the U. S. Senate. Before his term began, he was nominated as the Republican candidate for President. President Garfield spent most of his brief time in office trying to ameliorate the two conflicting factions within the Republican Party. He was shot July 2nd, 1881 in the Washington train station by a disappointed office seeker. Garfield died from his wounds on September 19, 1881, two months short of his 50th birthday.

John Davison Rockefeller
(1839-1937) Section 10 Lot 49
(Lake View Cemetery sign - Monument)
John Davison Rockefeller began his career as an assistant bookkeeper for a Cleveland commission merchant. In 1863, Rockefeller entered the oil business, and in 1865 he left the commission business to work full-time in oil. He organized the Standard Oil Co. and became its largest stockholder when it was chartered in 1870. The oil business made him the richest man in the world, worth over $1 billion at the time of his death. He gave away $500 million dollars during his lifetime.

Eliot Ness
(1903-1957) Sec 7
(Ness Monument)
Law enforcement agent, Ness started his career in Chicago and helped bring down gangster Al Capone. As Safety Director for Cleveland from 1935-1942, Ness modernized the Cleveland Police Department by developing two-way communications between police cars and their police stations, and developing the Emergency Medical System. Ness took Cleveland's worst traffic fatality record in the nation and turned it around to twice win the National Safety Council's award for reduction of traffic deaths. Ness fought juvenile crime by forming Boy Scout units in police, fire, and other public buildings.

Adella Prentiss Hughes
(1869-1950) Section 2 Lot 394-N
(Lake View Cemetery sign, 5 rows back, headstone)
Founder of the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1898, Hughes began bringing various orchestras and performers to Cleveland. In 1915, she created the Musical Arts Association and in 1918 the Musical Arts Association and Nikolai Sokoloff joined forces to become the Cleveland Orchestra. Hughes served as its manager for 15 years; after which she served in various administrative positions for 30 years.

Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr.
(1877-1963) Section 50 Lot 134
(Lake View Cemetery sign, 6 rows back)
Inventor and businessman, active in the affairs of Cleveland's black community. Among Morgan's inventions are the gas mask and the three-colored traffic light. Morgan introduced his breathing device in 1912 and continued to make improvements for its patent in 1914. He used this device to rescue several workers and retrieve the bodies of those killed in the gas-filled tunnels beneath Lake Erie in the Cleveland Waterworks explosion of 1916. He founded the publication "Cleveland Call," the forerunner of the "Cleveland Call and Post".

Raymond Johnson Chapman
(1891-1920) Section 42 Lot 16
Chapman was a Cleveland Indians shortstop from 1912-1920 who was more interested in his team's win than his own accomplishments. He led the league in sacrifice hits for three years, setting a major league record with 67 sacrifices in 1917. In 1,303 baseball games with Cleveland, his batting average was .278.

While playing the New York Yankees in New York on August 16, 1920, Chapman was hit in the head with a ball thrown by pitcher, Carl Mays, and died 12 hours later. Chapman is the only major league baseball player to die due to an injury during a game. Dedicating the season in memory of "Chappie", the Indians won the league and world championship for the first time.

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Additional biographies in alphabetical order:

Bolton, Frances Payne
(1885-1977) Section 9 Lot 39
(5 rows back - across the road and up the steps)
Congresswoman and founder of the School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University. Bolton was a Republican congresswoman (1939-1968) from Cleveland's 22nd district for 29 years after serving out her husband's term in 1939. Bolton donated funds to establish a school of nursing at Western Reserve University; she felt nurses should have a college education as well as nursing training. During World War I, Bolton was instrumental in persuading Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker, to set up an Army School of Nursing and during World War II, she sponsored the Bolton Bill, creating the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps.

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Collinwood School Fire
(Monument)
Lakeview Elementary School in the village of Collinwood caught fire March 4, 1908, killing 172 students and 2 teachers. The fire, caused by an overheated steam pipe in contact with wooden joints under the front steps, started shortly after 9:00 AM The initial report claimed that the doors opened inward and the children were unable to open them. However, at the coroner's request, an examination of the building proved the doors opened outward; laws requiring school doors to open outward were already in effect at this time. The Collinwood fire caused numerous school inspections across the country, resulting in stricter building codes for schools.

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Hanna, Marcus Alonzo
(1837-1904) Section 9 Lot 8
(Mausoleum)
Leading businessman who founded the M. A. Hanna Co. in 1885 and a national leader of the Republican Party. Known as the "President Maker", Hanna was influential in both the Garfield and McKinley presidential campaigns. Setting up headquarters in 1895, he organized committees to promote William McKinley's nomination for the presidency in key states, bearing almost the entire cost. Hanna successfully led the presidential reelection in 1900. Hanna was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1898 and reelected in 1903.

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Higbee, Edwin Converse
(1837-1906) Section 17 Lot 10
(Higbee Monument, 1st row)
Higbee opened the Hower & Higbee Dry Goods store in 1860 with partner John G. Hower. When Hower was killed in an accident, Higbee became President and the name of the store was changed to Higbee Co. Higbee served as President from 1897 until his death in January 1906. Higbee Company became the Dillard Department Store in the late 1980's. Higbee's was the first department store in Cleveland.

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Pressman, Gloria Hershey
(1923-1991) Section 43 Lot 678
(Lake View Cemetery sign, 10 rows back, headstone located behind a tree)
As a child, Pressman appeared in many of the original "Little Rascals" short films, portraying the girl with the Dutch boy hairstyle. Using the stage name, Mildred Jackson, she appeared in several full-length movies, including the first "talkie," the "Jazz Singer." She also was in "The Virginian" and "Moby Dick."

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Stokes, Carl Burton
(1927-1996) Section 5-C Lot 116-A
(Lake View Cemetery sign)
First black mayor of a major U.S. city and first black Ohio State legislator. Stokes' political career began in 1962 when he was elected to the Ohio General Assembly where he served for five years. Entering the Cleveland mayoral race in 1965 as an independent, he narrowly lost to incumbent Ralph Locher. In 1967, he defeated Locher in the primary and won the general election for mayor over Seth Taft. In 1972, Stokes left Cleveland to become a broadcaster at WNBC-TV in New York. He was elected Cleveland municipal judge in 1983 and was appointed ambassador to the Seychelles in 1994, serving until his death.

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Van Sweringen, Mantis James
(1881-1935) Section 30 Lot 117
Van Sweringen ,Oris Paxton
(1879-1936)
(Lake View Cemetery sign, 3 rows back)
Real-estate developers and businessmen responsible for the development of Shaker Heights, Shaker Square, Shaker Rapid and the Terminal Tower. By 1929 the Van Sweringens had put together a $3 billion, 30,000 mile railroad company. Their financial empire was heavily dependent upon stocks, and after the stock market crash in 1929, the brothers' holdings quickly lost value.

In 1935, the Van Sweringens defaulted on $48 million in loans from J. P. Morgan & Co. The brothers were able to arrange financial backing, formed another holding company and were able to buy back their holdings for just over $3 million. Neither brother lived to rebuild their empires.

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Wills, Sr., J. Walker
(1874-1971) Section 50 Lot 2
(Bench, to the right of Walker sign)
Founder and director of the state's largest black-owned funeral business. An ardent supporter of the theory that economic self-help was the key to black progress, he helped organize the city's first black business organization in 1905, the Cleveland Board of Trade, which grew into the Cleveland Association of Colored Men. He was a founder of the local branch of the NAACP and the Negro Welfare Association (Urban League of Cleveland).

We will be continuing to update our "Famous Residents" page to include additional famous and noteworthy men and women residing at Lake View.

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