Shadows of Liberty: The Legacy of the Massock Mausoleum

I grew up in north central Illinois in an area referred to by locals as the Illinois Valley. Like many areas, it has its own legends and ghost stories. One in particular I first heard about as a teenager in the 1970s involved a “hatchet man” who wanders an isolated cemetery near the Massock mausoleum in Spring Valley, Ill. More recently I noticed a discussion on social media among some people who grew up in the same area. One person mentioned they would like to know more about the men buried in the mausoleum. This made me realize I would also like to know more about them. I realized as a genealogist I now have the skills I would need to help me find the records I would need to delve into their story. Shadows of Liberty: The Legacy of the Massock Mausoleum is the result of my research. It definitely is not an exhaustive telling of their tale. There are more records which could be found and more details of their lives to tell. This booklet only hits the highlights and hopefully sheds a little more light on the brothers who lie entombed in the Massock mausoleum in the Lithuanian Liberty Cemetery in Spring Valley, Illinois.

While I embedded the story below, you can also download a PDF of the booklet here: https://www.intheoldendays.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Shadows-of-Liberty-The-Legacy-of-the-Massock-Mausoleum.pdf.

I also didn’t think everyone would be interested in the citations noting where I found the information to write the story. So, I pulled them out into another PDF you can download or access here if you are interested in the research or want to verify the information I shared: https://www.intheoldendays.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Shadows-of-Liberty-The-Legacy-of-the-Massock-Mausoleum-Citations.pdf

Shadows of Liberty by Pam Broviak