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The Potawatomi and the Pickle Pioneer

                                                            


Lyman Budlong was a prosperous pickle producer.

After buying 700 hundred acres of land in Bowmanville, Illinois, he started farming. Budlong grew carrots, tomatoes, onions, lettuce…but his cash crop was cucumbers, Budlong was the Davy Crocket of Cucumbers. By 1900, he  seasonally employed 1500 women and children and 800 men to harvest and process twelve thousand bushels of vegetables per day during the summer months  and 150,000 bushels of cucumbers per pickle season. All the pickles were processed on-site and Budlong became the largest supplier of premium pickles in the entire World.

One day while pitching a pitchfork into a pickle patch (figuratively speaking), Budlong was surprised by what he found.

An excavation of his gravel pit in 1909 revealed fourteen bodies buried in circle with their feet towards the center.

The excavation was thought to be a Potawatomi Indian  burial ground, but this seems totally inconsistent with the Tribe’s traditional funeral rituals. Clan members would dress the corpse in the best clothing and everyday items, tools, ornaments, moccasins and even prized possessions would be interred as well. And bodies were buried individually in a variety of positions.

Apparently, there was not a great deal of care exhuming the bodies on the Budlong site because while they were originally well preserved, they soon crumbled (dust to dust) and only the skeletons remained after being exposed to the air. There is also no record of any artifacts being recovered from the farm and no explanation offered for the mass grave.

What happened to the skeletons? No one knows.

Budlong died in 1909 and was buried next to wife Louise, less than one mile from his pickle paradise. A section of Chicago near Lincoln Square is named in his honor: Budlong Woods

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