LEONARD WELLS VOLK

11 – 7 – 1828

8 – 19 – 1895

EMILY CLARISSA BARLOW

HIS WIFE

8 – 23 – 1832

5 – 28 – 1895

ADELLE DOUGLAS

4 – 17 – 1864

8 – 9 – 1865

THEIR CHILDREN

ARTHUR DOUGLAS

4 – 23 – 1853

10 – 31 – 1855

HONORA VOLK COLT

7 – 13 – 1861

12 – 13 – 1928

A BELOVED MOTHER

Leonard Wells Volk was an artist most noted for the live mask he made of Lincoln’s face and hands shortly before Lincoln was elected president.  Ironically enough, Volk’s patron was Stephen Douglas, who was Lincoln’s political revival.  Stephen Douglas was a first cousin to Emily Volk, Leonard’s wife.  Douglas paid for Volk to study sculpture in Italy and later supported him when he opened a small studio in Chicago. 

Volk designed his own funerary monument which was carried out by the Gast Monument Company.  The sculpture sits on a circular plot in the Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.  Volk is depicted seated as if he is resting on a rocky ledge.  He leans against a closed book that has a bas-relief profile of a woman—presumably of his wife, Emily. In one hand he is holding a walking stick and by his feet is a tattered hat.