Oakland Cemetery, Iowa City, Iowa: The Black Angel, the Legends and the Record

Midwest Haunted Cemeteries

Oakland Cemetery in Iowa City, Iowa, holds one of the best-known grave markers in the Midwest: the Black Angel, a bronze statue that has turned almost entirely black. University of Iowa students and local children have told stories about it for generations, including warnings that touching it brings death. The statue also has a documented history, and that history is partly contested. This post separates what the records show from the folklore and notes where the sources disagree, including on the year the statue was installed.

What the record shows

Oakland Cemetery was deeded to “the people of Iowa City” by the Iowa territorial legislature on February 13, 1843. The city, which still owns and runs it, says it now covers 40 acres. It is also the burial place of Iowa’s first territorial governor, Robert Lucas, Civil War governor Samuel Kirkwood and local historian Irving Weber, among others.

The Black Angel marks the Feldevert family plot. According to the city and to a 2017 Cedar Rapids Gazette “Time Machine” column, Teresa Dolezal Feldevert was born in Bohemia and settled in Iowa City, where she worked as a midwife. Her son, Eduard “Eddie” Dolezal, died of meningitis in 1891 and was buried in Oakland Cemetery under a tree-stump marker. The Gazette and Our Iowa Heritage give his age as 17, while the city and Hibbs give 18. Teresa later married Nicholas Feldevert in Oregon. He died in 1911.

After his death, she hired Chicago sculptor Mario Korbel to design a bronze memorial. The Gazette dates the commission to April 1911, and the city says it cost $5,000. The statue arrived in Iowa City by train on November 21, 1912, which is the one date the city, the Gazette and other accounts all agree on. Teresa died on November 18, 1924. The Gazette reports that her ashes were buried under the angel with those of her husband and her son, whose grave was moved beside it after the statue was erected. Her estate was appraised at $1,393.21, and the Gazette says no money was left to carve her death date, which is why the inscription gives only her birth year.

When was it installed?

Sources give four different years:

  • 1912. The city’s page says longtime residents’ oral history holds that the angel was put up as soon as it arrived.
  • 1913. Iowa City resident Rose Zetek recalled watching an ox cart deliver the statue to the cemetery in 1913, according to a 2003 local-history column by Bob Hibbs. The Smithsonian’s art inventory, as cited by Wikipedia, also gives 1913.
  • 1915. The text of the Wikipedia article gives this year.
  • 1918. The city says “other publications” report that the statue was stored in a barn for six years and put up in 1918, after a court case Teresa brought against the artist, which she lost. The Gazette says accounts of a lawsuit date from 1960 on and describe it the other way around, with the artist suing her.

The Gazette also notes that “none of the local newspapers from that period ever mentioned a lawsuit.” Our Iowa Heritage, drawing on Weber, repeats the lawsuit story but says newspaper articles from the 1920s contradict the claim that the statue was stored. Hibbs writes that it is unclear which version is right. None of these accounts settles the question, so the installation date should be treated as unresolved.

Why is it black?

The city says the color comes from oxidation of the bronze, and Hibbs describes it as a normal aging process for a copper and tin alloy. The Gazette adds a wrinkle: when the statue arrived in 1912, “it already may have had its dark color,” since Korbel experimented with patinas. A 1922 Iowa City Press-Citizen item, quoted in the Gazette, says Teresa was disappointed by the blackness. Our Iowa Heritage cites a 1925 Des Moines Register interview in which she said the angel was not fully black on arrival but darkened soon after it was installed. Those accounts do not match.

One more disagreement concerns the metal. The Gazette says the statue “isn’t made of cheap metal,” while Our Iowa Heritage argues that a cheaper bronze and tin mix was used. Neither claim was independently confirmed. The statue’s height also varies by source: 8.5 feet from the city, the Gazette and Wikipedia, and 9 feet from Iowa PBS and Hibbs.

The legends

Most of the stories attach to the angel’s color and to touching it. Iowa PBS records the common versions: kissing or touching the statue brings death (with qualifiers that vary by teller), the angel turns a shade darker each year to mark the people it has killed, and touching it at midnight on October 31 means death within seven years. A fourth claim, that defacing it brings death, appears in a travel site quoted by Our Iowa Heritage.

Other tales explain the color. Hibbs lists a story that lightning struck the statue after the husband’s funeral and turned it black at once. The Gazette says the angel never crossed an ocean, that no one was cheated or cursed, and that no murder or infidelity is connected to it. The Press-Citizen was already reporting rumors about the statue’s color in 1922, according to Our Iowa Heritage, so the stories are at least a century old.

Halloween draws crowds to the cemetery, according to Iowa PBS and Wikipedia. These are folk beliefs, and none has any documented basis.

What the record does not support

The curse and the “death” stories have no documentation. The record the Gazette and the city give is ordinary: a mother commissioned a memorial for her son and husband, and the bronze darkened. The Gazette’s timeline also includes no funeral in Iowa City for Nicholas Feldevert, which the lightning story assumes: he was buried in Oregon in 1911, and in 1912 his remains were exhumed and cremated in Portland, and the ashes were sent to Iowa City.

The lawsuit story is not confirmed by newspapers of the time, and the accounts differ on who sued. The claim that the statue sat in a barn until 1918 conflicts with the oral histories that place it in the cemetery in 1912 or 1913. The cheap-metal explanation rests on one site’s argument.

The only well-documented harm connected to the statue is done by people. Vandals have broken off several fingers, according to Wikipedia, Hibbs and Our Iowa Heritage, and the Gazette reports that vandals painted it silver-gray in January 1965. Iowa PBS notes that the cemetery watches it closely because of past vandalism.

Visiting

Oakland Cemetery is at 1000 Brown St., Iowa City. The city lists cemetery hours of 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily and office hours of 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. The office phone is 319-356-5105. Hours around Halloween were not checked, so call to confirm.

The city’s posted rules are short:

  • Look and enjoy, but do not touch the monuments. That includes the Black Angel.
  • Rubbings and tracings of stones are not allowed.
  • Dogs must stay inside a vehicle, except service animals.
  • Any event other than a funeral needs a controlled-use application at least two weeks in advance.

The city also links to a full set of cemetery regulations, which were not read for this post. No posted photography or drone rule was found. This is an active cemetery with private family lots, so keep voices low, stay on the paths and give way to funerals. Dares to touch or climb the statue are not a good idea. The city asks visitors not to touch any monument, and this one has already been vandalized.

FAQ

Why is the Black Angel black?

The city and the Gazette both point to oxidation of the bronze. The Gazette adds that the statue may already have been dark when it arrived in November 1912. Sources disagree on whether it darkened before or after installation.

When was the Black Angel installed?

It arrived in Iowa City on November 21, 1912. Installation is dated 1912, 1913, 1915 or 1918 depending on the source, and the lawsuit story behind the 1918 date is not confirmed by newspapers from that time.

Is it true that touching the Black Angel brings death?

No record supports that. It is a long-running campus and local legend. The city asks visitors not to touch any monument, partly because the statue has been vandalized.

Is Oakland Cemetery open to the public?

Yes. The city lists daily cemetery hours of 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Call 319-356-5105 to confirm hours and rules before visiting.

More haunted cemeteries: For another Iowa entry, see Sunset View Cemetery in Washta. Other Midwest entries include Rochester Cemetery in Topeka, Kansas and Stull Cemetery in Kansas.

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