Join us at Spring Grove Cemetery in Delavan, WI on Monday June 22nd, 2026!
All 48StateTour! events are free & open to the public
Spring Grove Cemetery
North 7th Street Delavan, WI 53115
6/22/2026 9am-3pm
Find A Grave
Spring Grove Cemetery - City of Delavan
Delavan History.org
48StateTour Facebook Event
Location Details (keep scrolling for Google maps)
Local contact info for any questions: Peter Oyloe - allynmansion@outlook.com - (262) -725-7018
Parking: Parking can be in the perimeter of the cul-de-sac at the end of 7th Street, or along the street. There is also parking available within the cemetery on the roadways for those in need, but be mindful of staying on the road ways and not blocking all the entrances and exits.
Cemetery Background/Info
Spring Grove Cemetery, located on North Seventh Street in Delavan, Wisconsin, is one of the community’s earliest and most historically significant burial grounds. Although no single founding charter survives in public municipal archives, burial records and headstone data confirm that the cemetery was in active use by the mid‑nineteenth century, with documented interments beginning in the 1850s and 1860s. Several individuals buried at Spring Grove were born in the late 1700s, underscoring the cemetery’s role as a resting place for some of the region’s earliest settlers and linking the site to the closing decades of the eighteenth century. Over more than 150 years, Spring Grove has evolved into a principal repository of Delavan’s civic and family history, preserving the stories of early residents, multigenerational households, and community leaders who shaped the city’s development.
The cemetery holds particular historical importance due to Delavan’s foundational role in the American circus movement. William Cameron “W. C.” Coup—innovator, impresario, and early partner of P. T. Barnum—is interred at Spring Grove, marking the site as a place of national cultural significance. Coup’s pioneering contributions, including the development of the modern traveling circus and the introduction of the circus‑train system, were conceived and refined in Delavan during the city’s era as a major circus wintering headquarters. As a result, Spring Grove contains the graves of numerous 19th‑ and early‑20th‑century circus performers, trainers, and craftspeople whose work helped establish Delavan as a center of American entertainment history. Together with its Civil War Veterans Memorial and its extensive record of early and modern interments, Spring Grove Cemetery stands as a vital historical landscape, preserving both the civic narrative of Delavan and its unique legacy as a birthplace of the American circus.
*Info above and photos below provided by our local event host Peter Oyloe*
