Nestled in a quiet neighborhood near Hickory Hill Park is Iowa City’s Oakland Cemetery. The burial ground is home to numerous monuments to the dead, including one striking statue with a dark reputation—the bronze Black Angel.
The figure dates back to the early 20th century and stands watch over the graves of Teresa Dolezal and her family.
Teresa moved to Iowa City with her son Eddie in the late 1800s. There she worked as a midwife until 1891, when Eddie contracted meningitis and died. The boy’s body was buried in Oakland Cemetery and a monument carved in the shape of a tree stump was erected to mark his grave.After Eddie’s death, Teresa moved to Oregon where she met and married Nicholas Feldevert. But Feldevert was not long with for this world, either; he died only a few years later in 1911.
Stricken by two losses so close together, Teresa returned to Iowa City and commissioned the construction of an eight-and-a-half foot tall bronze angel from Chicago artist Mario Korbel to memorialize her loved ones.
As soon as the statue arrived by train car, stories began to circulate. When the statue was erected in 1913, Eddie’s monument was moved to stand beside it, while the ashes of Nicholas Feldevert were placed within the statue’s base. When Teresa Feldevert passed on in 1924, her ashes joined those of her late husband. Curiously, no death date was added to Teresa’s name at the base, fueling the statue’s mystery.
What’s more, the Black Angel statue had turned from bronze to black by the time of Teresa’s death. Local legends sprang up to…
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