With over 800,000 people buried in Forest Park, you can be assured that a fair number of them are celebrities. Resting here is a Governor, a few Congressmen, labor leaders, singers, movie stars, authors, radio personalities – but did you know that the “great inventor of the art of headwalking” was buried in Forest Park?
Faded by time, a tall, unique grave marker in Jewish Waldheim reads:
In Memory of the
Great Inventor of the Art
of Headwalking
Baptiste Louis Goldkette
Born June 28, 1880
Died June 22, 1920
Beloved Brother And Uncle
Baptiste Louise Goldkette was an equilibrist, acrobat, and dancer. There is some confusion about the year of his birth as it is also recorded as 1879 and 1883, but the Goldkette family seems to have been rather casual about those kinds of details.
For generations, the Goldkettes were magicians, trick riders, clowns, singers, dancers and “artistes.” They moved many times, claiming various nationalities (Danish, French, Scandinavian, Swiss, English) and used several different surnames. In fact, the name “Goldkette” is thought to be a stage name as it translates to “gold chain,” which could either refer to one of their acts where performers were linked together, or to a gift given to them by royalty.
The Goldkette family was said to have been the “oldest show family” with appearances before royal courts dating from 1741 when Baptiste’s great-great-grandfather walked on a tightrope at Maria-Theresa’s coronation as the Queen of Hungary. The family was even said to have been performing in a theater as it was torn down by a Parisian mob during the Reign of Terror at the time of the French Revolution. Continuing in the family tradition, Baptiste performed in a balancing act with his brother, Franconi. Baptiste said that they started performing, “almost from the cradle.”
Baptiste came to the U.S. in 1907 along with Franconi and his two sisters who were also performers. Once in America, the siblings traveled the continent, as they had done in Europe. Baptiste and Franconi even performed in Cuba while the sisters settled in New York. At one point, Baptiste and Franconi were based out of La Paz, Indiana, where it was cheaper to board animals than in Chicago.
One advertisement for Baptiste and Franconi featured their aerobatic skills with a photo of Baptiste standing on his brother’s shoulders holding either a monkey or a dog. Another promotional flyer showed Baptiste balanced on his head, arms and legs spread wide, traveling down a busy sidewalk, proclaiming that he was the “creator of a new sport – head walker!”
The Goldkette family continued in the entertainment industry into the 1960s, Baptiste’s nephew, Jean Goldkette was a well-known figure in the world of jazz and was also a classical musician.
While the life of an acrobat can be dangerous, Baptiste said he never suffered a serious mishap while performing except when he “…suffered a slight injury once in walking on my head down the nine marble steps of the Paris Opera House on a wager, the marble steps being a bit too hard for my skull, but I accomplished the feat and won my wager.”
Baptiste died in Columbus Hospital in Chicago at the age of 40. His death certificate states that he died of “acute dilation of the heart, edema of the lungs.” It’s probably safe to say that modern-day break dancers do not know that their “headspin” move was invented by a man born in the 1880s.
References used: St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper, Under Every Stone website, Vintage Jazz Mart magazine.
Amy Binns-Calvey is a volunteer with the Historical Society of Forest Park and the author of More Dead Than Alive: Stories of Forest Park’s Quietest Neighbors.