Laurel Hill Graphic



To navigate the Laurel HIll pages, use the menu dropdown at the top of each page

Laurel Hill Cemetery, located at 21st and Polk Street in Omaha, is squarely in the old South Omaha city limits. It's also known as Sautter's Cemetery and the Old German Cemetery. 

The lot owners association has been working hard in 2019 and 2020 to upgrade the cemetery, with new gate posts and new retaining walls. They've added new landscaping, new block markers, and are planning more improvements in the coming months. They are truly making a difference in the look and feel of the cemetery. 

They also have lots for sale now! 

The Lists/Markers page at the bottom of the left menu here has photos of all the markers at Laurel Hill, circa 2013.  They're alphabetical on the page, so people can find their relatives.  

I've been  documenting Laurel Hill, and am working on plot maps to help people find their family's plots. Click here to see the progress. It's something I work on when I've got free time, and since I started this five years ago I've apparently not had much free time because only Blocks 2 and 5 are finished. I'll keep trying.

Walking around it you can see the influence of the Victorian graveyard ideal of stately plots with imposing fenceposts and well-kept park-like vistas, but Laurel Hill has been hard hit by the weight of time and the elements. If you spend any time in it today, you can see what the cemetery once looked like and how charming and well-maintained it still is. 

Today you can see the cemetery from the Kennedy Freeway, just before the first Bellevue exit at Chandler Street. 

If you have Microsoft Excel, click here to see the layout of the cemetery. In the photo below, the main gates are at the top of the picture, a little right of center. The map at the link above has the same orientation. 

This picture has the rough outline of the block numbers that the cemetery is split into, which are marked by poles with the numbers on them, at the cemetery. Margie Sobotka's book has all the known burials listed, with their block, lot and grave number. There are a large amount of unknown burials here, I suspect, given that the records were destroyed in a fire fairly early on, and reconstructed from memory.

Laurel Hill Bock Map

Photo courtesy of Google Maps 

According to the Greater Omaha Genealogical Society book, "Graveyards of Douglas County," the cemetery was begun in 1866 by Christian Sautter on his farm in South Omaha. Mrs. Sautter gave the cemetery to the lot owners in 1936. All the early records were destroyed by fire in 1910. Mr. Sautter attempted to reconstruct the records from memory. 

Helen Zentz, the late past-President of the Laurel Hill Cemetery Association, was working to put together a card file of all extant records in the 1970's-80's. These were eventually collected into book form in 1990 by Margie Sobotka, called, appropriately enough, "The Laurel Hill Cemetery Book." At this time the book is out-of-print, but if there is enough demand it's possible they might do another printing. The Omaha Public Library Main Branch has all the known records on microfilm, as well as a copy of the book.