Most accounts of the anarchists' funeral contend that they were buried in Waldheim Cemetery (also known as German Waldheim), near the Des Plaines River in Forest Park, because no other cemetery would accept their remains. The warranty deed on the left appears to indicate that the burial plots for Louis Lingg and the four executed anarchists were first purchased by members of the committee in charge of the funeral (including Frank Stauber and Ernst Schmidt), who in this document signed ownership of the plots over to the Pioneer Aid and Support Association in 1890 for a token fee of one dollar.

The choice of the date of the transfer—May 5, 1890—may well have been purposeful, since it is almost exactly four years after the Haymarket meeting of May 4, 1886. The agreement specifies that the plots are "for a burial place of August Spies, Albert R. Parsons, Engel, Fisher [sic] and Ling [sic] and for no other purpose, or burial of any other corpses." In a separate document, the Pioneer Aid and Support Association pledged to keep the plots in repair or transfer them to the heirs of the deceased.

The deed on the right, dated June 16, 1890, shows that the Pioneer and Aid Society paid an additional $444 for adjoining plots "as a place of interment for the bodies of Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab and Oscar Neebe in the events of their deaths and for no other purpose." At this point all three of these men were very much alive, even if they were incarcerated in Joliet Prison. All but Fielden would eventually be interred at Waldheim. Coincidentally, Fielden, who worked as a teamster, had delivered a load of stone to Waldheim the morning of the Haymarket meeting.

Waldheim opened in 1873 when several German fraternal organizations purchased land for use as a cemetery from Ferdinand Haase, an immigrant from Prussia. Haase had first built a home and farmed in this area, but he converted a portion of his holdings to park and picnic grounds in 1856. The popularity of the park, and later of the cemetery, was in part attributable to Haase's negotiating a direct railroad connection to downtown Chicago. The closing of the city cemetery in Lincoln Park in 1866 and the banning of new burial grounds in 1869 encouraged Haase to market his property as a site for cemeteries. The area had actually long been a burial ground, serving Potowatomi Indians well before the first European settlers arrived.

Waldheim was one of several portions of land that Haase sold for this use. Concordia Cemetery was established in 1872 by German Lutherans. Forest Home (the English translation of "Waldheim"), which dates to 1876, was aimed mainly at a respectable "American" clientele—it would later be the last resting place of the parents of Ernest Hemingway, who lived in nearby Oak Park. The managers of these new enterprises participated in the garden cemetery movement popular in American urban centers from the 1830s to the end of the century. Designers of garden cemeteries turned them into parks or rural retreats, where citydwellers could both meditate on mortality and renew themselves in the embrace of nature.