‘Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery’ Archives
Tales from Pioneers and Soliders Memorial Cemetary: 209th in a Series
There’s Always More to the Story: A Mother Waits and Watches By SUE HUNTER WEIR At first glance, Sabina “Louise” Johnson’s looked like an ordinary, uneventful life. But there was much more to her story than that. Sabina “Louise” Nordstrom was born in Orebro, Sweden on March 14, 1873. Her family sailed on the U.S. Celtic from Liverpool in 1879. On June 20th, they arrived in New York. Louise was six years old. Three of her siblings (Hulda, aged 9, Mathilda, aged 8, and Carl, aged 1) were also on board. Sabina “Louise” Johnson’s marker. During World War I, she sewed uniforms for American sailors and soldiers--perhaps even one for her son. Photo Credit: Tim McCall Three markers -- the small marker on the right is for Sabina Louise Johnson’s four-year-old daughter, Myrtle. The marker on the left is for Sabina’s younger sister, Ellen Nordstrom. Photo Credit: Tim McCall Her family first settled in North Dakota, where her sister Ellen was born on March [...]
South Side Destructor—Part II City Leaders (Finally) Arrive at a Solution
The exterior of the plant looks much as it did when this “state-of-the-art” incinerator was built in 1939. It cost about $250,000. Funding came from the city’s operating budget and from the federal government’s Works Progress Administration. Photo Credit: Tim McCall The 180-foot-tall smokestack was decommissioned in 1971. Today it is home to a red-tailed hawk. Photo Credit: Tim McCall By SUE HUNTER WEIR208th in a SeriesIn the summer of 1938, no one denied that Minneapolis needed a new incinerator to deal with its overabundance of garbage. The problem was not new: the debate about where to locate the incinerator had already dragged on for ten years and there was no solution in sight. Untreated garbage was piling up, creating a health hazard. From the beginning, the City of Minneapolis Engineer’s Office had favored what was referred to as “the so-called Layman’s site” (by that time, the cemetery was officially Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial [...]
Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery: 207th in a Series
City Leaders at an Impasse, Garbage Piles Grow In the cemetery’s early years, the city’s center was located near what is now the intersection of Hennepin and Washington Avenues. A visit to the cemetery was regarded as a day-long excursion. Over the next 50-75 years the city moved steadily southward and the land around the cemetery, and on occasion the cemetery itself, had been involved in disputes over land use near Lake Street. The most obvious dispute came to a head in the late 19-teens, early 19-twenties, when an effort was made to vacate parts of the cemetery and develop the land for commercial purposes. More recently, in the mid-1960s, one City Council Member, most likely unaware that there are 22,000 people buried there, floated the idea that the cemetery would make an ideal location for the new South High School. Both ideas failed. Cemetery in the 1930s. Looking southeast toward Cedar Avenue and Lake Street. Photo from Library of Congress Collection. John [...]
