Caretaker Albert Nelson’s Journals–1927-53–Tell Stories
220th in a Series from Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery
By SUE HUNTER WEIR
Albert Nelson
Some of Albert Nelson’s workdays were more interesting than others. Nelson, the Cemetery’s Caretaker from 1927 until his death in 1953, sent a monthly report to his supervisor detailing his work and the number of hours that each task took. He often included a brief account, usually no more than a sentence or two, of unusual happenings in the Cemetery. In his report for April 1938, he wrote “Wed., April 20th, played nurse to a lost baby boy at the Cemetery for two hours until the mother and police called for him at the same time.” That baby boy was two-year-old James Horace Spillane.
James Horace Spillane
James was the youngest of Edward and Helen Spillane’s four children. The family lived just a few blocks from the Cemetery at 1839 East 28th Street. James, who had just turned two on February 10th, somehow managed to cross Cedar Avenue by himself and wander into the Cemetery. Apparently, he planned to stay a while since he brought a toy truck and a toy car with him. If James’ mother was frantic when she noticed that her son was missing, James clearly was not. A photographer for the Minneapolis Tribune captured a photo of James who appeared to be having the time of his young life. His toys were neatly lined up on the headstone of Roxanna Willard who had died 70 years earlier.
Roxanne (Converse) Willard
Roxanna was the daughter of transplanted New Englanders, Caleb and Harriet Converse. Their family moved to Minneapolis in the mid-1860s where Caleb found work as a blacksmith. Roxanna was a young bride. She married Henry Willard on July 4, 1865. Three and a-half years later, on Christmas in 1868, she died from tuberculosis. She was only 21 years old. Roxanna became the first member of the Converse family to be buried in the family’s plot.
Roxanna’s marker is made of marble, a beautiful stone, but one that is not very well suited to Minnesota’s climate extremes. It is even less well suited to acts of vandalism. The photo that appeared in the Tribune shows the marker in relatively good shape, the engraving only a little worn. The more recent photo shows the marker as it looks today at least two feet shorter than it originally was; the engraving is faded but still legible. Sometime after James’ big adventure in the Cemetery the marker was vandalized. Over the years there have been a number of acts of vandalism in the Cemetery including one on February 2, 1944, when, according to the Minneapolis Star, a “band of vandals,’ believed to be teenage boys, vandalized 50 headstones. And there were other, later acts of vandalism, as well.
Edward and Helen Spillane
Once young James was returned to his family, his wandering days appeared to be over. His father, Edward, a bookkeeper for the Electric Company, and his mother, Helen, and their children moved several times over the next few years but never farther than a few blocks from the Cemetery. Two of the houses in which they resided in Phillips are still standing. The family attended Holy Rosary Church, and James went on to graduate from the original South High School at 24th and Cedar Avenue in 1954. Shortly after graduating, he joined the Army and served in the U.S. Special Forces 4 in Korea. When he returned to Minnesota, on October 4, 1958, he married Ann Loranger.
From that point on, James is hard to trace. He does not appear in any Minneapolis City directories or any Federal census after 1950. He was mentioned in his parents’ obituaries but there was no obituary for him after he died on February 24, 1992. He was only 56 when he died. He is buried at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.
Sue Hunter Weir is chair of Friends of the Cemetery, an organization dedicated to preserving and maintaining Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery. She has lived in Phillips for almost 50 years and loves living in such a historic community.
