246th in the series Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery…
By SUE HUNTER WEIR
War of 1812
Korean War-era Veteran
Spanish-American War Veteran
Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery
Memorial Day Ceremony
May 25th 10:00 AMProgram honoring the more than 200 veterans buried in the Cemetery.
PROGRAM:
Seward Community Concert Band
JROTC from Minnesota Transitions School
American Legion Post One
Boy Scout Troop #1Speaker: Carissa McCollor
Carissa McCollor is a US Army veteran, with both Active Duty and National Guard experience. She currently works for the City of Roseville as an outreach contact for people experiencing homelessness; this work often involves veterans. She is a member of American Legion Post 1 and VFW Post 7555 and volunteers with many veteran-related entities including: The Mission Continues, Team Rubicon, Every Third Saturday.If you are able, bring a lawn chair.
Parking is limited in the Cemetery but there is on-street parking nearby.
History Talk: 1:00PM
Learn more about this important historical landmark located in the Phillips Community that is a designated site on the National Register of Historic Places National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.
America Judy Jamison, 1875-1911
America Judy Jamison and her young children moved to Minneapolis in the early 1900s.
The exact year that they arrived is unknown, but she was definitely here in 1907, the year that her father Ambrose Judy died.
America was the middle child of his five surviving children and his only daughter. (The 1880 census listed him as the father of seven children but there is no record of two of them after that census.) America was born in Missouri around 1875 after her father, his first wife and their one-year-old son, John, moved there from Kentucky. All of their other children were born in Missouri.
Ambrose Judy,
America’s Father
1872-1907
Ambrose Judy was born in Kentucky around 1872 and was likely enslaved when he was young since, in 1830, fewer than 3% of Kentucky’s Black population of slightly more than 170,000 were free. He worked as a farmer and a blacksmith. His first wife, Mary, the mother of his children, died in 1889. In 1892, at the age of 62, he remarried.
John Judy, William Henry Judy, And Milton Judy, America’s
Brothers
By 1900 his oldest son, John Ambrose Judy, had moved to Minneapolis where he found work as a porter at The Branch, a store that restored and sold second-hand furnishings. The following year, two of his brothers (William Henry and Milton Judy) were also listed in the Minneapolis City Directory. William, known as Henry, worked as a janitor, and Milton found work as a porter for The American Tailor. Isaac Judy, the youngest of Ambrose’s sons, came later, around 1909.
Ambrose Judy died at home on Nov. 11, 1907, from enteritis and cancer at the age of 80. America was living with him at the time. The year after he died, she was rooming and working as a seamstress for the Sing Wing Laundry on Hennepin Avenue, one of 15 Chinese-owned laundry businesses in the city. It was the last time that she was listed in a city directory.
America Marries
Jamison, 1890, Widow & 3 Children, 1900
When she was 15 years old, America married Sherman Jamison (Jimerson on the marriage license) in Missouri. The following year she gave birth to her first child. By 1900 she was a widow, the mother of three young children. She was counted twice when the 1910 Federal Census was taken. The first time, on April 16, 1910, she was living in a boarding house with her three children. Less than two weeks later, she was counted again, this time as one of 186 patients in the City Hospital. She died there eight months later on January 12, 1911. The cause of death was tuberculosis. She was 36 years old.
Ada Jamison, America’s Daughter
Ada Jamison was 14 years old when her mother died but was already working as an “ironer.” She lived with her uncle Milton and his wife. Her life was cut short. Nine months after her mother died, Ada died in the City Hospital. She, too, died from tuberculosis. She was 14 years, nine months and 27 days old.
Ernest, America’s Son
Ernest “Ernie” Jamison was 19 years old when his mother died. He worked as a porter and never married. He died in Hopewell Hospital from tuberculosis on March 17, 1917, one day shy of his 25th birthday.
Chauncey, America’s Youngest Son
America’s youngest son Chauncey who was only ten years old when his mother died. He outlived both of his older siblings, but he died in Glen Lake Sanitorium on November 26, 1938, after having been ill for a year. Like all of his other family members, he died from tuberculosis. He never married.
Ambrose Judy, America, Ada, and Ernest Jamison are all buried in Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery. Their graves are not close together, and none of them are marked. Chauncey Jamison is buried at Lakewood Cemetery.
Tuberculosis Ended America Jamison’s
Lineage
In a little less than 30 years, tuberculosis, one of the leading, and most feared, causes of death in the first half of the twentieth century, ended America Jameson’s lineage. There would be no more descendants on her branch of the family tree.
Her brothers fared somewhat better, although none of them were as long-lived as the grandfather. They are buried in Crystal Lake Cemetery.
