‘Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery’ Archives
The Hodsdons’ Family Secrets
from the series Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery... 243rd in a Series The Hodsdon-Wardwell marker. It is not known exactly when this marker was placed, but most likely it was some time in the 1970s or 80s. SOURCE: TIM MCCALL By SUE HUNTER WEIR Jane and Ebenezer Hodsdon were among the early New Englanders who settled in what was to become Minneapolis. They moved here with their three young children from Maine in 1852, and a few years later purchased 100 acres of land at what is now the intersection of Bloomington Avenue and Lake Street. Their nearest neighbors were Martin and Elizabeth Layman, the original owners of the Cemetery.Beatrice Morosco, the Hodsdon’s granddaughter, wrote a family history, The Restless Ones, that was published in 1965. It is a charming and lively, though not always accurate, account of the family’s early days in Minneapolis. In 1855, a few years after the Hodsdons arrived, they were joined by Jane’s parents, George and [...]
The Hidden Life of a Phillips Home: Lena Potts
242nd in a Series from Tales of Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery... By SUE HUNTER WEIR This started out to be a story about Lena Potts, a young African-American woman who died on March 13, 1905, from tuberculosis at age 23. It turned out that there is not a great deal of information to be found about her but the home where she died has an amazing history. Rev. Matthew W. WithersWhat is known about Lena is that she was the daughter of Charles and Martha Withers and was most likely born in Tennessee around 1882. If her story remains somewhat elusive, the same is not true of her brother, the Reverend Matthew W. Withers, who was pastor of Bethesda Baptist Church from 1900-1906. Lena lived with him and his family in the church’s parsonage at 2408 17th Avenue South, a house in Phillips that is still standing. But the parsonage was much more than that. The Goodrich-Russell Home as it looked in the early 1900s. Source: Minneapolis Journal The former Goodrich-Russell [...]
Harry Hurlburt: A Tale of Kindness and Compassion
241st edition of Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery By SUE HUNTER WEIR Every now and then it’s good to be reminded that there are kind and compassionate people in the world. This seems like one of those times. An earlier version of this story has appeared in the alley before. We have received more comments about this story than any of the many cemetery tales that the alley has published over the past 25 or so years. It is a story about kindness and generosity, qualities that sometimes seem to be in short supply. Thanks to Tim McCall for providing additional information about Mr. Howard’s military service and for his many contributions to preserving the cemetery’s stories. Photo Collage: Tim McCall The story of Captain Samuel J. Howard’s death was front page news on December 20, 1908. The story of his death was a human-interest story—a holiday story about kindness and generosity, and a story about friendship between two strangers. Because of that [...]
