‘Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery’ Archives
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 [...]
Louis Solberg, Humorous, Heroic, Helpful
Policeman Who Sang and Did So Much More 240th in the series Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery... By SUE HUNTER WEIR Louis Solberg quickly became one of the most respected Minneapolitans; he was an early Norwegian immigrant at age 33 in 1868. He died thirty-nine years later.He was buried in a gravenext to his infant son.Their graves have no markers.However, he was described as“one of our most gentlemanly policemen…having an excellent record for abilityand honesty.” In 1872 he was one of the first ten patrol officers appointed after Minneapolis and St. Anthony merged. George Brackett, elected mayor in 1873, charged the Police Force with cleaning up the City. Solberg and colleagues spent much of their time on stakeouts and patrolling of saloons in the City’s Red-Light District and “cleaning the City of early-day crooks.” Louis Solberg was born in Christiana (Oslo) Norway on June 6, 1835. He arrived in Minneapolis in 1868, appointed to the [...]
