‘Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery’ Archives
Willam Anthony Hazelquist: 140 Day Soldier Died Two Days Before WWI Armistice
251st from Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery… Historians are fond of saying that they “fell down arabbit hole” when they start out researching one topic andwind up somewhere unexpected. This is one of thosestories. There is a small connection to the cemetery but alarger story about a man who lived in what was to becomethe Phillips neighborhood.. In fact, he lived three doorsdown from my house. Private William Anthony HazelquistCompany B 353 rd U.S. InfantryBorn in Minneapolis on March 29, 1890Died on November 9, 1918, from wounds received at the Battle of Meuse-Argonne. William Anthony Hazelquist was a homebody. He was28 years old but had never spent more than a few daysaway from home. He was inducted in the U.S. Army onJune 22, 1918, and after completing his training, he wasshipped out to France. He died there on November 9,1918. William was born in Minneapolis on March 29, 1890,the fifth youngest of Swedish immigrants, John andSophia Johnson’s six [...]
Dr. Martha Ripley: A Life Dedicated to Women and Their Babies
250th from Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery... By SUE HUNTER WEIR Dr. Martha G. Ripley, pioneering doctor in women’s and infant’s healthcare. Founder ofMinneapolis’ Maternity Hospital in 1887. In 1887, Dr. Martha G. Ripley opened the city’s first hospital whose mission was to servepregnant women and their infants. This was at a time when 95% of women had their babies athome. The infant mortality rate in 1885 is only an estimate, and ranges from 250-300 infantdeaths per 1,000 live births. Dr. Ripley dedicated the next 25 years of her life to changing that. Infant mortality rate in 1885:250-300 deaths per 1,000 live births. She wasn’t always successful. Seventy of the people (two adults and 26 infants) who areburied in the cemetery died in the Maternity Hospital. The first burial was 22-year-old AgnesClayton, one of the two adults. She died on April 15, 1887, from puerperal fever, a postpartumbacterial infection. Agnes, like a majority of the women who [...]
No Escaping the Heat
249th from Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery... By SUE HUNTER WEIR The marker for Marie VonDeram, a professional nurse, who wasborn in Christiana (now Oslo) Norway in 1871. She died fromheatstroke on July 17, 1901. She was 30 years old. AnnaJohnson was buried in the same lot in 1911. Their relationship isuncertain. PHOTO: Tim McCall It’s only August and this already feels like a too-long summer. Prolonged temperatures in the nineties. Records being broken. Although the scope and scale are bigger, this isn’t a recent phenomenon. Recorded deaths in Minneapolis due to heat and sunstroke date back to the 1860s and there were undoubtedly many more that went unrecorded before that. The Cemetery’s recorded death due to heatstroke was that of an “unknown German man” on July 16, 1866. Nothing else was known about him.While conventional wisdom claims that it is the very young and the elderly who are most susceptible to the effects of heat, this was not the case for [...]
