‘Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery’ Archives
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 [...]
Remember the Ladies During the Semiquincentennial
248th in the series Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery By SUE HUNTER WEIR Experience Short Buck (1791-1854) was an early New England transplant to what wouldbecome Minnesota. She and her family arrived in the 1850s. PHOTO: Courtesy the family. On March 31, 1776, as her husband and other members of the Constitutional Congress were drafting a new code of laws for a new, independent nation, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband reminding him to “Remember the Ladies.” Two hundred and fifty years later, that is easier said than done. There are 15 women buried in the cemetery who were born in the 18th century. A few of them, primarily those born in New England, are somewhat well-documented but in other cases there is very little record of them. What is remarkable about all of them was their longevity. The average life expectancy for a woman born around the time of the American Revolution was 36. All of these women were alive at the time of the War of 1812, and [...]
One Family’s Tale: A Gift for Music and Civic Leadership
Chloe Adens, Harriet Morgan Jones, Katie and William Smith, and Lafayette Mason 247th in the series Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery... By SUE HUNTER WEIR Members of American Legion Post One who spent the day getting the Cemetery in good shape for the Memorial Day Program. Amazing friends and supporters of the Cemetery. PHOTO: American Legion Post One Chloe Adens* was the first of four generations of her family to be buried in the Cemetery, and hers was the first recorded burial of an African American in what was referred to at the time as Layman’s Cemetery. She was born in Delaware County, Pennsylvania sometime around 1803. In 1790, Pennsylvania passed a law that stated that the child of an enslaved mother was either a free person of color or, in some cases, was an indentured servant until they reached the age of 28. Whether Mrs. Adens began life as a free person of color or as an indentured servant is not known. She arrived in Minnesota [...]
