‘Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery’ Archives
A Grandson remembers his Grandfather
Tales of Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery by Sue Hunter Weir Emilie and William Gaspar with their children Photo Courtesy of the Gaspar Family William Gaspar had a dog named Brownie, who loved to eat chocolate-covered peanuts. When William went to visit his son Joseph, in Loretto, Minnesota, he would walk Brownie to his son’s grocery store and buy him a treat. These are small things, and certainly not the most important things that William did in his life, but they give us a sense of who he was, that other types of information - lists of dates and places - cannot. Emilie Gaspar, William’s wife, was the second person buried in the cemetery after the City Council reconsidered an earlier decision not to allow burials after 1919. Emilie met the criteria for an exception—she owned a plot, and other members of her family were already buried there. Emilie’s mother, Mary Ann Klapperich Kelly Gaspar, was buried there, as were Mary Ann’s first two husbands. [...]
They Have Wandered Into an Unknown Land
Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery By SUE HUNTER WEIR Corrie Family Marker The inscription carved on the Corrie family’s marker undoubtedly referred to life after death, but it also accurately captured the lived experiences of thousands of people buried in Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery. They are the ones who traveled thousands of miles to establish new homes in Minneapolis. Once settled, they tended not to travel far. They may have moved from house to house but for the most part they rarely strayed far from their first neighborhood—near to jobs, churches, family members and friends. The Corrie family came to Minneapolis from England by way of Canada. Frederick Charles Corrie, the patriarch, was born in 1852. When he was 30 years old, he moved with his wife, Frances (Fannie) Hill, and their oldest son, also named Frederick, to Quebec. Two more children, Herbert and Tenice Rose, were born there. In 1889, they made one more major move—this time [...]
A Winter Tale of Friendship and Kindness
By SUE HUNTER WEIR An earlier version of this story appeared in the December 2004 edition of the alley. It is a story about kindness and generosity, qualities that sometimes seem in short supply during these challenging times. Sometimes it’s good to remember good people doing kind things for strangers.Thanks to Tim McCall for providing additional information about Mr. Howard’s military service. 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 friendship, Captain Howard, who had no known connection to the city of Minneapolis, came to be buried in Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery. Captain Howard was a 72-year-old Civil War veteran who was traveling from Olympia, Washington, where he lived in a veterans’ home, to Boston for Christmas. Although the newspaper [...]
