‘Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery’ Archives
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 [...]
22,000+ Rest, Undisturbed
Tales of Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery By SUE HUNTER WEIR In the cemetery’s early days, the cost of maintenance and repair was paid for voluntarily by the families of those buried there. By 1919, the cemetery was filled to capacity. Many families had moved away and some were simply too poor to continue to pay an annual maintenance fee. The cemetery fell into serious disrepair. On May 23, 1919, the Minneapolis City Council, at the request of some South Minneapolis residents and merchants, voted to close Layman’s Cemetery to further burials. The ordinance did not condemn the cemetery, which would have required the removal and relocation of more than 27,000 people. The ordinance simply stated that no burials would be allowed after August 1, 1919. Nonetheless, there were rumors that the cemetery had to be vacated and the remains of 5,000 to 6,000 people were removed. The deeds to the graves for those removals were returned to the Layman Land Trust, and became the property of [...]
Lawrence Wenell, a superior soldier and civilian, remembered.
By SUE HUNTER WEIR Lawrence Wenell had an elementary-school education. He loved baseball, and according to his mother, he was very good at it. Private Carl Wenell laying flowers at the grave of his brother Lawrence Wenell.: Courtesy Wenell family Lawrence was born on July 5, 1893, the oldest of August and Laura Wenell”™s fourteen children. He attended Irving School, which has since been demolished, but which was located on the corner of 17th Avenue and 28th Street. By the time that he was 17 years old he was working as a “shirt cutter,” for the Wyman-Partridge Company. In June 1917, he enlisted in the Army. He was assigned to the Battery C 151st Field Artillery, also known as the Gopher Gunners, part of the Rainbow Division. His unit sailed from New York on October 18, 1917, aboard the President Lincoln. Less than five months later, on March 9, 1918, his parents received a telegram from the War Department notifying them that their son had been [...]
