‘Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery’ Archives
To Be Remembered
By Sue Hunter Weir Names in Stone Stories in Memory Pictures in Archives Albert Swanson and his sister, Eleanore Chakolis, never knew their great-grandmother or their paternal grandparents but they wanted to make sure that that part of their family”'s history would not be forgotten. In October 2010, Albert and Eleanore, now in their nineties, visited Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery to pay their respects to several family members and to see the three markers that they had arranged to have placed on their relatives”' graves a few weeks earlier. Anna Andersdotter, Albert and Eleanore”'s great grandmother, emigrated from Sweden on September 11, 1887. She was born in a crofter”'s cottage in Norra Vanga, Skaraborg, Sweden in 1822. In 1847, at the age of 25, she married Anders Anderson, and they had seven children. In 1883, Anders died, and in 1887 Anna came to the United States to live with her daughter Clara. Anna was one month [...]
Gettysburg infantryman, James Francis Towner, Remembered and Honored 147 years later
By Sue Hunter Weir In April 1932, members of the Minneapolis Cemetery Protective Association (MCPA) ordered a military marker for James F. Tower, a man they believed to have been a Civil War vet. When the marker arrived they had it set on the grave of a man named John K. Tower where it has been ever since. No one, it seems, noticed that the first name on the marker was James, not John. Private James Francis Towner (not Tower), the man that the MCPA thought that they were honoring, has been buried in an unmarked grave in a different section of the cemetery since 1865. Private James Francis Towner was a veteran of Company K 1st Minnesota Infantry; he was mustered in at Fort Snelling on April 29, 1861. James Towner was one of the 215 (out of 265) men from the 1st Minnesota who were wounded at Gettysburg in July 1863. The inscription on the 1st Minnesota”'s monument at Gettysburg sums up the vital contribution that these men made to the Union cause: “In self sacrificing [...]
You Matter
Stone columns being built in 1928 By Sue Hunter Weir A cemetery seems like an odd place to be talking about building a healthy community since it”'s where most of us will wind up when our health ultimately and inevitably fails. But cemeteries are about more than our physical selves, they are about the legacy that we leave to others and that others have given to us. They are about stories; they are about community. Nation Builders. Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It is a place of national, not just local, significance. Part of the designation recognizes the cemetery”'s architectural features, but another part, perhaps the most important part, recognizes the role that the people who are buried here in the Phillips community played in both our local and national history. They are not people whose names are household words, yet they are recognized as nation builders. “”¦who is [...]
