‘Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery’ Archives
Geneology Second only to Gardening
by Susan Hunter Weir Genealogy is the second most popular hobby in America (gardening is first). Genealogy is like solving puzzles””finding that one clue that leads you to the maiden name of your great-great-grandmother or locating the name of the town where she was born. Millions of people spend their leisure time searching the internet, digging through trunks in attics and reading obituaries looking for information about long-lost relatives. The cemetery office has records on all of the 21,000 people buried there. The amount and type of information varies a little bit and tends not to be as complete for the earliest burials (the 1850s and 60s) as it is for later ones. Every person has a burial card, and most cards contain information about that person”'s age, place of death and cause of death. Some contain birthdates and birth locations. For those who died after 1876 there are burial permits as well. Grave locations are recorded in a large plat book. The [...]
Squire Borden, Tender of first Bridge Across the Mississippi River
by Susan Hunter Weir Squire Borden was born on the Atlantic Ocean on August 25, 1823. Perhaps that explains his life-long attraction to water. For many years, he worked as the bridge-tender on the first two suspension bridges that spanned the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, and since everyone who crossed the bridge encountered him, his was one of the most familiar faces in the city. In 1854, local entrepreneurs paid for the first bridge in the country to span the Mississippi River. The bridge was made of wood, and the cost of operating it was initially covered by tolls (two cents for a pedestrian and 25 cents for a wagon). Twenty years after it was built, the bridge was in poor condition and too narrow to accommodate the number of wagons that needed to cross it. The City contracted with Thomas M. Griffith, a nationally-known engineer, to build a replacement. The second bridge, 675 feet long and 32 feet wide, was constructed of steel and concrete rather than wood. It was [...]
Momentary absence.Flames prevail. Mother burned, and grieving
By Sue Hunter Weir In the early years of the last century the Minneapolis Tribune”'s coverage tended toward the sensational, especially when it came to covering tragedies involving children. But every now and then a reporter captured the sense of loss and grief, like in this excerpt from a story written by an unidentified Tribune reporter on January 14, 1911: A white hearse wound its way between snow-covered mounds and marble shafts at Layman”'s cemetery yesterday and stopped at the door of the vault room. From the three carriages that followed it a little group of people stepped and moved silently toward the vault. A man in a black cassock led. Following close came two old men, each looking straight ahead, their eyes dim with something besides age. Last came a little figure in deepest mourning, toil worn hand clutching the sleeve of the man who walked beside her. The door of the hearse opened and a square white coffin was borne out and carried into the vault [...]
