Posts Tagged ‘Sue Hunter Weir’
Willam Anthony Hazelquist: 140 Day Soldier Died Two Days Before WWI Armistice
251st from Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery… Historians are fond of saying that they “fell down arabbit hole” when they start out researching one topic andwind up somewhere unexpected. This is one of thosestories. There is a small connection to the cemetery but alarger story about a man who lived in what was to becomethe Phillips neighborhood.. In fact, he lived three doorsdown from my house. Private William Anthony HazelquistCompany B 353 rd U.S. InfantryBorn in Minneapolis on March 29, 1890Died on November 9, 1918, from wounds received at the Battle of Meuse-Argonne. William Anthony Hazelquist was a homebody. He was28 years old but had never spent more than a few daysaway from home. He was inducted in the U.S. Army onJune 22, 1918, and after completing his training, he wasshipped out to France. He died there on November 9,1918. William was born in Minneapolis on March 29, 1890,the fifth youngest of Swedish immigrants, John andSophia Johnson’s six [...]
Artifacts and Curios (and a Piano)
Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery: 206th in a series By SUE HUNTER WEIR The caretaker’s cottage is a wonderful place. The two front rooms were built in 1871, which means it may well be the oldest existing stone building in South Minneapolis outside of Fort Snelling. The back room was built during the Great Depression by workers employed by the Works Progress Administration, a program designed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to create jobs for displaced workers. But it’s not just the structure that’s interesting. The inside of the building is something of a way-back machine. There are artifacts and relics dating back in some cases to the 1870s. None of the items are of any great monetary value, but they capture a piece of Minneapolis’ history that might otherwise have been lost. The Layman family, the cemetery’s original owners, were prodigious recordkeepers. There are dozens of ledgers in which they recorded the sales of cemetery plots, some for as [...]
Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery: Public Health Policy Saves the Lives of Mothers and Babies
Julia Abram died from complications of childbirth on June 1, 1874. She was 22 years old. Her husband remarried and Isabell, his daughter with his second wife, died on August 22, 1877 from inanition. Photo: Tim McCall By SUE HUNTER WEIR Julia Abrams was just 22 years old when she died after giving birth in 1874. Julia is only one of 110 women buried in Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery who either died during childbirth or shortly afterward from complications caused by their pregnancies. There are undoubtedly more but since doctors used a variety of words to describe the cause of death, it is hard, if not impossible, to say how many. “Peritonitis” might refer to an infection but it might also refer to something like appendicitis.The women’s ages ranged from 16 to 53. Anna Griffin was the youngest of the women; she was barely 16 years old when she died; her baby died from malnutrition 15 days later. Mary Zustiak was 53 when she died in 1915. The majority of [...]
