Minnesota’s oldest cemetery receives preservation award

by CAELI HARRIS

An 1800s gravestone at the Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery on Lake Street. (Photo by Dennis Geisinger)

Most of the tombstones are chipped, unreadable, covered with grass or have fallen over, and much of the cemetery is covered by dry leaves, long grass, garbage and stray branches.

It is Minnesota’s oldest cemetery—five years older than statehood—and the resting place for war veterans, pioneers, abolitionists, immigrants and children. But the neglect of Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery in South Minneapolis has gotten it onto the list of the state’s 10 most endangered historic places for 2008.

“The reason this cemetery was designated is deferred maintenance,” said Susan Hunter-Weir, chair of Friends of the Cemetery, a nonprofit group working to promote appreciation and revitalization of the cemetery.

The lack of a perpetual maintenance fund caused the neglect that landed the 27-acre cemetery on the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota’s list of 2008 Preservation Awards, Hunter-Weir said. Now cemeteries have to have them to go into business. A percentage of funeral and tombstone costs go toward a perpetual maintenance fund for the business, for preservation and maintenance needs, she said.

Because Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery has no fund, maintenance is very costly. Aspects like the rusted wrought-iron fence need to be repaired, which has been estimated at a cost of near $800,000, Hunter-Weir said. The city has granted a one-time expenditure of $120,000, so the rest will need to be provided through private, nonprofit funding.

“This is a rehabilitation project, not a replacement project,” she said.
The cemetery business is a difficult one because the laws are so ambiguous, said Ron Gjerde, president of Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis. “The day a cemetery starts going out of business is the day it goes into business.”

Minneapolis is not the only city flooded with cemetery maintenance problems. Many other states have cemetery preservation organizations like Friends of the Cemetery.

The Oregon Historic Cemeteries Organization provides education on preservation to the surrounding communities. Maintenance is one of the main focuses.
Another organization based out of Massachusetts, the Association for Gravestone Studies, works towards preserving and maintaining gravestones and burial grounds.

According to its website, gravestones “provide valuable information: genealogy, local history, medical history, religious history and changing fashions in art and literature.”

Along with the gravestones, Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery’s wrought-iron fence that borders the Cedar Avenue and Lake Street sides of the cemetery needs the most work. It is in bad shape because of salt on the street in the winter, pollution and vandalism, Hunter-Weir said.

Some endangered gravesites at the Pioneers and Memorial Cemetery include those of:

• William Goodridge, an African-American businessman who ran the Underground Railroad between York, Pa., and Philadelphia in the 1850s, along with his son and grandson.
• About 10,000 children, many of whose tombstones read only, “Baby.”
• “Lina, wife of H.J. Quam,” whose broken stone needs the pieces put back together to read the full birth and death descriptions.

Many war veterans who go unidentified with a stone simply stating, “ Soldier.”
The cemetery, formerly known as Layman’s, was established in 1853 and became the burial place for 27,000 people during the next 70 years. The 27-acre site now has 20,000 bodies after 7,000 were relocated when the founder and caretaker of the cemetery, Martin Layman, died in 1886.

In 1919, Minneapolis City Council closed the cemetery to burials because of its size and condition. The City bought the cemetery in 1928 and has owned it since.
Mark Stensrud, the person in charge of maintenance, said the minimal funding for the land has led to its poor condition. Memorial Day is the one time of year the cemetery gets special attention, he said.

This cemetery was given a preservation award, he said, because “it’s in need of lots of dollars for lots of costly renovations.”

One new law that helps the future of cemetery preservation is that if a body is to be buried in a coffin, the coffin has to be placed in a concrete vault, Hunter-Weir said.

“This keeps the coffin from decaying, and causing the ground to sink and become uneven, something that has happened at this cemetery,” she said.
The Capital Long-Range Improvement Committee for the city of Minneapolis hopes to have a long-term plan and perpetual maintenance fund set up for the cemetery by 2010, Hunter-Weir said.

The Preservation Alliance of Minnesota, the group that gave the cemetery the preservation award, is a nonprofit organization that advocates the preservation of Minnesota’s historic places. Established in 1981, it aims to develop networks that will help shape important community values and preservation.

On the list this year the ten awards range from a small-town bank in McGrath, Minn., to an abandoned jail in Duluth. The awards are designed to spotlight historic places that face imminent danger through poor maintenance, neglect, demolition or severe renovations. Two-thirds of the 122 places that have been listed through this program have been preserved. Among them are Minneapolis’ Midtown Exchange, the Ivy Tower and the Stillwater Lift Bridge.

The awards are given to ten places that are chosen from the selection committee based on nominations from citizens and groups from around the state. The cemetery was nominated by Aaron Hanauer, an employee at the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission.

This commission works to maintain Minnesota’s historical integrity and has done recent work for Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery, said Linda Mack, a board member and former architecture design writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Some of the work includes developing a maintenance plan, making sure the public works keeps up, and that the city “has a awareness of its historic integrity and how to proceed” with it in the future, Mack said.

For a complete listing of the 2008 Preservation Awards, go to www.mnpreservation.org.

To learn more about donating to the fund of Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery, visit www.friendsofthecemetery.org.

Caeli Harris is a journalism student at the University of St. Thomas.