Byline: STEVE BRANDT; STAFF WRITER
Sue Hunter-Weir lives only eight blocks from the Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery in the Phillips area of Minneapolis, so when she talks about the people whose bones or ashes lie there she does so with the familiarity of someone talking about the neighbors down the block.
There's the Dakota widow caught between clashing cultures in the 1862 conflict. The noted conductor on the underground railroad who made a new start in Minneapolis after the Civil War. There are her four War of 1812 veterans, all of whose families she's reached through the wonders of the Internet.
Hunter-Weir usually toils anonymously at the cemetery at Cedar Avenue and Lake Street, alone but for city caretaker Mike Barth. She's created a searchable database of who is buried there from Depression-era records. She will scrub for hours at a time with a toothbrush and water to try to uncover a name on a badly eroded headstone.
But come Monday, Hunter-Weir will have plenty of company. The cemetery's 140th Memorial Day observance will bring visitors, many of them descendants of the inhabitants.
They'll be able to look at the new Veterans Administration headstone installed for Asa Clark Brown, one of the decedents born in the 18th century who helped populate the 27 acres of grass and trees; descendant Vesta Bachelder, who died in 1909, lies nearby, one of the few burials that recent.
They'll get a talk on the cemetery, and those who are able will have a chance to tour some of its more notable graves.
The city, which owns the cemetery, and Hunter-Weir, who advocates for it, also will be showing off the first sections of newly restored fencing that girds the plots along Lake and Cedar. The Minnesota Historical Society and the city paid for most of it, but Hunter-Weir's Friends of the Cemetery group also raised $18,000 by asking people to adopt one or more of the metal pickets for $30 a piece. (More information is available at www.friendsofthecemetery.org. )
Some 300 of the 3,510 pickets have been adopted in a fence erected in 1928. The initial restoration removed 14 of its 66 sections 28 feet long for extensive work. Contractor Terra gave them a sandblasting, then galvanized and primed them before adding high-performance coatings designed to help them stand up better.
Architect Laura Faucher of Miller Dunwiddie was involved in a survey of every section that graded each from A to F according to degree of deterioration. The reinstallation raised each section slightly, adding barely noticeable feet underneath. That will lift them slightly above the salt-laden snowmelt that splashes off Lake Street and the sidewalk.
Given the cemetery's national and local historic designation, "We have to make improvements that no one will notice," said John Mecum, also of Miller Dunwiddie.
Another $175,000 to do more sections is in hand, but the total bill to finish the work is estimated at $1.1 million.
Hunter-Weir continues to sell pickets, and photographer Wing Young Huie boosted the cause by devoting 25 percent of the proceeds from selling selected photos from his Lake Street USA exhibit. More information is available at www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/dca/currentevents.asp.
Meanwhile, Barth and Hunter-Weir toil away.
Barth, a public works employee, mows the cemetery on a three-week cycle, interrupted by the occasional visitor on a genealogical hunt. Mowing is complicated. Many headstones angle as the wooden caskets underneath them long since have decomposed. Only about 10 percent of the graves have headstones, which makes it nigh impossible for Hunter-Weir to heed the admonishment she was brought up with to not walk on the graves of the dead.
Dates to 1853
The cemetery dates to 1853, before the city was organized as a municipality, and it was a couple of miles outside the original settlement. Martin Layman, who built what is credited as the sixth house in the city, offered a burial site that year for his minister's son, and platted the cemetery the following year.
At one point, about 27,000 people were buried there, filling it by 1919. But when Layman's descendants later sought to dispose of the land for development, some 6,000 remains were moved. Nevertheless, about 70 of them left their headstones behind, Hunter-Weir's research has found.
After a public outcry over disturbing the graves of the dead from the Civil War, the city stepped in to buy the property in 1927, adding the fence. There have been no more than 70 burials since, although it's open to those with an unused plot, a family member buried there, and a favorable City Council vote.
Time seems to move more slowly in this oasis beside two busy arteries. Berenice Meigs, a Chicago socialite, died in 1988, but her ashes didn't get buried until 2002. Before cremation was common, bodies were stored over winter in the caretaker building to be buried when the ground thawed.
It took years for Hunter-Weir to build her database on weekends and during her annual vacation from her job at the University of Minnesota, where she worked for 40 years. She's now retired.
As she works, she's motivated by this question: "Who do we as a society decide is worth remembering and who is not?" She thinks those buried here qualify for remembrance. "These are the people who built Minneapolis -- literally."
And she particularly remembers those who made it here the hard way. There are some 350 cadavers buried in mass graves, the homeless or other paupers of years ago whose unclaimed corpses were used for medical research; the University of Minnesota is contributing a marker. There is a section of two dozen graves established by the Grand Army of the Republic for paupers who were Civil War veterans.
Ask her for the saddest story and she'll take you to the grave of Anna L. Clark, who died in 1909 at age 53. "She committed suicide right where we are. She shot herself right on her husband's grave," Hunter-Weir said. Aided by old newspapers that covered every detail in a much smaller city, she found the suicide note. Clark had eight living children and eight more who died before her.
Some of her accidental research has produced surprises and even a sex change in one decedent. Records showed a young woman with the first name of Christine buried in the cemetery. After cleaning the marker, Hunter-Weir discovered that it was Christian.
Monday's observance begins with the dedication of 1812 veteran Brown's new marker at 9 a.m., followed by a traditional observance at 10 a.m.
There will be a talk and optional walking tour at 1 p.m. The cemetery will be open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., as it normally is Wednesdays through Sundays, April 15 through Oct. 15.
Steve Brandt - 612-673-4438
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