1800s cemetery plots are donated
By Joel Stottrup
The city is now the owner of three lots that it hadn’t owned before at Pioneer Cemetery, located just west of Princeton Middle School.
The city council on March 24 accepted Hamline University’s donation of lots 1, 2, and 3 in block 71 at the cemetery. A quit claim deed was made in order to make the transfer.
The lots are on the eastern part of the old cemetery that dates back to the 1800s and which has not been used for many decades.
The most significant activity in the area of the cemetery in recent time came shortly before the middle school was completed about 11 years ago. A section of Twelfth Street North was added to accommodate the middle school’s location to the east of the cemetery.
Twelfth Street North runs along the north side of Pioneer Cemetery, with Eleventh Street North running along the south side. Fifth Avenue North is on the west end of the cemetery and Fourth Avenue North on the east end.
An archaeology crew dug and sifted dirt in the planned path of the extension of Twelfth Street North along the cemetery to make sure any buried remains there would be properly handled.
David Mather, an archaeologist who worked for Louckes Associates at the time of the Twelfth Street North extension, said Louckes did civil engineering and archaeological work associated with the extension.
Mather said by phone on Monday this week that a burial authentication investigation under license of the state archaeologist was completed to prepare for the street extension. Some human bones were found through the investigation’s digging and sifting along the north side of the cemetery. Those bones were then reburied in another cemetery, possibly Oak Knoll in Princeton, Mather said. Mather now works as an archaeologist at the Minnesota Historical Society.
Later some bones were unearthed by a crew working on a utility main project on the opposite side of the cemetery and it appeared those bones had ended up in that spot from an earlier excavation project, Mather noted. The bones that had been found on the north side of Pioneer Cemetery were not in graves, Mather said, explaining that sometimes bones will get moved from graves to areas beyond by natural forces such as tree roots and burrowing woodchucks. Princeton resident Dick Gist researched the cemetery, and a copy of his findings is at the Mille Lacs County Historical Society museum in Princeton. Gist concluded that Pioneer Cemetery contains “36 known burials,” of which four are unmarked.
Mary Ellen Klas, who interned at the Princeton Union-Eagle during 1983-84, wrote a feature story called “The story of Pioneer Cemetery,” published in the Union-Eagle on June 16, 1983.
Both Klas and Gist wrote about the lives of some of the people who were buried at Pioneer Cemetery, which included both adults and children.
It appears the last person to be buried at Pioneer Cemetery, Klas wrote, was Carl Brandemer, who died at age 80 on April 17, 1922. Klas then noted that “others have said there may have been one or two more buried there after Brandemer, but that the families probably couldn’t afford tombstones.
The last names of people who Gist has listed among the dead buried at Pioneer Cemetery are Hilton, Burnham, Smith, Lustig, Roos, Cordes, Bergman, Winkler, Schimpfky, Schlee, Liskey, Hatch, Brandemer, and Lentz. Walker was another last name that Gist stated could also be among the dead there. Gist wrote that Hamline University had bought 64 lots in Princeton in 1873.
Princeton City Administrator Mark Karnowski, in a memo to the Princeton City Council on Nov. 5, 2010, states: Apparently back in 1887, a benevolent individual donated some property to the University. Karnowski was referring to Hamline and relating it to the three lots that Hamline was offering to donate to the city.
The Trustees of Hamline University signed the quit claim deed to the three Pioneer Cemetery lots of 1, 2, and 3, in block 71, on March 11 of this year.
Princeton public works has been maintaining all of Pioneer Cemetery for many years, including the three lots that Hamline had owned.
