Tour guide J*B here, our next stop on the MnSQuest brings us to Hillside Cemetery in the St. Anthony/Minneapolis area. This is a pretty large property with paved roads wide enough to pass other vehicles comfortably. Also this is a frequently visited cemetery since I've seen more cars here then all the others in the series combined.
St. Anthony History -Also know as Saint Anthony Village, this city is in both Hennepin and Ramsey counties. The population was 8,226 at the 2010 census of whom 5,156 residents lived in the larger Hennepin County part of the city while 3,070 were in the Ramsey County part.
St. Anthony was also the name of the older twin city of Minneapolis, located across from downtown Minneapolis on the east bank of the Mississippi River. Minneapolis and St. Anthony merged in 1872.
The origins of St. Anthony date to 1838 when Franklin Steele, a storekeeper at Fort Snelling, made a claim on the land east of St. Anthony Falls. Steele did not begin developing the land until 1848, but it quickly became a center of milling and trade much like the neighboring town of Minneapolis on the land west of the falls. In 1858 the town was formally organized as the Township of St. Anthony.
In 1872, Minneapolis annexed the majority of St. Anthony (much of present-day Northeast, Minneapolis). Roughly 1,000 acres of mostly agricultural land north of the city retained the name of St. Anthony but remained unincorporated. In 1945, the township's residents voted 167-57 in favor of incorporating as a village. This was challenged by the state of Minnesota on the basis that St. Anthony was too agricultural and rural, but the vote was upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court. As the city's suburbs grew outward, St. Anthony evolved from a rural township to an inner suburb.
St. Anthony was the home of Apache Plaza, the tenth indoor shopping mall in United States, which opened in October 1961. The second oldest, Southdale, was built only 15 miles to the south and was completed in October 1956. Built in the 1950s, the St. Anthony Shopping Center was the first strip mall in the state of Minnesota and was owned by the Batista family of Cuba.
Memories of Maple Hill Cemetery 1857-1890 - One of the entrancing stories of Northeast history surrounds the origins of Beltrami Park, that inviting plot of land at Polk and Broadway, most easily identified by the bocce ball courts, just one of Beltrami Park’s living reminders of the Italian-American heritage of the neighborhood. The fact is, the Beltrami Park site was Maple Hill Cemetery from 1857 until 1890 when it morphed to Maple Hill Park until 1948.
Although it is of record that the earliest settlers of St. Anthony interred some of their dead in a small tract near the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street Southeast, the first cemetery whose line is unbroken to the comparatively recent day was Maple Hill. In 1849 Robert W. Cummings obtained some land from the government in St. Anthony township, now part of the city of Minneapolis. Cummings reserved a twenty acre tract for a cemetery along what is now Broadway. The dedication of these private burial grounds as Maple Hill Cemetery in February, 1857, gave the people, especially the early settlers of the east side, a resting place for their dead which was not disturbed for more than forty years. By that time, it is said that no fewer than 5,000 bodies had been laid away on the slopes of Maple Hill.
In time, negligence and vandalism took their toll at Maple Hill Cemetery. In 1890, with the increase of population, coupled with the rising impact of vandalism, health authorities halted further interments. The following year the city council condemned land on either side of the cemetery for street purposes; removal of the bodies commenced. Many bodies were moved to Lakewood and Hillside cemeteries. A City Engineers Report from 1894 reports that 1321 bodies and 82 monuments had been removed from Maple Hill. Clearly, this is a fraction of the 5,000 estimated interred.
Still, because Maple Hill Cemetery was in part a potters’ field there was no great attention to perpetual care, much less record-keeping. By 1906 the non-denominational cemetery had been abandoned and had become a community eyesore and cause of consternation. Community members took matters into their own hands. Actually, they took reins into their own hands, hitched up their horses, and one night cleared the cemetery not only of debris but of all of the tombstones. The tombstones, including a civil war veterans memorial, were later found dumped in a ditch. City officials, understandably outraged, made pronouncements about capture and prosecution of the miscreants.
However, since it was used as a potters field many bodies remain to this day!!!
At Posted Coords you will see a monument that looks like it could be Zeus's Temple high up on a hill. You will need to locate the proper information to obtain Final Coords. HAVE FUN J*B!
Final Coords
N 45º 00. ( last # of the year that G.C.N. died on Sept. 3, last # of the year Doris Mae died, # of the month Doris Mae was born )
W 93° 14. ( Subtract the # of the month from the # of the day Virginia Renee was born, # of letters in the first word of the bible verse under Doris Mae, do this math with the year Virginia Renee died _+_+_+_= )