Guides share research about cemetery

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Historical personalities of Brown County's past, gravestone funerary art and symbolism came alive for dozens of visitors Sunday afternoon at the Historic Cemetery Walk at New Ulm City Cemetery.

Guides weaved the history of New Ulm's founding with stories of early pioneers and the tragedy of the Dakota Conflict in Brown County. The tours commemorated the anniversary of the Dakota Conflict and defense of New Ulm on Aug. 19 and 23, 1862.

Tours began in the Pioneer Section of the cemetery. Many older gravestones featured symbolism like a finger pointing up, implying that the dead went to heaven.

Tour guide Darla Gebhard, research librarian at the Brown County Historical Society, said the cemetery gets annual city funding so it can continue to restore old gravestones. Cement bases are added to older stones to protect them.

Tree stones were popular at the turn of the century. Cut off branches indicated the end of life. Lambs and doves and even shoes and socks were placed on top of the gravestones of children.

Draperies on tops of stones symbolized sorrow. Harps referred to joy and music. Crossed branches of spouses symbolized unity. Torches represented the soul living and the body going to heaven.

A hand and quill were embossed on Ludwig Bogen's stone. He operated the New Ulm Post, the first newspaper after the Civil War.

Jacob Castor, a baker during the Dakota Conflict, is buried in the New Ulm cemetery. He died from friendly fire after dressing up in a buffalo robe in an attempt to disguise himself while carrying bread from his bakery to the barricade that protected New Ulm during two Dakota attacks.

The city population swelled from 900 to 2,000-3,000 during the attacks. Settlers rushed into town after losing their farms and many of their loved ones.

Frederick Beinhorn, another pioneer whose grave was on the tour, was credited with founding New Ulm. He founded the Chicago Landverein that sent surveyors to the upper Midwest in search of land with good water, farmland and timber.

Many Germans who left their homeland after the 1848 Revolution came to New Ulm in search of wide open spaces, after stopping in Cincinnati or Chicago.

"They were told that America was the land of milk and honey and the streets were paved with gold," Gebhard said. "For many of those people, the 1862 Uprising was a nightmare."

With food and medicine in short supply and overcrowding in the barricaded city, settlers crossed the Cottonwood River and walked to Mankato and St. Peter after Indians left the area following the attacks.

Some settlers rode steam ferries to St. Paul and settled there. Others kept going farther east to Wisconsin and points east. A number of settlers who returned to New Ulm made war claims and were paid meager amounts of money for losses suffered.

The largest headstone in the cemetery belongs to August Schell, who founded Schell Brewery.

A 150-year-old white rose bush still blooms next to Alexander Harkin's gravestone. The bush was originally transplanted from Melrose, Scotland; then moved to West Newton Township, where Harkin had established a general store, before it was brought to the cemetery.

The diphtheria epidemic of 1880 was deadly enough to take the lives of four children in a single month. They were the children of the Methodist minister serving New Ulm at that time.

Perhaps the most unique gravestone features the likeness of eight-year-old Allie Peterson that was created from a photograph in 1883. The stone is often visited by children who leave pennies at the base of the stone or in the hands of the sculpture.