Ingham County MI Archives Photo Place.....Mount Hope Historic Cemetery Sign (Side 2) October 26, 2009
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Terri Vance theresannv@gmail.com November 1, 2009, 12:48 am

Source:             Mount Hope
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The Mount Hope Cemetery Michigan Historic Site Signs were erected in October 
2009.

Mount Hope Cemetery opened as Lansing's new city cemetery in June 1874 on what 
was formerly the John Miller Farm.  Between 1874 and 1881 the city vacated the 
Lansing City Cemetery, located on the site of what would become Oak Park, and 
moved roughly one thousand graves to Mount Hope.  Frederick W. Higgins, 
superintendent of Detroit's Woodmere Cemetery, planned the drives, and Harry 
Lee Bancroft, Lansing cemetery superintendent and director of parks and 
recreation from 1914 to 1957, developed the landscape over many years.  The 
rolling terrain, curving drives, and variety and profusion of monuments 
reflect cemetery design century.  A large obelisk, the city's Civil War 
soldiers' monument, was dedicated in 1878 on one of the highest points in the 
cemetery.

Mount Hope Cemetery contains the remains of some of the capital city's most 
prominent citizens, as well as some of its least privileged.  Industrialist 
such as Ransom Eli Olds, pioneer botanist Dr. William J. Beal, and two time 
Medal of Honor winner and surgeon Dr. George Ranney are buried here as well as 
state officials and university presidents.  A section platted in 1874 for the 
State Reform School (later the Boys Vocational School) holds the remains of 
sixty-one boys who died at the school between roughly 1860 and 1933.  In 
addtion, the remains of Lieutenant Luther Baker, who led the effort to capture 
John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, are here, as are 
those of Lucy Karney, a formerly enslved African American who died in 1879 at 
the ages of 117.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mi/ingham/photos/mounthop90792nph.txt

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