Monroe County MI Archives Photo Place.....P1010232 August 2006 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/mi/mifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Keitha Morgan keithajo@yahoo.com October 22, 2006, 5:11 pm Source: Memorial Place Cemetery, Monroe, Monroe County, Michigan Photo can be seen at: http://www.usgwarchives.net/mi/monroe/photos/p101023271854gph.jpg Image file size: 109.2 Kb Taken from the rear of the park. you can see how the stones are imbedded in the ground. You can not see them until you are standing on them Additional Comments: MEMORIAL PLACE CEMETERY LOCATION: Presently this cemetery is situated in Monroe, Michigan on South Monroe Street between West 6th and West 7th Streets on the West side of the road. HISTORY: This cemetery was once at the Northwest corner of Front and South Monroe Streets. Our earliest pioneers were catholic and had their own burial ground at St. Antoine Catholic Church. As the years went by, more and more Protestants came into the region. Samuel Agnew, in 1810, gave “to the protestant inhabitants of the District of Erie” a quarter acre of land for a burying ground. Among the first bodies buried there were those of Kentucky veterans of the War of 1812. These were later exhumed and taken to Detroit, Michigan then on to Kentucky. The “downtown” cemetery apparently was abandoned quickly so Mr. Agnew and Daniel Mulhollen donated, to the community, a second plot which now is known as “Memorial Place", and is situated between West 6th and West 7th streets on South Monroe Street. The Memorial Place Cemetery "prospered" in 1834 when the Community was swept by a Cholera Epidemic. The graveyard deteriorated until early part of the 20th century when the Civic Improvement Society converted it into a park in preparation for a statue honoring the fallen Kentuckians, some of whose bodies had been buried here following the Frenchtown Massacre. On September 1 1904 the granite monument, for which the legislature had appropriated $15,000, was unveiled. Before 1960 the Nancy De Graff Toll Chapter, D.A.R. and the city of Monroe restored to the cemetery 16 tombstones which were buried for some 40 years along the alley west of the west 2 stones, one marking the children of Hiram R. and Philia Hopkins, the other stone is that of Minerva Cornell. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mi/monroe/photos/p101023271854gph.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/mifiles/ File size: 2.8 Kb