STORY OF CLEANING UP THE NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH CEMETERY, Jackson Co., MN Told by Darrell Bloom USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, material may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material, AND permission is obtained from the contributor of the file. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for non-commercial purposes, MUST obtain the written consent of the contributor, OR the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. Made available to The USGenWeb Archives by: Joretta Mohns STORY OF CLEANING UP THE NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH CEMETERY Told by Darrell Bloom October 14,1993 About 12 years ago, I working for Coop Ag Center in Lakefield, Minnesota. I was spraying for a farmer in Sioux Valley Round Lake, Minnesota area, waiting for a load of water and chemicals to finish the job. There was kind of a fenced in area in the field. I drove up there and got to looking around and figured it was an abandoned farm place or something. The next thing I did was discovered a couple of head stones. They kind of peaked my interest I guess it has been in the back of my mind for years that it would be nice to do something with that place, but it was a shamble. Some weeds were growing and stood over my head. In the fall of years that had passed, I looked at it so more or less it stayed in the back of my mind. Tony Sorensen was up for his Eagle Scout Badge. We discussed what he might want to do and we had given him about three options.. He had to do a community service work project. So he was going to do something for the church. I took him out to the cemetery one fall day. He was just amazed at what he could do. I think his friends were more amazed at the tearing around they could do on this acre and all the cleaning up that needed to be done. So we started on Saturdays. We cruised around the area looking for who might know what church it belonged to. I finally found an elder guy that said it was the Norwegian Lutheran Cemetery. That church had been tom down 60-70 years ago. I fixed the cemetery up. He said there had been other groups come in and worked a day and said it couldn't be done. You had to be a certain rank to start this project, so two years ago in the spring we started. There was even snow on the honey suckles that had grown up in places. We started out with three boys on Saturday morning with clippers and handsaws. We had accomplished some in a few hours. Six hours was too short but we were read to go home. I transported the boys back and forth from Jackson, Minnesota to help. Pretty soon we were into the chain saw business. I was cutting and they were hauling, the brush away. We found stones that we didn't even know existed. Finally came the day for the big equipment to come in. We scraped off 2.5 feet of dirt that had blown in on the honey suckles and tried to get down to where you could tell there had been a grave. It was a different texture of color of dirt. Also to get the root system of the honey suckles out at the same time. We took it out of one spot and where there was a bare spot we piled it there and leveled it off. The boys would take and pull roots out and throw them in a pile between rain storms and busy weekends. We spent all summer out there. It was getting late in the fall and it was getting time to plant grass seed. Things weren't coming together like they should have. But finally, we got more equipment in and dug it and pulled some more roots out. There were grave stones that had one piece sticking out of the ground. The next thing we thought about was the footing. So we found three pieces of grave stones that were buried 2.5 feet down. Finally, we got it all dug up and leveled off and planted grass seed and it came up before winter set in. The following spring it was a real nice grown of grass. There was two grave stones with real small decorations we had notice when we were out there one Saturday. It rained that week, so we went back and it was laying away from the stone. We pulled the fence out one day. One of the boys came up to me and said "What is this?" It was the top of the other stone. We found a couple of foot stones. A lot of stones out there have three names on each side. One of those stone had disappeared already. We went around and collected from other organizations and those funds were used for grass seed. We put in about 209 hours in this project. The oldest stone is from about 1804. We went out one day and cleaned the stones with water and a scrub brush. They had a shine in the sunlight now. In the spring, we went out and mowed it. Ed Hanson, undertaker from Lakefield, Minnesota called us. An undertaker from Sioux Falls, South Dakota wanted to move a body. I said okay but I have no authority. So the undertaker from Sioux Falls and Ed Hanson came out. We stood around for a while. A car kept driving back and forth, up and down the road. Finally they drove up. They had a picture that was taken about 60 years ago. They were looking for a hill with a bunch of weeds on it but they couldn't find it. So they finally drove up as they had seen us stand out there. They dug up that grave and moved it to Sioux Fall, South Dakota. They took the stone and all. They found all the bones of the body but one. They also found the glass of the casket as they had the glass on caskets for viewing the body in the early days. They also found the handles. The stone was in real good shape as it was in some of the underbrush. The cemetery got started as someone lost an infant son and this was on their property. The name on one of the stones is not the person's real name. The name is HILBAND. That is the name of the farm, on which the person lived on or worked for. When someone owned a farm you either worked for him or you went on it after he died. That is how you ended up with that name. Chuck Untied ran a payloader. When moving dirt, I kind of mapped out the graves. One of the biggest stones was laying down. I didn't know it was there until I started to dig. They said it was some of the soldiers buried in a massive grave. They took out one fence and while they were scraping, they found another fence buried down in the dirt. They took both fences out. They mowed the grass on the cemetery every two weeks during the summer.