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The New Calvary Cemetery
On September 11, 1904, the Board of Trustees, consisting of: Andrew Pierce R. A. Anthony John Muellermann Allen DeGuire John Spickermann William Pierce
As Secretary, decided to buy a plot of about four acres for a new cemetery. The old cemetery was filled and could not well be enlarged.
Besides there was a strong feeling in town, zealously cultivated by some socialists and sentimentalists against the old practice of burying the dead within the city limits.
It was plain that a new cemetery would have to be established ere long, and so we began to look up available locations. But here we found a series of difficulties: no place seemed to meet the requirements, and we felt that many of our people were utterly averse to closing the old cemetery. Where their people lay buried, they too hoped to find a grave.
This one difficulty, perhaps the greatest one, was solved for us by the Town Board, headed by a Mayor of ultra-progressive tendencies, and about as popular as the celebrated Mayor of Troy, whom the people loved so well that at the next election they made him an Ex-Mayor.
The decree went forth, that no burials must take place in the old cemetery after September 1, 1905.
After looking at several places, we decided to buy fourteen acres from Anton Budenholzer at one hundred dollars per acre, making a total of fourteen hundred dollars.
The commissioners appointed were:
Robert A. Anthony John Muellermann Frank Sondermann
The transaction was closed on Monday, May 22, 1905. On the following Wednesday Archbishop Glennon arrived for confirmation.
In the course of the summer four acres of the land purchased were fenced in and laid out for burial purposes: walks and driveways were made and lots staked off.
The Cemetery was blessed on the eve of All Souls' Day. The plot of ground was soon paid with the proceeds of the sale of lots.
The Cemetery was ready, and looked like a haven of rest, and yet no one wanted to be buried there. The place seemed so lonely, with not a tombstone nor even a shrub in sight.
The dying parishioners would request to be buried in the God's Acre near the church.
At last old William DeGuire, who had spent all his seventy years on a little farm nearby, came to die, and his remains were laid to rest in the New Calvary on April 2, 1906.
After his burial there was no longer any difficulty and a number of beautiful monuments already mark the last resting place of St. Michael's dead.
Among the last parishioners buried in the Old Churchyard, I would mention:
Mary Teresa Bruce, aged 87 years and 5 months; March 27, 1905 Robert Bruce, aged 58 years; May 7, 1905 Bernard O'Connor, aged 64 years and 19 months; June 26, 1905 William N. Nalle, aged 73 years; July 25, 1905 Charles Thompson, aged 38 years; August 26, 1905 Josephine Heidenreich, aged 24 years, October 4, 1905 Julia Bruce, aged 25 years; December 4, 1905
After this burial the Cemetery was closed. Of course, its graves and monuments will not be disturbed; the place itself will be preserved as it is, to keep alive among future generations the hallowed memories of the past.
Chronicles of an Old Missouri Parish Historical Sketches of St. Michael’s Church Fredericktown, Madison County, Missouri - 1917
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