Eagle River Cemetery, Houghton Township, Keweenaw County, Michigan

Date: About 1847 [unknown]
Location: Eagle River, Keweenaw, Michigan, United States
Surname/tag: Michigan_ Cemetery

Contents 1 General Information 2 History 3 Notable Monuments 4 Notable Interments 5 More Information

General Information

Eagle River Evergreen Cemetery Entrance

Cemetery name: Eagle River Cemetery

Address: Highway M26, Houghton Township, Michigan 49950

GPS Coordinates: 47.40637, -88.29921

History

Eagle River was first settled in 1843 in conjunction with the east coast-based Lake Superior Copper Company, and later served as the shipping port for the very successful Cliff Mine. Life in the rugged Copper Country was hard and the work was dangerous. The miners worked with crude equipment, nothing was known of safety methods, there were no mine inspectors, and emergency medical services were very limited. Many of this cemetery's early stone markers include simple epitaphs documenting these hardships and the lives which often ended with no warning. This cemetery contains graves dating from the 1840s to the present. Ninety-eight graves date from the nineteenth century and include miners tragically killed at the Cliff Mine. This was not the first cemetery in Eagle River. Several people were buried across the road in the 1840s, but no trace of that cemetery remains.

The Eagle River Cemetery consists of five adjacent parcels totaling 3.17 acres. The four oldest parcels make up the historic “Evergreen” portion of the cemetery and are in Allouez Township. The fifth parcel is active and spans across the boundary between Allouez and Houghton Townships. The entire Eagle River Cemetery has been operated by Houghton Township since 1947.

The cemetery was already in use before it was surveyed by Edward Hurlbert in September 1857 and plotted in 1858. The first 1.75 acres of the cemetery were officially transferred to the Evergreen Cemetery Association by its owner, the Pittsburg & Boston Mining Company, in 1860. The southern portion of that property (the area with the circular layout) was then transferred by the Evergreen Cemetery Association to the Houghton Lodge No. 160 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) of Michigan in 1861. In 1877 another 50-foot strip of land on the west side of the cemetery (0.51 acres) was transferred to the Evergreen Cemetery Association who, in turn, then transferred the south portion of that strip to the IOOF in 1877.

The fifth and last parcel consisting of 0.91 acres on the east side of the old cemetery was purchased by the Township from Mr. Lyle Peterson in 1997. This portion is active.

The Evergreen Cemetery portion of the Eagle River Cemetery is Michigan Historic Site No. 581 and was listed in the State Register on July 17, 1986.

Notable Monuments

The Joseph Blight Monument was made from Scotch granite imported from the quarries of Aberdeen, Scotland.

Notable Interments

Miners killed at the Cliff Mine in the 1800s.

Joseph Blight Sr., 1832-1894, and Mary Ann Terrill Blight, 1835-1911, founders of the Original Lake Superior Safety Fuse Co., established in 1862 at Eagle River, MI. (Profile Blight-415 appears to be this Joseph Blight. The profile manager has indicated she will be providing more information on the Blights.)

Pereley Carley

Bessie Phillips

Anton Sibilsky

More Information

• Link to Houghton Township webpage with cemetery contact information: https://www.houghtontwp.org/attractions
• Find a Grave: Evergreen Cemetery, Also known as Eagle River Cemetery, Eagle River, Keweenaw County, Michigan, USA, https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/405/evergreen-cemetery
• Property records from Keweenaw County Courthouse (source of property transfer dates in history above)
• Phillips, Bessie, "A Story the Old Tombstones Tell in Keweenaw", The Daily Mining Gazette, October [9?], 1943, reprinted in, "Keweenaw Stories Retold by Bessie Phillips", Marcia Herring Mason, Editor, Keweenaw County Historical Society, 2019, p 26.
• Germain, P., "Lest We Forget (Copper Country Tombstones)", 1987. pp 35-54.
• Grave listing (does not include an unknown number of unmarked graves): https://web.archive.org/web/20120426082103/http://www.lib.mtu.edu/mtuarchives/cemetery/keer.aspx
• Link to article on the Joseph Blight Monument (column 2 under Keweenaw heading): The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.), 25 Feb. 1896. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86086632/1896-02-25/ed-1/seq-2/>

The grave count, earliest grave, and date of transfer from the mining company on these sites conflict with the sources above:

• Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_River_Cemetery
• https://web.archive.org/web/20120612201753/http://www.mcgi.state.mi.us/hso/sites/8103.htm