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This year's cemetery tour


walker

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Every year the last four or five years retired attorney Tom Dilley gives a cemetery tour, and every year I post something announcing it.  It seems like a strange hobby but he knows his stuff and the tours are popular and always interesting.  He talks about the history of the cemetery's architecture along with interesting stories about the cemetery occupants.

 

So this year it's the Fulton Street Cemetery, the oldest public cemetery in Grand Rapids.  This year he's going to actually give two tours on Saturday September 6, one in the morning and another in the afternoon, and then another in the early afternoon Sunday September 7.

 

Here are the details:

 

http://www.grhistory.org/events/fultonstcemeterywalkingtour/10

 

 

EDIT: Just noticed that Dilley has written a book about GR cemeteries that comes out September 1.

 

Here's a link to Amazon giving a description:

 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Memory-Historic-Cemeteries/dp/0814340199/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407527942&sr=8-1&keywords=art+of+memory+grand+rapids+cemeteries

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Thought I'd give this a bump as a reminder that this is coming up this week-end.

 

Here's a nice article about what's in store by Garrett Ellison:

 

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2014/09/fulton_street_cemetery_walk-th.html#incart_river

 

 

Every year the last four or five years retired attorney Tom Dilley gives a cemetery tour, and every year I post something announcing it.  It seems like a strange hobby but he knows his stuff and the tours are popular and always interesting.  He talks about the history of the cemetery's architecture along with interesting stories about the cemetery occupants.

 

So this year it's the Fulton Street Cemetery, the oldest public cemetery in Grand Rapids.  This year he's going to actually give two tours on Saturday September 6, one in the morning and another in the afternoon, and then another in the early afternoon Sunday September 7.

 

Here are the details:

 

http://www.grhistory.org/events/fultonstcemeterywalkingtour/10

 

 

EDIT: Just noticed that Dilley has written a book about GR cemeteries that comes out September 1.

 

Here's a link to Amazon giving a description:

 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Memory-Historic-Cemeteries/dp/0814340199/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407527942&sr=8-1&keywords=art+of+memory+grand+rapids+cemeteries

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Thought I'd give this a bump as a reminder that this is coming up this week-end.

 

Here's a nice article about what's in store by Garrett Ellison:

 

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2014/09/fulton_street_cemetery_walk-th.html#incart_river

 

OK, it's pretty bad when I'm replying to my own post.  But I just got around to watching the video in the link where Dilley talks about John Ball, and it reminded me that Ball was also a minor historical figure in the northwest with stuff named after him.  Here's a photo I took of another John Ball Park, this one on the west side of Vancouver Washington:

 

post-11660-0-21185900-1409771400_thumb.j

 

click on thumbnail to expand.

 

Dilley talked about John Ball and mentions Ball’s trip through the wilderness to the Pacific Northwest where he spent the winter teaching at Fort Vancouver and then farming the next spring across the river in roughly what would later become the greater Portland area.  I’ll add a little to what Dilley said: the expedition to the northwest was led by Nathaniel Wyeth.  The route they blazed would become known as the Oregon Trail.  Because of his short stint at teaching and because of his attempt at farming, he is considered to be the first teacher in the northwest and the first American farmer (although the farmer claim excludes Native Americans and a few foreign born farmers in the neighborhood.)  So there have been schools named after him out there, and the park, and you can visit an archaeological site in Oregon's Champoeg State Park where they've unearthed what they think might be his farmstead, and I've been told but haven't seen it, that in Salem Oregon, the capital, there is a large painting of pioneers where his name is included on the top border along with others historical figures such as Lewis and Clark. 

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