Raisin Township committee working to enhance cemeteries

RAISIN TWP. — Cemeteries offer a look into the history of a community.

In Raisin Township, an advisory committee is working to make its cemeteries and the stories they tell more accessible. That means working to make the cemeteries contemplative places to visit, organize the records and put them online, post signs about the cleanup dates and create a Facebook page to highlight the cemeteries and the township’s history.

The township manages four cemeteries: Raisin/Holloway Presbyterian Cemetery on Sutton Road east of Rogers Highway, McLain Cemetery on Rogers Highway between Centennial and Pocklington Road, Raisin Center Friends Cemetery on Chase Road between Wilmoth and Raisin Center highways, and Chandler Cemetery off Breckel Highway.

The McLain and Chandler cemeteries are family cemeteries. The Chandler cemetery has only five graves, with one of them being famed abolitionist writer Elizabeth Chandler, who died from illness at the age of 26. The McLain Cemetery has 50 graves who are family or friends of Fulton and Jane (Jack) McLain. The Raisin Center Friends Cemetery has 560 interred with about 40 plots available, and 801 are buried in the Raisin/Holloway cemetery, which might have room for expansion.

There hadn’t been an advisory committee for the cemeteries for a while when township Supervisor Tom Hawkins decided to give some attention to the cemeteries, said Kathy Smith, who is heading the committee with Donna Andre. The other committee members are Heather Franco and Mark Tommelein.

Smith and Andre are retired teachers with a passion for history. Smith lives in Tecumseh but grew up in Raisin Township and has many ancestors from the Lewis family who are buried in the township’s cemeteries. Andre has lived in the township for almost 50 years in a house that was built in 1853. Being able to learn about the connections between those historical township residents drew Andre and Smith to the opportunity to practice their passion for history, they said.

Andre has found connections to her home through researching the people who are buried in the cemeteries, including finding out that Smith as a child played at what is now her home when one of her cousins lived there.

“I know that people that we’ve learned about and talk about have been in my house at some point, and that really touches me,” Andre said.

They’ve learned about other aspects of 19th-century life in the township, such as how the Quakers generally lived west of the River Raisin and the Puritans or Protestants generally lived east of the river, and about the little hamlets, like Holloway and Little Hope, that grew up along the railroad.

Cemetery visitors could learn about some of the township’s earliest residents of European descent, including Deborah Holdridge, who was born in 1775 and moved to Michigan with her husband. She died after becoming lost while looking for reeds in a wetlands. Her body was found six weeks later in a Native American hut near Dundee, Smith said. She had died of starvation.

The cemetery committee also learned about the Rogers family, as in Rogers Highway. Obediah Rogers, the son of a Revolutionary War soldier, settled in the area and one of his grandsons, Frank Rogers, attended the Holloway School and what is now Michigan State University before eventually becoming Michigan’s first elected highway commissioner. He held that position from 1913 to 1929 and is credited with laying out the state’s original highway network and administering the road-building program that “pulled Michigan out of the mud,” according to the Michigan Department of Transportation.

The cemeteries also reveal the hazards people faced in the 1800s: mothers who died in childbirth, diseases like cholera and malaria that killed young people, and the number of people who were hit by trains. There are many infants buried in the cemeteries, too.

To improve access to the cemeteries, the township has hired Tommelein to mow and do general maintenance at the cemeteries. Hawkins is also doing similar work at McLain Cemetery. The signs reminding residents of when decorations can be put at the graves and when they need to be removed have been posted. They are updating and cross-referencing the township’s cemetery records, which date back to the 1830s. That information is being put into a spreadsheet that includes links to findagrave.com, which has information and photos about individual graves and the person buried at each site. The Facebook page “Raisin Township Cemeteries and Historical Highlights” is active and has 200 followers.

The cemeteries have a logo now, too. It features the names of the four cemeteries and wrought-iron fences on either side of a tall pine tree with a dove flying near the tree’s top.

The committee has goals it would like to achieve:
• Continue cleaning up the cemeteries to create more park-like settings.
• Acquire a columbarium to accommodate people who wish to be cremated and not buried.
• Apply for Michigan historical designations and signs for the locations of Laura Smith Haviland’s Raisin Institute and the Chandler Cemetery, given Haviland’s and Chandler’s prominent roles in the abolitionist movement.
• Continue to involve and education township residents in the heritage of the area.
• Memorialize with gratitude and appreciation.

The committee members would like to share information they’re compiling on the spreadsheets through the township’s website, Smith said.

To help with maintaining the cemeteries, the township invited Tecumseh High School students to help with spring cleanup at the Raisin/Holloway Cemetery. The township also is working with the Lenawee County National Intern Day organizers to have about 30 college interns who are working at local businesses do a community service project by cleaning tombstones and doing other summertime maintenance. Township residents can also expect a community workday to be scheduled when they can help improve the cemeteries.