Ramsey County Cemetery

Established in 1893 on the grounds of the county almshouse and poor farm, Ramsey County Cemetery served as a potter's field for indigent persons, the homeless, and patients at Ancker Hospital who died without friends or relatives to pay funeral costs. No provision was made for headstones, and with few exceptions the graves were unmarked. By the time the cemetery closed in 1923, there had been 2,991 recorded burials, and afterward the burial ground returned to agricultural use as part of the poor farm. In 2001, the 2.45-acre site was designated a heritage park by the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners. After the last burial in December 1923, the old potter's field was quickly forgotten except for one grave: Conrad Samuelson cared for the grave of his friend Elmer Dahl, who had died in 1922, with a makeshift memorial of old bricks and flowers and two spruce trees placed in the middle. When Samuelson died, he wished to be buried next to his friend, but he was buried on June 29, 1936, at Elmhurst Cemetery.

Maplewood, Minnesota · United States