Beaver Island ArchiveA primary-source archive & encyclopedia45°40′N 85°33′W · Lake Michigan
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Death, burial, and cemeteries

Also Cemeteries of Beaver Island · Burial customs

Draft — sources verified, prose evolving

TypeTheme
WithinBeaver Island archipelago
ErasStrang eraIrish eraModern era
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Strang eraIrish eraModern era
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Beaver Island archipelago

Summary

Four cemeteries are documented on the archipelago: Holy Cross Cemetery, associated with the Catholic parish since the original 1860 church was built beside it; St. James Township Cemetery; a separately named “Beaver Island Township cemetery” attested only in a single 1960 obituary, whose relationship to the St. James ground is unresolved; and the Garden Island Indian Cemetery, listed on the National Register in 1978. Before any of them existed in an organized form, an 1850s Gentile memoir describes informal, decorated burials on family property during Strang’s kingdom, including one burial denied any funeral rite as a punitive act.

Holy Cross Cemetery’s documented history since 1860 is mostly a record of upkeep: a 1961 volunteer campaign, a 1973 fund drive, a 1974 change of maintenance crew, and a 1977 headstone-lettering notice. A Requiem Mass followed by burial is the recurring published sacramental pattern, and an ordained deacon’s faculties explicitly include presiding at “wake and burial services.”

The clearest institutional fact the record preserves is practical: Holy Cross Cemetery banned burials from 1 December to 15 May, with winter vault storage and other arrangements left to “your funeral director.” Obituaries from the 1960s show that pattern already operating informally — bodies held over winter, buried the following spring. No funeral home is documented on the island itself; Charlevoix’s Winchester Funeral Home appears far more than any other, and one 1963 notice describes relatives gathering there to recite the Rosary before the deceased was brought to the island for Mass and burial.

Grave markers are a source in their own right, not treated here as infallible. The Historical Society’s cemetery directory takes its dates from the stone even where they conflict with other records, and separately flags unmarked graves. One research card preserves an outright conflict between a marker’s dates and a transcribed death record for a man named Kane. An 1887 shipwreck’s dead were marked unevenly: three sisters share small headstones; a fourth, recovered from the same wreck, has none.

Garden Island’s Anishinaabe burial ground is documented only at the level the project’s existing work on this subject already sets: its existence and 1978 National Register listing are recorded; its location and extent are not, and the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians’ Tribal Historic Preservation Office is named as the appropriate authority, not this archive. A separate, unrelated 1961 record shows an Anishinaabe woman buried at Holy Cross Cemetery — a distinct fact about the parish ground.

Burial grounds and their periods

Holy Cross Cemetery is the only burial ground on the archipelago with a continuous documented institutional history. The Michigan historical marker for Holy Cross Catholic Church places the original 1860 church beside the parish cemetery, about a mile south of the church’s present site; the church itself was cut in half and moved to Donegal Bay Road in 1957, while the cemetery is treated in the knowledge base as the separate physical resource it is. No held source gives the cemetery its own founding date distinct from the church’s.

Two further named cemeteries appear in the Beaver Beacon, and their relationship to each other is not settled by anything held here. St. James Township Cemetery is documented from 1963 to 1966, through an annual spring cleaning and three named burials or graveside services, and is currently mapped as an OpenStreetMap polygon named “Saint James Township Cemetery.” A single December 1960 obituary instead names the “Beaver Island Township cemetery” as a decedent’s place of interment. The two articles for these grounds keep the records separate rather than merging them — nothing in the held sources establishes that the 1960 label and the mapped St. James ground are the same place.

Garden Island Indian Cemetery, also recorded as archaeological site 20CX12, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 under an Indigenous/Aboriginal historic context with a stated period of significance of 1850-1949. Its nomination text, boundary, and burial count are not held here; what that period-of-significance figure describes, and what lies outside it, is discussed further below.

Before the parish: home-site burial in the 1850s

Before any of the island’s mapped cemeteries existed, at least two Beaver Island burials from Strang’s kingdom are described in Elizabeth Whitney Williams’ 1905 memoir of growing up in a Gentile family there. One is political: after Thomas Bennett was shot by Strang’s followers in a dispute over fish and property, his body was examined for the fatal wound, “put in a plain pine coffin and buried without prayer or ceremony of any kind” in a grove of cedar trees near the harbor — and his grave was later found piled with rocks, which Williams reports as meant to signal what would happen to any Gentile who defied the king. The other two are domestic and undramatic: a family dog’s grave marked with a planted rose bush, and a young woman’s grave on the “Johnson House” property marked with a white picket fence, rose bushes, and a lilac bush, tended after the family that dug it had already left the island.

These are a single author’s recollections, published nearly fifty years after the events, and this record treats them as such rather than as a register. Read together, they show burial on family or claimed ground, marked or left unmarked at the family’s own choice, in the years before Holy Cross gave the island a shared consecrated ground.

Catholic burial practice and the parish’s role

From 1860 onward, the Beacon’s recurring published pattern for a Catholic burial on the island is a Requiem Mass at Holy Cross Church followed by interment at the adjoining cemetery, and the parish treated the cemetery as an object of its own ongoing care rather than a fixed physical fact. In August 1960, the parish’s hundredth-anniversary program opened with a Mass for deceased parish members that included cemetery prayers and a grave blessing. The clergy who serve the parish carry an explicit sacramental role in death: when Michael McGinnity was ordained a permanent deacon in 1988, the Beacon reported that his faculties would include being “the legitimate presider at wake and burial services,” alongside baptism, marriage, and preaching.

Maintaining the cemetery ground itself shows up as a recurring, sometimes precarious, volunteer effort rather than a standing parish budget line. In December 1961, Betty Lockton of Chicago began a fundraising campaign after visitors questioned the cemetery’s state of care, working with Musette LaFreniere and Bob Delaney; the Beacon reports the campaign progressing into February 1962 without reporting a final total raised. A separate 1973 fund drive changed its closing date to 17 October and later awarded a $100 prize by drawing. Cutting the grass changed hands in 1974, when Bob McGlocklin’s Circle M crew, which had also offered grave-site repairs and free topsoil at the cemetery entrance, gave up the work because of his business and the loss of a crew member to the Armed Services, and the Bing McCafferties took over. In 1977 the paper carried a notice inviting anyone wanting lettering added to a Holy Cross headstone to contact Mary “Bert” McDonough or Robert Winchester. None of these notices amounts to a maintenance record or budget; together they show upkeep as an intermittent community project, publicly renegotiated roughly every few years.

The winter problem: frozen ground and no ferry

Holy Cross Cemetery’s most concrete piece of institutional self-description is a published policy, not a narrative. The Beacon’s November-December 1978 issue states it plainly: “Winter policy of Holy Cross Cemetery is now in effect. No burials are permitted between December 1 and May 15. Storage in the Holy Cross Cemetery Vault is available for the winter months. Other arrangements must be made with your funeral director.” The notice does not explain why — frozen ground, and an island whose ferry service and open-water access both narrow through the winter (see Weather, ice, and winter isolation), are the plain practical reasons a burial ground would need such a rule, but this record states only the rule itself, not its stated justification, because no held source gives one.

Obituaries from the fifteen years before that notice show the same practice already operating informally. In May 1962, the Beacon reported a Requiem High Mass for Christina Gallagher, held three and a half months after her January death because of “delayed winter transport,” with burial at Holy Cross Cemetery following directly. The January and February 1963 issues report two further cases in the same pattern: Alice Johnston Belfy’s burial at Holy Cross Cemetery, and a second decedent’s burial at St. James Township Cemetery, both explicitly described as planned for spring. Read together with the 1978 notice, these read less as isolated delays than as the shape a winter death regularly took on the island before the policy that formalized it: the funeral service could happen promptly, but the ground itself had to wait for the thaw.

Bringing the dead home

A death away from the island posed a related, separate practical problem: where the person would be waked, and whether the body would return for island burial at all. No funeral home is documented as operating on Beaver Island itself; the Beacon’s obituary notices instead name mainland establishments, overwhelmingly the Winchester Funeral Home in Charlevoix, far more often than any other. One 1963 notice makes the two-stage pattern explicit: relatives and friends gathered at the Winchester Funeral Home in Charlevoix “to recite the Rosary” the evening before the deceased was brought to Holy Cross Church for services and to Holy Cross Cemetery for burial — a mainland vigil paired with an island Mass and burial. Not every body made that return trip: the January 1963 Beacon also reports a death and burial in Chicago rather than on the island, with no stated reason recorded.

The same return-to-the-island pattern applied outside the immediate Irish-Catholic community that built Holy Cross. In April 1961, the Beacon reported that Nancy Waubininkee, born on High Island, was returned to Beaver Island for burial at Holy Cross Cemetery after her death at a hospital in East Jordan — evidence that the parish cemetery served Anishinaabe islanders as well as the Irish-descended community around it, a separate fact from what is or is not said below about Garden Island.

Markers, transcription, and disagreement with civil records

The Beaver Island Historical Society’s cemetery directory and map is the most complete transcription project held here, and it says plainly how it was built and where it is uncertain: by cross-referencing church records, index cards, an older cemetery map, gravestones, deeds, and genealogy research. Its own stated method is to take dates from the gravestone “whether they matched death records or not,” in order to keep one consistent recording basis, and it marks unmarked graves with the notation N.S. (“No Stone”), a list the Society says will continue to be added to. The directory is explicit that this makes it a compilation under active correction, not a settled register.

One case among the sources held here shows exactly the kind of conflict that method is built to preserve rather than resolve. A Helen Collar biographical research card transcribes a cemetery marker reading “Michael Kane,” giving birth and death years of 1836 and 1904, directly alongside a separately transcribed Peaine Township civil death-record entry for “Michael Kan,” a single Irish-born farmer who died of scarlet fever on 15 January 1901 at age 62 — arithmetic that implies an 1839 birth year. The card notes the conflict itself. Neither the underlying marker nor the civil record has been independently retrieved, so the two entries are kept here as a contested pair, following the same precedent as the marker-versus-civil-record conflict preserved for Michael Kane rather than silently choosing one date.

A second kind of disagreement is not about dates but about whether a marker exists at all. A 2026 Northern Islander article reports that three Gallagher sisters who died in the 1887 sinking of the steamer Vernon are commemorated at Holy Cross Cemetery by small headstones, while a fourth Gallagher recovered from the same wreck, Rose, was buried there without a headstone. The same disaster produced both a marked and an unmarked outcome within one family plot — a reminder that “no stone” in a cemetery directory can describe a burial as real as any other, just less visible to a later reader.

The Anishinaabe burial ground

Garden Island’s Anishinaabe burial ground is documented here at the level Anishinaabe presence in the archipelago already sets, and this article does not go further than that. The ground’s existence and its 1978 National Register listing, under reference 78001494 and also recorded as archaeological site 20CX12, are established facts; a 1965 Beacon visitor’s account describes moss-covered wooden spirit houses and a latest grave dated 1938 near the island’s former Indian Village. What this record does not do, deliberately, is locate the ground, describe its extent, or estimate how many people are buried there. Anishinaabe presence in the archipelago states the reason directly: burial sites are protected under tribal and federal preservation law, and the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians’ Tribal Historic Preservation Office, not this archive, is the appropriate authority on what more may be said. That guidance is followed here rather than reargued.

The archive’s own genealogical sources

Beyond the Beaver Island Historical Society’s cemetery directory described above, the Clarke Historical Library holds Helen Collar’s transcriptions of the island’s Catholic sacramental registers, organized around baptism, marriage, death, and an 1864 church-membership roll. That series is a researcher’s working transcription of primary registers, not a published vital-records series, and one that names causes of death, records illegitimacy, and carries deaths into the 1950s and 1960s — a period with living descendants still on the island. Accordingly, this article records the series’ existence and general shape as a genealogical resource and does not reproduce any individual entry from it.

Evidence and limits

This article rests on published newspaper notices, a state historical marker, a National Register finding aid, one nineteenth-century travel memoir, and the Beaver Island Historical Society’s own transcription methodology — no civil death certificate, parish sacramental register, or cemetery deed has been consulted directly. Every burial and funeral described here is a newspaper’s own reporting or a directory compiler’s own cross-reference, not an independently verified vital record; where a source disagrees with another, that disagreement is stated rather than resolved. Individuals named in the sources above are recorded only to the extent already published in a newspaper, a National Register finding aid, or an existing project article; this survey deliberately does not compile a fuller mortality list, catalogue causes of death, or extend to any death recent enough that a survivor is plausibly still living. The Helen Collar church-record transcriptions are cited only for their existence and general schema, not for individual entries, and Garden Island’s Anishinaabe burial ground is described only at the level Anishinaabe presence in the archipelago already sets.

Open questions

  • Holy Cross Cemetery has no founding date in the held record separate from the 1860 church; a parish or diocesan register might supply one.
  • The relationship between the single 1960-attested “Beaver Island Township cemetery” and the currently mapped St. James Township Cemetery is unresolved — are they the same ground under two names, or two different grounds?
  • No held source states when the December 1-May 15 winter burial policy was first adopted; the 1978 notice reports it as already “in effect,” and the 1962-1963 spring burials show the same practice years earlier without a stated rule.
  • Whether the Winchester Funeral Home in Charlevoix was ever the island’s sole or official mainland funeral home, or simply the most frequently chosen one, is not established by frequency of mention alone.
  • No plot map, burial count, or founding date is held for St. James Township Cemetery or the Beaver Island Township cemetery beyond the newspaper notices cited here.
  • Garden Island Indian Cemetery’s boundary, burial count, and current stewardship arrangements remain open questions for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians’ Tribal Historic Preservation Office to answer, not this archive.

See also

Sources

  1. Participants memorialized Ernie "Big Ern" Martin, described family donations, and recalled his presence at Donegal Danny's Pub. This is community memory and fundraising context, not an obituary or financial record.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 00 · t000448
  2. A participant asked for family burial information, a caretaker contact, and a plot map; another participant offered to help identify information. This is a genealogical research lead and community response, not a burial register or authoritative cemetery map.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 00 · t000788
  3. The forum reproduced a Muskegon Chronicle obituary and identified Nancy Dovick's family's connections to Beaver Island and the Brothers Lodge. The newspaper/funeral-home notice is stronger for death and biography; the forum preserves local relevance and circulation.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001049
  4. A participant reported that Larry Malloy broke his arm in a fall at his granddaughter's home in Crown Point, Indiana. This is a community health report, not a medical record; the joking replies do not add clinical evidence.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001035
  5. The forum reproduced an obituary for Dr. Donald W. Alimenti and identified a close late-life relationship with Beaver Island's Don Mooney. The obituary is the stronger source for the death and biography; the forum preserves local circulation and a kinship connection that should be checked against family or newspaper records.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001060
  6. A participant offered a personal remembrance of Aunt Loy; it is memorial testimony and does not establish identity, dates, or burial details.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001104
  7. The topic reproduced an obituary-style death notice for Evelyn Mae McNamara and a condolence; the named funeral-home or church records would be stronger evidence for the underlying details.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001092
  8. A personal remembrance marked Tina Walker’s passing and discussed the absence of an official island ceremony; it is memorial testimony, not an obituary or verified ceremony record.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 06 · t006397
  9. A family notice thanked people who attended Eugene Bonadeo’s funeral and identified supporting groups; it is family testimony about the service, not a complete obituary.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 06 · t006356
  10. A participant sought updated contact information for a former acquaintance; it documents a private communication request, not a clergy directory.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 06 · t006340
  11. The forum preserved a detailed participant-posted obituary; it is a secondary memorial notice and should be checked against the named funeral-home or family source for authoritative biographical details.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 07 · t007058
  12. The forum preserved a link to an external funeral-home obituary; the obituary is the stronger source for identity and death details, while the forum records local circulation of the notice.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 07 · t007146
  13. The forum preserved a link to an external death notice and a thank-you for condolences; the linked notice is stronger evidence for the underlying biographical claim.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 07 · t007134
  14. A participant asked whether an island cemetery allowed natural or green burial with a biodegradable coffin or urn. This is a planning inquiry, not a cemetery-policy, burial, or legal record.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 12 · t012831
  15. A forum notice reproduced obituary-style details for Daniel Thomas Rafferty, who died August 25 at age 68; a reply added personal recollections of his music and family connections. This is a community memorial notice, not a vital record or independently verified biography.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 13 · t013508
  16. A notice linked to a funeral-home obituary for Joan Allen, who reportedly died unexpectedly on August 15, 2018; replies expressed sympathy. The forum preserves a community referral and condolence, not an independent vital-record check.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 13 · t013487
  17. A participant recalled Elvis Presley’s 1977 death and Carol Wierenga’s 2006 death. The Elvis date is externally stable; the community remembrance of Wierenga remains a forum statement unless supported by a memorial or vital record.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 13 · t013464
  18. A participant announced Jack White's death and offered personal family and friendship recollections, including a statement that their fathers were cousins. This is a personal memorial notice, not an obituary, vital record, or independently verified genealogy.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 13 · t013576
  19. A forum notice reproduced an obituary-style account of Arthur Erskine Huston’s November 14 death, family relationships, World War II Navy service, and planned funeral service. It is a community-posted memorial notice; the copied details should be checked against the funeral home or vital record before being treated as an official biography.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 13 · t013739
  20. The forum reproduced an obituary for Anthony Greene, born on Beaver Island in 1927, a World War II Army veteran and longtime Ludington electrician with family farms and cemetery connections on Beaver Island; community replies remembered his help, including the Veterans Park flagpole lighting. The funeral was held off island, and the forum testimony is family/community reporting rather than a civil record or complete biography.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 14 · t014790
  21. The forum reproduced an off-island obituary for Richard Elms, identifying Beaver Island family connections and United States Air Force service. The notice gives Wichita funeral information and a memorial destination but does not establish Beaver Island burial or a local cemetery record.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 14 · t014848
  22. The forum reproduced an obituary for Dennis Walczewski, noting United States Marine Corps service, VFW and Kosciusko Hall affiliations, and hunting and fishing at Little Bull Head Lake. It gives an off-island burial destination and does not establish Beaver Island residence, burial, or a local cemetery record.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 14 · t014834
  23. Front text gives the 1860 construction and consecration of the original Holy Cross church beside the parish cemetery, about a mile south of the present site, and the 1957 move of the church building. It does not give the cemetery a separate founding date.
    state · michigan · historical_markers
  24. Explains the directory's method: cross-referencing church records, index cards, an old cemetery cardboard map, gravestones, deeds, and genealogy research. Defines N.S. as "No Stone (unmarked grave-site)," states that dates are taken from gravestones "whether they matched death records or not," and that unmarked burials continue to be added and corrected on report.
    websites · www.beaverislandhistory.org · holy-cross-cemetery · index
  25. Quoted directly: "Winter policy of Holy Cross Cemetery is now in effect. No burials are permitted between December 1 and May 15. Storage in the Holy Cross Cemetery Vault is available for the winter months. Other arrangements must be made with your funeral director." The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1978-11_Beaver-Beacon
  26. Project event article for the same 1978 notice.
    Described in this archive: Holy Cross Cemetery announces winter burial policy, 1978.
    Existing KB record of the notice, cited alongside the primary reading rather than in place of it. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · events · beaver-island-holy-cross-cemetery-winter-policy-1978
  27. Reports a Requiem High Mass for Christina Gallagher at Holy Cross Church on April 28, after her January 7 death and delayed winter transport, with burial at Holy Cross Cemetery; separately reports John Donlevy's body returned for Holy Cross burial on April 23 after a Requiem Mass at St. Mary's Catholic Church, Charlevoix.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1962-05_Beaver-Beacon
  28. Project event article for the same spring 1962 burials.
    Described in this archive: Spring services and burials return Christina Gallagher and John Donlevy to Beaver Island, 1962.
    Existing KB record, cited alongside the primary reading. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · events · beaver-island-burials-april-1962
  29. Reports Alice Johnston Belfy's death and a planned spring burial at Holy Cross Cemetery, and Herbert Boyle's death and burial in Chicago rather than on the island.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1963-01_Beaver-Beacon
  30. Reports Mrs. Herman Fischner's death and a planned spring burial at St. James Township Cemetery.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1963-02_Beaver-Beacon
  31. Project event article grouping the January-February 1963 notices.
    Described in this archive: Beaver Island-connected winter death notices, 1963.
    Existing KB record, cited alongside the primary readings. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · events · beaver-island-winter-death-notices-1963
  32. Reports that relatives and friends gathered at the Winchester Funeral Home in Charlevoix on July 17 "to recite the Rosary" the evening before funeral services at Holy Cross Church and burial at Holy Cross Cemetery. Veronica (Gallagher) Left died in a Detroit nursing home; the notice is read only for the two-stage mainland-vigil/island-burial pattern it documents, not for any further biographical claim.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1963-08_Beaver-Beacon
  33. Reports funeral services at the Winchester Funeral Home, burial in Brookside Cemetery (off-island); read only as an example of the Winchester Funeral Home's recurring role, which is by far the most frequently named funeral home in the held Beacon corpus.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1964-05_Beaver-Beacon
  34. Quoted directly on the faculties a Beaver Island deacon receives: to "be the legitimate presider at wake and burial services, as well as at prayer and liturgical gatherings of the local church." The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1988-07_Beaver-Beacon
  35. Announces a 7 August 1960 Mass for deceased parish members with cemetery prayers and grave blessing, as part of the parish centennial program.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1960-08_Beaver-Beacon
  36. Reports Betty Lockton of Chicago beginning a fundraising campaign for Holy Cross Cemetery after visitors questioned its lack of care, assisted by Musette LaFreniere and Bob Delaney.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1961-12_Beaver-Beacon
  37. Project event article for the same campaign.
    Described in this archive: Campaign to improve Holy Cross Cemetery’s care begins and continues, 1961–1962.
    No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · events · holy-cross-cemetery-care-campaign-1961
  38. Reports the Holy Cross Cemetery Fund Drive's final date moved to October 17, 1973, and a subsequent $100 prize drawing won by Fred Floyd of Muskegon.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1973-08_Beaver-Beacon
  39. Project event article for the same fund drive.
    Described in this archive: Holy Cross Cemetery fund drive, 1973.
    No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · events · holy-cross-cemetery-fund-drive-1973
  40. Reports Bob McGlocklin's Circle M crew ending its cemetery-cutting service because of business demands and the loss of a crew member to the Armed Services, and the Bing McCafferties taking over; also offers grave-site repairs by arrangement and topsoil at the cemetery entrance.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1974-05_Beaver-Beacon
  41. Project event article for the same maintenance transition.
    Described in this archive: Holy Cross Parish Cemetery maintenance succession, 1974.
    No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · events · holy-cross-cemetery-maintenance-service-1974
  42. Invites inquiries about lettering on Holy Cross Cemetery headstones through Mary "Bert" McDonough or Robert Winchester. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1977-04_Beaver-Beacon
  43. Project event article for the same notice.
    Described in this archive: Holy Cross Cemetery lettering service notice published, 1977.
    No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · events · beaver-island-holy-cross-cemetery-lettering-notice-1977
  44. Reports that St. James Township Cemetery received annual cleaning.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1963-06_Beaver-Beacon
  45. Project event article for the same cleanup.
    Described in this archive: Beaver Island cemeteries and public beach receive spring cleanup, 1963.
    No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · events · beaver-island-cemetery-and-beach-cleanup-1963
  46. Names the "Beaver Island Township cemetery" as Max Sondereggor's place of interment; the held sources do not establish whether this is the same feature mapped today as St. James Township Cemetery.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1960-12_Beaver-Beacon
  47. Confirms the listing, also identified as archaeological site 20CX12, an Indigenous/Aboriginal historic context, and a stated period of significance of 1850-1949. Does not supply the nomination text, boundary, or burial count.
  48. Eyewitness visit describes an Indian burial ground with moss-covered wooden spirit houses and a latest grave dated 1938, near the Indian Village and school/church remains. A 1965 travel account, not an archaeological survey.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1965-07_Beaver-Beacon
  49. Project theme article on Anishinaabe presence in the archipelago.
    Described in this archive: Anishinaabe presence in the archipelago.
    Its existing "Burial ground" section states that Garden Island holds a significant Anishinaabe burial ground and that no location, extent, boundary, or inventory should be recorded here; the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians' Tribal Historic Preservation Office is named as the appropriate authority. That guidance is followed here rather than re-derived. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · themes · anishinaabe-presence
  50. Reports Nancy Waubininkee's body returned to Beaver Island on April 7 for burial at Holy Cross Cemetery, after her death at Grandview Medical in East Jordan; identifies her as born on High Island.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1961-05_Beaver-Beacon
  51. Project event article for the same burial.
    Described in this archive: Nancy Waubininkee is returned to Beaver Island for burial, 1961.
    No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · events · burial-of-nancy-waubininkee-1961
  52. Reports that three Gallagher sisters who died in the 1887 sinking of the steamer Vernon are commemorated by small headstones at Holy Cross Cemetery, and that Rose Gallagher's body was recovered and buried there without a headstone.
    internet_archive · northern_islander_2026
  53. Project person article preserving a marker/civil-record date conflict.
    Described in this archive: Michael Kane.
    A Helen Collar biographical card transcribes a cemetery marker reading "Michael Kane," 1836-1904, alongside a separately transcribed Peaine Township death-record entry for "Michael Kan," age 62, scarlet fever, 15 January 1901 — implying an 1839 birth year. The card notes the conflict itself; neither the marker nor the underlying civil record has been independently retrieved, so the two entries are kept as a contested pair rather than merged. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · people · michael-kane
  54. Described in this archive: A Child of the Sea; and Life among the Mormons, 1905.
    Personal memoir, published nearly fifty years after the events it describes, of a Gentile family on Beaver Island during Strang's kingdom. Pages 93-94 describe Thomas Bennett's shooting and burial "in a plain pine coffin," "without prayer or ceremony of any kind," in a grove of cedar trees near the harbor, his grave afterward piled with rocks as a warning to other Gentiles. Pages 191-193 describe two informal, decorated home-site graves from the same period: "Tiger's grave," a family dog's grave marked with a rose bush, and a young woman's grave on the "Johnson House" property marked with a white picket fence, rose bushes, and a lilac bush. Read as a single witness's later recollection, not as a register.
    internet_archive · childofsealifeam00will
  55. Described in this archive: Helen Collar Church Records transcriptions.
    Alphabetized transcriptions of cards drawn from Beaver Island Catholic church records and Charlevoix County death records, organized around baptism, marriage, death, and church-roll entries. Cited here only for its existence and general schema as a genealogical resource; no individual entry is reproduced.
    web · collar_church
  56. Project documentation note, "Helen Collar's church records — structured archive."
    States that the series records deaths into the 1950s and 1960s, names causes of death and illegitimacy, and concerns "a living community's ancestors"; instructs that entry text not be surfaced without editorial framing. Followed here by omission rather than summary of individual entries. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    docs · collar-church-records
  57. A forum obituary notice reported Robert L. Meaney’s death and family connections, including Beaver Island-linked names. The linked or quoted obituary is the stronger source for biographical and death details; the forum documents community circulation.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 04 · t004865
  58. A participant relayed an obituary for Aaron Ryan Anthony, including Traverse City, Charlevoix, and Grand Traverse Band family connections. The quoted obituary is stronger evidence for its biographical and death details; the forum documents local circulation.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001807
  59. A participant reposted a detailed obituary and memorial-service notice for Charles Kay Lucas, a Mt. Pleasant resident with an island connection. The funeral-home obituary text is stronger for the death and family details than the forum repost; the forum documents local circulation of the notice, not a Beaver Island burial or death record.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001673
  60. A family member posted a eulogy for Catherine 'Georgie' Connaghan Gatliff, delivered at St. Philomena Catholic Church in Detroit on January 26, 2009. The eulogy is a valuable family/community memory source for Connaghan kinship, dance, Irish identity, and island belonging; it is not a death certificate or independent chronology of every biographical detail.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001448
  61. John Crouse's brother described his death in December 2008, the family's Grand Rapids viewing, and plans for an island remembrance. This first-person family notice is strong evidence of the community's memorial response and the family's stated connection to the island, but not a civil death record or complete obituary.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001374
  62. A participant reported that Genie Vreeland was recovering from a fall at a Charlevoix rehabilitation center and invited cards. This is a community care notice, not a clinical record, diagnosis, or complete account of her later outcome.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001335
  63. A family/community notice reported Jane Anderson's death and described her long affection for Beaver Island, including the Emerald Isle christening, Christian Church, McDonough's Market, Community Center groundbreaking, and Out On a Limb work. This is first-person family memory and a memorial-giving notice, not an obituary or independent chronology of those events.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001206
  64. A brief family/community notice reported the drowning death of two-year-old William Graham in Lake Superior and requested prayers. It is a contemporaneous community notice, not an incident report, death certificate, or detailed account of the event.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001200
  65. A reposted obituary identified John Fiegen of Beaver Island as a surviving son of Gretta Miller Fiegen, who died in Wilmette at age 96. The funeral-home obituary text is stronger for the death and family details; the forum documents local circulation and an island family connection.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001222
  66. A participant reposted an Indianapolis obituary for John W. 'Jack' Hannon Jr. The obituary is stronger for formal biographical and funeral details; the forum preserves its local circulation, not a Beaver Island residence or burial claim.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001223
  67. The first post reported Peggy Currier's death without details; a follow-up reposted a Petoskey News Review notice identifying Margaret 'Peggy' Currier, age 82, and burial at Holy Cross Cemetery. The newspaper notice is stronger for the death, age, funeral, and burial facts; the forum preserves local circulation and the initial uncertainty.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001113

Added 4 August 2026. Recent changes

Cite this article

Beaver Island Archive, “Death, burial, and cemeteries”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/themes/death-burial-and-cemeteries/, accessed [date], citing Beaver Island Forum, "Quiet", September 2005, topic 448. (and 66 further sources listed on the page).

Last revised 2026-08-04. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.

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