Bethany Lutheran Indian Cemetery

In 1847, Rev. August Craemer, a Lutheran missionary pastor working in Frankenmuth, was asked to open a mission among the Chippewa, or Ojibwe, people in central Michigan. Craemer had been visiting the Ojibwe along the Pine River, with the assistance of an interpreter, since 1846. Ojibwe chief Bemassikeh visited Frankenmuth and invited Craemer to come to his village on the Pine River and teach his people. Craemer sent his colleague, the Rev. Edmund R. Baierlein, who, in 1848, established a mission among Chief Bemassikeh's people that he called "Bethany" (Hebrew for "house of misery") because of the poverty and poor living conditions of the Ojibwe people there.

A log house and a chapel were built to serve the mission, and eventually, a burial ground was dedicated beside it. The Rev. Ernst Miessler arrived in Michigan from Germany in 1851 and joined Baierlein at the Bethany Mission. Together, the two missionaries printed a book, Spelling and Reading in the Chippewa Language, which included Bible stories and some hymns translated from the German. The mission had a congregation of fifty-eight members, many of whom settled permanently on the mission land. Miessler taught the Ojibwe children in the mission school.

The first burial in the Bethany cemetery was that of a sixteen-year-old Ojibwe girl who was a student at the mission school and had taken the name of Pauline at baptism. When she died of tuberculosis, the Rev. Baierlein prepared a burial ground on a high spot of ground within the mission's boundaries, and Pauline was laid to rest with the other students of the school singing a hymn that Baierlein had translated into the Ojibwe language.

Baierlein was given a mission assignment in India in 1853, and Miessler continued the work of the Bethany Mission by himself. His wife, Johanna, died in 1857, and was buried in the Bethany cemetery—the only white woman to be interred there. About this time, the work at the Bethany Mission began to decline, because the government had established a reservation in Isabella County, and was offering eighty-acre tracts of land to the Ojibwe to encourage them to relocate there. This offer drew most of the Ojibwe families away from Gratiot County by 1860, and the Bethany mission was abandoned. The buildings were eventually torn down and all the land except for the burial ground was sold, leaving only the Bethany Lutheran Indian Cemetery to mark the place where the mission had been.

In 1931, churches in Saginaw joined together in an effort to improve the cemetery grounds. The cemetery was rededicated in October 1931, and a bronze plaque was placed near the entrance, memorializing the work of Craemer, Baierlein, and Miessler at the Bethany Mission.

A newspaper account of the dedication ceremony published in the Frankenmuth News read, in part, as follows:

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Approximately 5,000 people attended the rededication of Bethany Lutheran Indian Cemetery near St. Louis, Sunday afternoon by the Saginaw Valley churches of the Missouri Synod, as a memorial to the Lutheran pioneers of Michigan.

This old Indian burial grounds has been beautified and landscaped through the efforts of the four Saginaw churches, Trinity, Holy Cross, Redeemer and Bethlehem. Rev. August Bernthal, Rev. E. Voss, Rev. W. Roth, and Rev. Andrew Zeile were in charge of the services, which included the placing of a wreath on a large white wooden cross in the center of the cemetery and the dedication of a bronze plaque inscribed with a tribute to the missionaries who founded Bethany Mission.

The Cross was erected to mark the grave of a missionary's wife, the only white woman buried in the cemetery, has been placed in a cement foundation The wreath was placed on it by Rev. Herman Mayer of Bay City, and Rev. J. G. Nuechterlein of Bay City unveiled the memorial tablet. The tablet cast of metal collected by Saginaw Lutheran school children commemorates the work of the Missionaries August Cramer, Edward Boerlein [sic] and E. G. H. Meissler [sic].

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The Bethany Lutheran Indian Cemetery includes the graves of several Ojibwe adults and children who were members of the Bethany congregation. Among them is the grave of Sahrah Miksewe, who died at age 110 and was known as the "mother of the Chippewa."

"Lutherans Rededicate Indian Cemetery Sun.," Frankenmuth News, October 15, 1931, p.1.

Baierlein, E. R. (Edward R.). Im Urwalde: Bei Den Roten Indianern. 4. durchgesehene Aufl. / Dresden: Justus Naumann's Buchhandlung (L. Ungelenk), 1894. 

Schmid, Friedrich. A Short Sketch of the Missionary Activity of the First Lutheran Pastor In Michigan, the Rev. Frederick Schmid, From 1833 to 1871. [Mich.: s.n.], 1932. 

Keiser, Albert. Lutheran Mission Work Among the American Indians. Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Publishing House, 1922, pp.63-92.

Graebner, Theodore. The Bavarian Settlements of the Saginaw Valley: the Story of Lutheran Pioneer Life In the Primeval Forests of Michigan. St. Louis: Concordia, 1919. 

Polack, W. G. Bringing Christ to the Ojibways In Michigan: a Story of the Mission Work of E. R. Baierlein (1848-1853). New York [etc.]: E. Kaufmann, 1927.