Original Location of Saint Anne Cemetery

Saint Anne de Détroit is the country's second-oldest Roman Catholic parish and was founded on July 26, 1701, the day after the City of Detroit's founding by French explorers, traders, and clergy. While the current basilica dates back to 1886, the parish utilized seven previous locations and several graveyards. This was the first location of Saint Anne Cemetery, the earliest Euro-American burial ground in the region. Many, but not all of the people who were interned here were moved to other cemeteries as the church moved to other locations.

The original fort that began Detroit, Fort Ponchartrain du Détroit, was established in what is now bound by Fort, Larned, Shelby, and Griswold streets. The first Saint.Anne church building was inside this fort, and the cemetery was located just outside the stockade . The Great Fire of 1805 was a defining and tragic moment in Detroit history and saw many buildings connected to Detroit's colonial era destroyed, including the current building for Saint Anne which had been constructed in the 1750s. That building was the sixth built for the congregation. The first church building, which was located very near this location, was set on fire by Native Americans three years after its original construction. Between the Great Fire and the first fire, most of the church records were destroyed, including records of who might have been buried here.

One of the earliest known and recorded burials at Ste. Anne was from the rebuilt church belonging to a missionary named Nicolas Constantine del Halle. He was killed by Native Americans during an expedition outside of the stockades in 1706 and was buried near where he fell. He was exhumed and interred under the church alter a few years later and would have his remains removed and reinterred at least four more times with every succeeding church structure. After the Great Fire of 1805, the church was rebuilt in a different location outside of the original fort boundary, but it is unknown where del Halle's remains are located now.

Burial customs of early settlers in New France were very different from what we imagine in places such as colonial New England, and they can be attributed to various factors. One factor was the colonial French relationship with the land that was fostered in their home country: the terrain of France, being more mountainous and rugged, might not have permitted certain types of burials and those attitudes carried over to the New World. A second factor involved economic status, as many early French settlers were working class and were unlikely to afford a sculpted grave marker. Finally, the religious influence of Jesuit priests, whose mission in the New World was to proselytize over as large of an area as possible and saw no reason for a permanent presence, could have played a role. A combination of these factors might have influenced the French colonial worldview toward death and burial practices, opting to not dwell on death and to instead employ simple burials. This could explain why material such as grave markers have not been recovered, and the loss of early church records can explain why we have little evidence of early working-class burials. It was very easy for the cemetery to be forgotten both in place and time. 

By the 1820s the colonial forts of Detroit - Ponchartrain, Lernoult, and Shelby - were no more and Detroit entered a period of industrialization and urban expansion. By this time the original fort boundary - including Ste. Anne Cemetery - was allotted for other city uses. Burials that were marked were removed to a new location in the city and those that weren't - including del Halle - remain in downtown Detroit underneath concrete and buildings.

Currently, Ste. Anne de Detroit is located on Howard and 19th Street and is the eigth of Ste. Anne’s inception, built in 1887. This church has no adjoining graveyard but has interred one of Detroit’s most enduring and important figures: Father Gabriel Jacques Richard. Born in 1767 in Saintonge, France, he arrived in Detroit in 1798. There, he not only assumed religious duties in leading the Catholic community but also engaged in civic duties that gave Detroit and Michigan many defining features, such getting federal backing for a road from Detroit to Chicago – Michigan Avenue – and being one of the founders of the University of Michigan. Most memorably, Richard’s words during the city’s bleakest moment during the great fires became Detroit’s city motto: "Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus," or, “we hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes.”  

The city motto’s emphasis on destruction, resurrection, and change can serve as a reflection on the city’s changing outlook on death, burial, and memorial.

Dunnigan, Brian Leigh. Frontier Metropolis: Picturing Early Detroit, 1701-1838. Detroit, MI. Wayne State University Press, 2001.

Basilica of Sainte Anne de Détroit, Wikipedia. Accessed December 10th 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Sainte_Anne_de_D%C3%A9troit#:~:text=Father%20del%20Halle%20was%20kidnapped,the%20succeeding%20new%20church%20buildings..

Schrader, Michael H. "Detroit: The Environmental Influence of the French on an American City Environmental History." Environmental History (2014).

Toups, Eric. "More Than Just a Missionary: The Jesuits, the Wyandot, and Colonial Crises in French Detroit, 1728-1751." Michigan Historical Review 46, no. 1 (2020): 1-28.

Madden Project, Wayne State University: Gordon L. Grosscup Museum of Anthropology. Accessed December 11th 2020. http://www.clas.wayne.edu/anthromuseum/Madden-Project.

Collins, Liam. What happened to the cemeteries each time Saint Anne’s Church relocated?, Hometown History Tours. Accessed December 11th 2020. https://hometownhistorytours.com/2013/10/12/what-happened-to-the-cemeteries-each-time-saint-annes-church-relocated/.