French Cemetery in Saint Peter, Minnesota

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Get directions Saint Peter, Minnesota, USA

Coordinates: 44.35403, -93.95489
Cemetery ID:

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About these numbers These percentages indicate the number of Find a Grave memorials that have a grave photo or GPS coordinates. We don't know the total number of burials in a cemetery, so we cannot calculate a percentage of those with memorials, photos or GPS coordinates.

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As described in the Old Traverse des Sioux book by Thomas Hughes, the French cemetery was located on the first steppe or bench of land that lay back of the river (Minnesota) bottom and back from the Mission buildings. The French cemetery lay to the southeast of the treaty booth where the Traverse des Sioux Treaty was signed in 1851. A ditch separated the treaty booth from the graveyard.

Louisa Carpenter stated "I well remember the little French Indian cemetery which lay just across to the south of that small gully and ditch in Young's field to the south of the buildings. It had a picket fence about it and there were crosses on the graves painted black and the names of the people on them and some figures to show how old they were." (Page 109)

Alexander Ramsey described the cemetery as being a quaint old French graveyard.(Page 111) James Goodhue stated that by the time they went to look up the place in 1900 the cemetery had disappeared. (Page 107)

In reading the Old Traverse des Sioux book, a minimum of six individuals are known to have been interred in that cemetery.

A marker also commemorates the existence of the cemetery. Using the descriptions as written in the Old Traverse des Sioux book, the cemetery is located either on the edge of Minnesota Highway 169 or under the highway which was built in the late 1950's.