by Dennis Dalman
A definite date and time are now set for a public ceremony at the installation of a memorial monument for 11 orphans who died and were buried in St. Joseph in the late 1880s.
The ceremony will take place starting at 11 a.m. Saturday, July 26 at the “Old Parish Cemetery” behind the St. Joseph Catholic Church.
After introductory comments by David Marthaler, Sister Pat Kennedy, OSB (Order of St. Benedict), will present a brief history of the St. Benedict Orphanage, followed by a blessing by Father Brad Jenniges, OSB.
Featured speaker David Marthaler, a retired FBI special agent and military veteran, spearheaded a fundraising drive for the monument to the orphans. He now lives in Michigan but has parental and childhood roots that go all the way back to the St. Joseph/St. Cloud area.
In an interview with the Newsleaders, Marthaler said he vividly remembers visiting that cemetery with his mother many times when he was a boy. She would stand there in sad silence, brimming with memories by her parents’ graves, her grandparents’ graves and at the sorrowful place covered with 11 decaying wooden crosses. One of the men buried there is Marthaler’s grandfather (his mother’s father, Frank Simon, Jr.) who was the brother of one of the orphans who died – John Simon.
In 1882, the rural St. Joseph Simon family’s parents, farmers, died. The mother, Elizabeth (Meyer) Simon, died first of pneumonia. About a year later the father, Frank Simon Sr. died (apparently of influenza). Their eight children were suddenly parentless. Orphans. The older children went to live with relatives. The three youngest (Frank, Jr.; John, Louisa) became wards of the St. Benedict’s Orphan Asylum in St. Joseph, operated by nuns.
In the late 1800s, many adults and children died of communicable diseases for which there was no cure. Thus, orphanages for homeless children were quite common.
The monument
When each of the 11 orphans died, a wooden cross was placed over their graves, but during the many decades since, those crosses deteriorated to nothing.
Thanks to the efforts of David Marthaler and his fist cousin, Robert Simon of rural St. Joseph, almost $2,330 in donations was raised. That was enough to have a black-granite monument created, 48 inches wide and 40 inches high.
The monument shows the names and ages of the orphans who died between the years of 1883 and 1890. On the monument there is also an etching made from a very old photo of the orphans sitting or standing on the asylum’s steps.
Those who died and their ages are:
John Joseph Simon, 5.
Anna Sweeney, 2.
Christina Peffer, age unknown.
William Black, 6.
Josephine Degross, 1.
Lucia Lingnan, 2 months.
Gregory Sylvester Boland, 5.
Adelaide Blanchard, 2.
John Miller, 4 months.
Rose Jourdan (Native American), 12.
Charlotte Johnson (Native American), 7.
