This photo shows the St. Andrew’s Cemetery in McIntosh County, North Dakota, marked by an ornate arched metal entrance with a cross at the top. The sign reads “St. Andrews Cemetery Lutheran.” Beyond the gate, rows of headstones are scattered across a well-kept grassy field, with a few trees and open farmland stretching into the distance under a cloudy sky. The simple, rural setting conveys a peaceful resting place on the prairie.

Take a journey through pioneer time on our cemetery Talking Trail...

The names on these cemetery markers read like the roster of the founding members of the Glückstal Colonies of Glückstal, Neudorf, Bergdorf, and Kassel, formed more than 200 years ago in South Russia by Germans invited by the Russian Czar to settle the uncultivated Steppe of what is now Ukraine and Moldova.

McIntosh County, Dakota Territory, opened for homestead in 1884 and this area of the county was settled by descendants of those colonies.

The earliest markers in this cemetery date back to 1894 and belong to a 49-yr-old emigrant wife and mother, and to three small children from three different emigrant families. They were the casualties of the raw, unrelenting prairie with its extreme heat and ice cold, isolation and illnesses that even the respected Brauchere, gifted healers trained in South Russia, found beyond the realm of their healing ability.

You will notice that the earliest markers are placed in the order of death beginning in the Southeast corner, just as they did in South Russia. No special plots for couples until the 1960’s. The children’s section is separate from the adult section, to the left, also facing west.

A smallpox epidemic in the winter of 1898-1899 claimed many on the prairie including three children in one family in three short weeks. The family didn’t know what hit them – their family suddenly cut in half. The influenza epidemic of 1918 brought many more new graves and the diphtheria epidemic of 1923 cut to the core, claiming not just children but parents, as well. Farm accidents, death in childbirth also claimed victims in this community.

You will notice in the middle of all those markers with German surnames, there is a marker for a lone Norwegian emigrant by the name of Frank Olson, husband of Karolina Heine. The two married in Yankton, Dakota Territory, and migrated to a homestead along Beaver Creek just a few miles west of here. Not long after, Frank left Karolina a widow, and was buried on the homestead, later joined there by his father-in-law, Johann, in 1900. In 1910 both graves were exhumed when a county road was platted in the path of their resting places. The remains were moved to this cemetery.

The tall white church on the property, served as a “Beacon on the Prairie”. When a church member died, the pastor climbed the narrow steps and tolled the church bell the number of years the deceased lived on earth, a practice that came with them from South Russia and continues today.

Funerals were taken seriously and attended by all in the community. Children were not sheltered from death. The procession from the sanctuary to the cemetery was a somber one, sometimes with flower girls leading the pallbearers to the grave site. A lone voice began a mournful graveside hymn. “Wo Findet die Seele die Heimat, die Ruh” (Where Does the Soul Find its Home, its Rest?) or “So Nimm Den Meine Hande” (Lord, Take My Hand and Lead Me), or “Las Mich Gehen” (Let Me Go) were common choices for adults, “Müde bin Ich, geh zur Ruh” (Weary am I, to rest I go) was a lullaby often sung at the grave of a child. Sometimes tombstones DO talk - because many of these Germans from Russia traditions continue today.