Unravelling the mystery of a lost Minnesota cemetery and a forgotten baby's grave

Lost cemetery — Though they are hard to see, to the left and right of this one headstone are dips in the ground approximately the size of a coffin, indicating this stone found in the woods in spring of 2024 is not marking the only grave there. Tyler McAllister stands near the graves.

By Travis G. Grimler

June 10, 2024 at 6:31 AM

BACKUS, Minn. 鈥� When you go to a cemetery, you likely expect all the graves to be located inside the graveyard.

What you might not expect is to find signs of burials in the nearby woods, but that's what some individuals recently found near the cemetery behind Mildred Bible Chapel between Backus and Pine River in Minnesota.

It started with a school lineage project. The story of some mysterious graves came to light when Foothills Christian Academy Principal and Pine Mountain Gospel Pastor Blair Ecker's son, Aero, was interviewing Ecker's great-aunt, Donna Eveland.

"In the course of the interview, she had mentioned the 'old Mildred Cemetery' and how her father had talked about the old headstones when she was younger," Ecker said. "When we left her place, we had a couple hours of daylight left and decided to go look and see what might still be remaining out there."

They searched the woods to the north of the modern cemetery and eventually found something obscured in the snow. Worked stone, one with only "R. B." on it; another, lying down next to a short, flat base, read "Raymond Benjamin, 1905-1905."

"It was tipped over, and the area was grown over, but we felt like Indiana Jones having found anything," Ecker said.

It was clearly a grave, but it wasn't in great shape. The base upon which the headstone would normally rest was cracked down the middle and delaminated, possibly due to a root underneath.

The headstone itself was dirty and needed to be secured to the base once more.

The stones needed restoration, and Ecker knew exactly who to call.

It was tipped over, and the area was grown over, but we felt like Indiana Jones having found anything.

Blair Ecker

"I've been doing preservation for a few years now and just moved back to the area," said Tyler McAllister. "Pastor Blair Ecker knows my family and he knew I did this kind of stuff, so I got a text from him saying he found an old stone in the woods by the cemetery."

McAllister, of Raven's Trowel Preservation, is a trained professional in cleaning and repairing memorials. When he heard about the grave, he realized there was a mystery to unravel.

He and Ecker met at the cemetery. Ecker was searching for more clues using a metal detector. At first he found a tin train car full of fake flowers, likely a decoration for the grave. He also found metal markers in the ground, likely marking the cemetery boundary.

More mysteries from The Vault

While only one marker was found, McAllister immediately recognized signs of more graves.

"If you go to a pioneer cemetery or historic cemetery, they didn't do vaults," McAllister said. "You'll see depressions in the ground where graves used to be and they've collapsed."

Parallel to baby Benjamin's grave, on either side, are at least three depressions, approximately six feet long and several wide, likely indicating adult graves.

The grave of Raymond Benjamin, who was born and died in 1905, is the only obvious clue that a cemetery exists in the woods between Pine River and Backus. Tyler McAllister helped to repair the base and re-set the stone after it was found in the spring of 2024.

McAllister and his brother returned to the site later with probes to feel around near the tops of the graves to find potentially buried markers. None were found, suggesting the graves may have been marked with wooden markers that have since decomposed.

As would be expected of any graves from 1905 or earlier, not much is known about the history of the Benjamin grave or the unmarked graves nearby.

McAllister asked around for more information. His father and some other locals told him stories about looking into the woods and seeing stones, though they didn't say anything about the history of the burials there.

McAllister said genealogical search records unveiled just a bit of information on Benjamin.

"Records online are very scarce," McAllister said. "Personally, I think this was part of a family cemetery that later became the modern cemetery. I think Raymond Benjamin is still here because his life was so brief. When you look up his records, they mention his parents: Freddie Benjamin and Ida J. Pattson, but neither of his parents' records mentioned him."

McAllister said Benjamin's mother may have been buried in Pine Ridge Cemetery, though she had changed her name by then, possibly because of Freddie's death. He was able to find records for a Pine River Ida J. Pattson-Peterson and Ida J. Hannah.

"It's either a lot of Ida J.'s in the area or just poor documentation," McAllister said.

McAllister hopes more information about these graves can be uncovered by those who grew up seeing them in the woods.

"There's got to be some older folks around here that know something," McAllister said. "At least something about the family."

It's a stretch, but it is even possible that someone alive today had visited this grave at some point, as evidenced by the plastic flowers found inside the tin train car.

According to Designerplants.com, before the 1920s or 1930s, artificial flowers were made of silk. After that, celluloid flowers became a popular artificial decoration.

Finally, modern plastic flowers were invented, meaning someone visited the grave sometime around the mid 1900s or later.

For now, the long forgotten cemetery remains a mystery.