The newest addition to Arcadia Publishing’s popular Images of America series is Detroit’s Holy Cross Cemetery from local author Elaine Walters Raymo. The book boasts more than 200 vintage images that tell the story of the cemetery’s historic past.
In the early hours before dawn on October 6, 1907, a raging fire illuminated the sky as the historic chapel that stood on the cemetery grounds for over half a century reduced to a pile of cinders and ash. Lit by sparks from a nearby barn ablaze from an act of arson, the fire destroyed priceless paintings, relics, statues and artifacts that held sacrament to the area's earliest settlers. So ended the era of the cemetery's obscure past and launched a new era for the little mission-turned-
Detroit's Holy Cross Cemetery is a collage of persons whose immigrant dreams landed them in an area budding with industry. The cemetery's evolution reflects the waves of immigration, from the early French to the Irish, Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Hispanics. From its 1838 2-acre roots to its current 65-acre span, Holy Cross Cemetery filled the need for a Catholic cemetery on Detroit's west side.
Highlights of Detroit’s Holy Cross Cemetery:
• Many of the images came from archives and family collections of the early settlers, and the men responsible for the cemetery’s incorporation in 1906.
• A treasure trove of documents and ephemera from the incorporation years are included in the book.
• Several of the images depict the merging ethnic groups who settled, worked and worshiped in the community, and what they brought to the neighborhoods of southwest Detroit.
Available at area bookstores, independent retailers, and online retailers, or through Arcadia Publishing at www.arcadiapublishing.com or
(888)-313-2665.
Arcadia Publishing is the leading publisher of local and regional history in the United States. Our mission is to make history accessible and meaningful through the publication of books on the heritage of America’s people and places. Have we done a book on your town? Visit www.arcadiapublishing.com.
