POLKTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Eldon Kramer was writing a book on his family’s history when he discovered his great-grandfather’s resting place was an overgrown, neglected cemetery at an Ottawa County farm dedicated to the destitute.
“When I saw the deterioration, I hoped that, one day, it could be restored, because (the poor farm residents) are just forgotten,” said Kramer, a native of Holland, Mich., who now lives in Boerne, Texas.
What once was known as Community Haven, a “poor farm” established in Ottawa County’s Polkton Township in 1866 mostly for suffering Civil War veterans, was in operation into the 1990s. It is now the 229-acre Eastmanville Farm Park, but the Friends of Ottawa County Parks wants to make improvements to mark the cemetery where residents were buried before 1929.
Read the full article in the October 3, 2009 edition of the Chicago Tribune.
