Beekman "cemetery" - Southfield Michigan - Abandoned Cemeteries on Waymarking.com

From the geocache page:
On 13 October 1830, Samuel D. Beekman, from New York City, purchased land in Section 12 of Southfield Township. Later, he set off 100 square feet for a burying ground in which his family members, and others, were buried. Later, Mr. Fons bought the land, eventually opened Southfield Downs Trailer Park, and the gravestones gradually disappeared. In 1963, two boys found the broken tombstone of Samuel Beekman "in a thicket south of the trailer park."



From the December 19th, 2005 Detroit Free Press

Clark Risley, 61, of Royal Oak walks away from the grave of Samuel Beekman in the Beekman Cemetery in Southfield on Friday. Risley wants to install a monument for a relative who's a War of 1812 veteran and buried in the cemetery. The biggest problem for Southfield's pioneer Beekman Cemetery is not its long history of abuse -- from the gravel pit operator who ran dump trucks over graves in the 1930s to the trailer park residents of later decades who stole headstones and used them as doorsteps. It's biggest problem is that few know it's a cemetery. Bob Murray, supervisor of parks for Southfield, said he's seen city workers mow the grass and he's seen the lone tombstone there. But he didn't know there was a cemetery wedged between Bedford Woods Park, a Farmer Jack store and a vacant trailer park near 12 1/2 Mile and Southfield Road. The 0.2-acre graveyard with its three majestic pines is a good 10 feet above the surrounding terrain, but there is nothing to signify that it is a cemetery -- except for that one tombstone, which vandals knocked over decades ago. Now the descendant of a man who's buried in an unmarked grave in the cemetery wants to raise the graveyard's profile. Clark Risley, 61, of Royal Oak plans to install a marker for his great-great-great-grandfather. The only monument left commemorates Samuel D. Beekman, Sept. 9, 1795 - Jan. 30, 1868. In 1830, Beekman bought 160 acres including the cemetery. He became Southfield Township's first clerk in 1831. Because all the other markers -- maybe as many as 40 -- are gone, Risley doesn't know his ancestor's grave site. The other gravestones were apparently plundered by trailer park residents. "It is believed the tombstones were used as steps and blocks for some of the trailers," according to a write-up in a directory to Southfield cemeteries the Oakland County Genealogical Society published in 1989. The Southfield News published photos of Beekman's headstone lying on its back in 1963. In 1984, Southfield officials, assuming that the marker signified there was only one body in the cemetery, tried to move Beekman's remains so the city could add the graveyard to nearby Bedford Woods Park. But a descendant of Samuel Beekman, Beatrice McCrumb, went noisily to court and forced the city to back off. Five years ago, McCrumb was back in the cemetery looking for gravestones. A former trailer resident who admitted digging up and re-burying gravestones in different spots had fed her hope of finding stones to prove there were more graves. According to records in the Oakland County Register of Deeds Office, in 1901, McCrumb's relative, George Beekman, paid a dollar for a deed that gave him and his heirs title to the cemetery as long as there are bodies buried there. For Beekman descendants to own the graveyard, it must have bodies. Although McCrumb didn't find buried tombstones in December 2000, Risley has proof that Samuel Beekman's is not the only body in the graveyard. In the Birmingham Eccentric of June 2, 1911, he found a notice that "after several weeks of intense suffering," Francis (Frank) Beekman "passed out Monday forenoon at 11 o'clock. Burial in the Beekman Cemetery on the old farm." Francis Beekman's burial was probably the last one at the cemetery. That makes two bodies. There's at least one more. Risley found an obituary for his great-great-great-grandfather, Michael Blumberg, who was a soldier in the War of 1812. Blumberg died Dec. 20, 1882, according to the Eccentric: "Remains interred in the family cemetery on the Beekman farm in Southfield. "Risley plans to ask the Veterans Administration to make a bronze marker for Michael Blumberg. Murray said he thinks something more permanent and informative would be better -- like a metal plaque to explain the troubled history of the burying ground. On Friday, Risley brushed snow off the inscription of Samuel Beekman's monument. Yellow paint from graffiti stains the stone. "Logically, the first thing to do is re-mount it," said Risley. Meanwhile, condominiums are being built where the trailer park stood. In the spring, Risley will hunt for gravestones among the old trailers. Murray's curiosity has been piqued, too. He plans to use a metal probe to poke through the cemetery for headstones and caskets. Charles Martinez, a West Bloomfield archaeologist at the Oakland County Pioneer and Historical Museum in Pontiac, said he doubts Murray will find anything. Nineteenth-century burials used wooden coffins and bodies weren't embalmed. "There is not going to be much left," Martinez said.

Earliest Burial: 01/30/1868 Latest Burial: 01/30/1868

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