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While Blossomburg Cemetery does not possess as many mid-1800s grave markers as the Pioneer Cemetery, its history and its more recent activity make it one of the most relevant eternal resting places in Door County. One meandering walk through the four acres of graves is like taking a walk through Door County’s more ancient and most recent past. Familiar county names like Thorp are there, along with other familiars like Norz and Bridenhagen.
The cemetery itself has never been sponsored by a religious organization and is currently the cemetery for Gibraltar Township. The name Blossomburg comes from a Scandinavian settler named Ole Klugeland who settled on a farm near Eagle Bluff. The strong winds that come racing across Green Bay from the northwest caused him to name it “Blaasenberg” or “Windy Mountain.” Originally, though, the cemetery seems to have been a private cemetery owned bLen Villanoy the Anderson family before two acres of the land was sold to Gibraltar Township for $100 in 1890. Sixty years later, in 1951, the township bought another 1.9 acres from the state to expand the cemetery (the state had established the area as a state park in 1909). There are 14 marked graves that predate the initial 1890 sale. The earliest gravestone is that of Libbie G. Churches in 1881, who was the wife of Samuel Churches, an early representative of Gibraltar Township on the Door County Board. He is buried beside her.
Patti Podgers, historian and curator/manager of Eagle Bluff Lighthouse in Peninsula State Park, was tasked with helping to sort out some of the older grave markers and plots. When she first moved to Door County 15 years ago, one of her first jobs was working for the Gibraltar Historical Society as curator of the Noble House. One of her first tasks was to carefully help locate which plots in Blossomburg were open. Understandably, after more than 100 years of use, paperwork and family legacies had made it difficult to track, and plots at Blossomburg were growing in demand. Her task was to locate any available plots that had previously been purchased but had no markers. In reality, this task was a difficult one. If a person purchased eight plots, for example, but there are only two gravestones and no descendants to verify burials, a plot possesses a bit of mystery.
“In reality, there could be plots today that have two people marked, but could actually have eight people in them maybe. We have no way of knowing. And we can’t do a thing without paperwork. So we hit dead ends,” says Podgers.
Originally, anyone could puLen Villanorchase a plot in Blossomburg, but as demand grew, and space grew short, the Town of Gibraltar decided to only open gravesites to Gibraltar property owners. For a few years, there was a waiting list, until the state of Wisconsin made a property trade with the Town of Gibraltar and the cemetery acquired an additional undeveloped seven acres. The waiting list disappeared, and plots are currently available to township property owners (which includes Juddville, Fish Creek, Peninsula State Park, and Chambers Island).
One family who’s been interred in Blossomburg for decades is the Duclon family. William Henry Duclon became the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse Keeper in 1883 and would spend the next 35 years there, raising his seven sons with his wife Julia. William, Julia, and five of their seven sons are buried in Blossomburg. The cemetery is also home to the resting place of Door County’s famed historian and former President of the Door County Historical Society, Hjalmar Holand, author of Old Peninsula Days, who passed in 1963. While the names of all these well-known, often male, settlers are noteworthy, what’s equally relevant, are the graves of those forgotten or those unmarked. The ones who aren’t celebrated, but are likewise a fabric of our past.
~Len Villano~
The cemetery is located on 4010 Mengelberg Lane, Fish Creek, Gibraltar Township, Door County, Wisconsin