Carson Mennonite Brethren Church Cemetery

The Carson Mennonite Brethren Cemetery, surveyed and platted in June 1900, has 185 recorded burials as of 2017. Some graves have been relocated from other sites.

One half-acre of land for the cemetery of the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church (initially known as the Bingham Lake Mennonite Brethren Church) was originally donated by Heinrich Ewert of Carson Township. It was platted in June 1900, and the plat was certified by a surveyor, endorsed, and filed with the Register of Deeds in Cottonwood County on December 8, 1900. The cost of surveying the cemetery was $5.00; registration of its deed was $.90. The south section of the cemetery, added in 1958, was donated by David H. Ewert, son of Heinrich, who lived on the property after his father’s passing.

Oak trees surrounding the cemetery and adjacent churchyard create an atmosphere of quiet reflection and tranquility for the final resting place of loved ones. Many grave markers are etched with scriptural and spiritual expressions of faith.

John K. Dick, the first cemetery sexton, took responsibility for upkeep of the burial plots and grounds in the early twentieth century. David H. Ewert served as caretaker of the cemetery from 1920–1944.

At a business meeting on December 28, 1944, trustees agreed to send letters to loved ones of those buried in the cemetery and request donations for cemetery maintenance. Until at least 1950, burial plots were furnished without charge to church members and their families.

Although the cemetery’s first recorded burial was of Susan Eytzen in April 1908, Anna Funk Wiens, who died in 1904, is also buried there. There may have been initial burials before 1908 that cannot be confirmed. Some burials listed with a date before this may have been moved from initial burial sites when Carson Cemetery became available.

Beginning in the 1920s, David H. Ewert kept records of burials as caretaker of the cemetery. Families unable to afford permanent grave markers used wooden ones instead. As markers deteriorated, Norman Ewert, David’s grandson, preserved his grandfather’s notes by welding the vital information onto disk blades. Completed disk blades, serving as temporary markers, marked grave sites until permanent markers replaced them.

After the Mennonite Brethren Church Cemetery, south of Mountain Lake, was abandoned to widen County Road #1, thirteen bodies were moved to the Carson Cemetery and reburied in about 1947. By 1990, 154 burials were recorded at the Carson Cemetery; by 2013, the number had risen to 180.

Upon closure of the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church in 2005, the cemetery was deeded to Community Bible Church of Mt. Lake, Minnesota—also a Mennonite Brethren church; Wes Kroeker became sexton. He designed a memorial marker and had it erected at the entrance of the cemetery in 2013. A dedication of the memorial took place on September 15, 2013. Kroeker presented a brief history of the cemetery, and former pastors John Klassen and Herb Schroeder led a devotional and dedicatory prayer.

As of 2017, 185 bodies are interred in Carson Cemetery.