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The Sunday Times
Sunday, 4 June, 1893

         STRUCK A CEMETERY
         
         FOUR COFFINS UNEARTHED ON TWELFTH STREET.
         
         Bay City's Burying Ground in the Thirties -
          The Cholera Victims of 1854.
          
         The men engaged in digging a trench for the 6-inch
       tile sewer for Twelfth street pavement, yesterday un-
       earthed four coffins at the end of Saginaw street. 
       JAMES BLIGH, the foreman on the job, said the coffins
       lay parallel with the north gutter line of Twelfth
       street, about three feet and six inches below the
       surface. The coffins were those of full grown persons
       and were either unpainted or of a light color. The
       wood appeared to be in a good state of perservation.
       The men thought at first they had merely come upon
       some planks, but discovered that they were coffins
       by their tapering form. The coffins were not dis-
       turbed, as they are down low enough to allow of the
       sewer being laid. The solution of the mystery is that
       Twelfth street before it was opened marked the divid-
       ing line between the two first cemeteries in Bay City,
       the Catholics using the south side. The burying ground
       extended east and west over the ground now lying be-
       tween Washington avenue and Saginaw street.
       
         THE SUNDAY TIMES interviewed W. R. McCORMICK, a
       pioneer citizen, and learned that the cemetery was in
       use in the '30's. The first grown person buried there
       was a man named BENNETT, in 1836. MR. McCORMICK'S 
       father, JAMES McCORMICK, was buried there in 1846, 
       as were also his mother and a sister, at a later
       date. Their remains were transferred in 1862 to
       Pine Ridge cemetery.
       
         Most of the burials in the old cemetery took place
       during the cholera period of 1854, and in the opinion
       of MR. McCORMICK, judging from the description of the
       coffins found yesterday, they were those of cholera
       victims.
       
         A crew of 16 men is at work, and the excavating
       for sewer purposes has proceeded on the south side
       of 12th street as far as Bowery and on the north
       side as far as Saginaw street.
       
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