News of Glen Arbor Township Cemetery project brings Trumbull descendant to tears

Trumbull headstone photo by Grace Dickinson

By Linda Alice Dewey

Sun contributor

Dede DeWitt deManigold of Traverse City wasn’t expecting the call yesterday. Even so, when asked whether she had an ancestor buried at the former Glen Arbor Township Cemetery, her response was immediate.  

“Not an ancestor,” she replied. “Ancestors.” 

Until now, the still-forming Glen Arbor Cemetery group (there’s no official title) has been unable to find local family members aside from the Carl Oleson family, which has two (and most likely a third) ancestors buried there, about which the family knows very little. 

DeManigold, on the other hand, is a descendant of the Trumbull family, at least four of whom—three generations–are buried inside the wire fence in the center of the graveyard. Only 13 graves are marked in the cemetery, although at least 40 bodies are buried on the site, their wooden markers long since decayed, a fact that, a year ago, no living person knew, though some surmised. 

A Glen Lake Laker herself, Dede indicates she has pictures, documents and more than a few stories to share. Her third great-grandfather, Civil War veteran Edmund Trumbull, fought under General Sherman on his march across Georgia to the Atlantic and is one of four Civil War veterans buried there. 

Dede’s family lived at the Trumbull Farm up on Trumbull Road. She tells of her grandmother, who went to school in Glen Arbor, tobogganing down the hill to Dunn’s Farm Road, then walking to Glen Arbor, socks on her hands, each of which was wrapped around a warm potato she would eat for lunch.   

Until the storm of August 2, 2015, desecrated the cemetery woods, deManigold and her family cared for the plot. Sometimes, the boy scouts would help out. After the storm, she couldn’t get in to Glen Arbor for two weeks. When she and her family finally did, they climbed through tangled roots and over trees to get to the cemetery. 

What they saw was shocking. Although miraculously, none of the markers had been damaged, trees were down in tangles everywhere, and the graves were inaccessible. She and her family members did what they could and had to leave it.

Afterward, she inquired at the county, asking, “Who can clear this stuff out?” She learned that, because the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore owned the land, she would have to go through it. Not knowing where to start or who to talk to, and having a regular job, she gave up, feeling the project was too big for her. 

That’s where she left it. But over the past year, a small group of local historians have been working with community leaders, the National Lakeshore, and Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear to restore the little wooded cemetery deep in the woods between Forest Haven Road and M-22. Even before the storm of 2015, it was barely accessible. When a tree fell across the path in, it was cleared away. Few realized it had actually been a township cemetery. 

Then, in late November 2019, under the supervision of the National Lakeshore, Parshall Tree Care Experts took the first big physical step and cleared much of the downed wood and created a new entry way off the fire break on Forest Haven Road. 

So yesterday morning, this Trumbull descendant was informed that the cemetery had already been partially cleared of downed trees, with more intended for the future. Researchers, she was told, were looking into the lives of the family members. Even the 8th graders at Glen Lake School had been involved. The line went silent. Overcome with emotion, she was unable to speak.

Dede DeWitt deManifold will soon be escorted through the new cemetery entrance Parshall cleared last fall.