Flashlight Lakeside Cemetery Tour!

Happy Friday Forest County Residents!
This Monday, October 27th the Crandon Public Library and Forest County Historical Society are hosting a “Flashlight Lakeside Cemetery Tour” at 6 pm at the Lakeside Cemetery in Crandon. The Crandon High School Drama Club will be enacting the stories of individuals laid to rest in Lakeside Cemetery next to the gravestones. So bring your flashlight and follow us through the graveyard while the actors bring to life the accounts of murder mysteries, victims of illness, and prominent historical figures.  For those of you that attended the cemetery tour this summer, this tour features all new stories brought to you in a new and exciting way! Please dress for the weather. The tour will be cancelled if there are thunderstorms.
Here is one of the stories from the previous cemetery tour this summer, just to give you a little taste of what to expect!
Hugh McGinnis Space 7 Lot 1 Block D
Hugh was born in Ireland in 1870. He spent his teenage years working as a grocer until he heard stories of the opportunities in the United States. He traveled to Chicago to work as a wrapper in a soap factory. Then he traveled to St. Louis to work as a hospital attendant. At the age of 20 year old he enlisted in the U. S. army and was sent to Missouri with the First Battalion of the seventh cavalry. He took part in the Battle of Wounded Knee against the Sioux Indians and was wounded in the arm and leg and spent a year in an army hospital. After he recovered he moved to Wisconsin to work in the lumber industry. He lived 55 years alone in a cottage outside of Crandon until his death in 1965.
Hugh remembered the famous battle this way ” Through the interpreter, Colonel Forsyth got down to the business at hand. But the Indians were very far from pleased when he requested them to surrender their arms. They argued that they needed their old fowling pieces to kill game in order to survive. This plea failed to move Colonel Forsyth, however and he insisted that the Sioux go back to their tents and return with their weapons. Forsyth then detailed a number of soldiers to search their tents and confiscate the Indians arsenal. The Sioux became agitated by the cries of their squaws, who attempted to prevent the soldiers from scattering their belongings. Fantastic as it sounds, the surrounding troops were firing wildly into this seething mass of humanity, subjecting us as well as the Indians to a deadly crossfire while the first volley from the Hotchkiss guns mowed down scores of women and children who had been watching the proceedings. Few escaped the merciless slaughter dealt out that dreadful day by members of the Seventh Calvary. There as no discrimination of age or sex, children as well as women with babes in their arms were brought down as far as two miles from the Wounded Knee Crossing”(Glasgow, McGinnis, 1965).