Historic Marker Recognizes Pioneer Cemetery—and the Stories That Shaped a Nation

Growing up, Chelsea resident Ann Sweet spent hours in the Rice Cemetery in Milan Township with her grandmother Nellie. They visited ancestors’ graves, planted flowers, cleaned up after funerals and picked wild asparagus. From when she was six or seven her grandmother told her stories of times past.

Sweet remembers those tales when she walks the cemetery once owned by her ancestors. She hopes the new Michigan Historical Marker she helped to become a reality encourages others to learn more about the lives of those who lay there. 

The marker was dedicated on Saturday May 17, on Grandma Nellie’s 131^st birthday. In addition to the pioneer cemetery, it honors the resting place of more than thirty veterans of the American Civil War and several veterans of the War of 1812.

One of the veterans buried there, Sergeant Daniel McFall, received a Congressional Medal of Honor in 1896. He was honored for capturing the commanding officer of the Confederate brigade and rescuing a lieutenant during the 1864 Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. Part of the 17^th Michigan Infantry Regiment, which was organized in Detroit, he saw many men killed in battle and die from disease. After the war, McFall operated a farm in Milan, until his death in 1919.

Michigan Historical Commission president Brian James Egen said at the event that the new marker is one of more than 1,800 state historical markers that together tell Michigan’s history. 

Post 268 Commander Angie Jaworski read a tribute from the American Legion. Then members of Milan Township Board pulled the covering off the sign on the edge of the cemetery, near Dennison Road, followed by an honor guard presentation, Rifle Valley Salute, and Taps played by Joe Fenner from the Dundee American Legion Post. 

The Rice family

Sweet is the great-great granddaughter of Josephus Rice, the founder of the cemetery. Sweet once lived in the farmhouse next door to the cemetery along with her two siblings, Milan resident Mark Sweet and Clinton resident Kris VonBroda. 

She worked with Cemetery Sexton Andrew Nolan and Milan Township Supervisor Mark Bogi to get the historic marker put in place.

Both of her siblings were also at the event, along with four generations of their family. The Rice family’s descendants have lived at what became Rice Corners for seven-generations.

Sweet said her Grandma Nellie Miller Sweet linked the family to their past. They grew up hearing Nellie tell stories of her own grandparents Josephus and Mary Goss Rice who created the cemetery in the 1850s. Josephus’ father traveled from New York to Michigan to purchase him the 240 acres he farmed for $300.

Grandma Nellie left Milan for a time to live in Ann Arbor and other communities, but returned to the farmhouse next door to the cemetery to care for her ailing father. Her husband worked at the Ideal Foundry in Milan and farmed.  Nellie sold antiques, wrote articles about her many hobbies for publication, kept many journals and was an avid genealogist. Nellie and her cousin, Flora Osborn, gifted their descendants with 600 years worth of family history.

The Rice cemetery, at 12800 Dennison Rd, has since been sold to the township, which maintains it and sells plots in the new section of the cemetery. Next door to the cemetery, Mark Sweet still lives in the farmhouse he and his sisters grew up in. His family farmed grain and had some animals growing up, he said, though today much of the land has been sold.

Mark Sweet said he enjoyed the ceremony where his family history was honored.

“Very nice, very nice,” he said, after posing for a photo with four generations of his family and the monument.

For Ann Sweet, learning history brings to life the people who came before.

“From reading antique family letters, one can appreciate how hard … the farmers worked, how much they appreciated each other, how generous they could be, even with having very little, and their sense of humor still resonates in our time,” Ann Sweet told The Sun Times News.