Town takes over care of tiny cemeteries with long histories
Two tiny cemeteries in the Town of Saukville, Sizer on Highway O and Katharina on Highway 57, were placed in the care of new hands last month.
For decades, the cemeteries that both contain veterans, some dating to the Civil War, were maintained by the Ozaukee County Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5373. Member Ernie Hadler was tasked with mowing and cleaning the cemeteries for 25 years, but he passed away in 2022.
Now, the VFW doesn’t have members to care for the cemeteries.
“We were glad to do it, but unfortunately we can’t now,” Quartermaster Jim Schmidt said. “A lot of our members are getting older and don’t have the ability to maintain them.”
Last month, the Town Board agreed to pay a private contractor, which also cuts the lawn at Town Hall, $60 a mow for Sizer and $75 for Katharina.
According to state law, the responsibility of cemetery care ultimately falls to the town even when it doesn’t own the land.
Ozaukee County records indicate that Sizer Cemetery is on land owned by Julia E. Carlson and Katharina Cemetery is largely on land owned by Schuat Brothers, LLC.
Sizer Cemetery was started on land donated by Lemuel Steuben Sizer of Middlefield, N. Y., who settled in the Town of Saukville, then known as Sackville, in the fall of 1846, according to Ozaukee Press archives. Sizer sold parts of his 500-acre property to his seven children and donated a portion for a school in a neighborhood that became known as Sizer settlement.
Eventually, all the Sizers died or moved away from the settlement. The last to leave, Julius, moved to Port Washington in 1896.
Two soldiers who died in the Civil War, Robert and Franklin Ingersoll, are buried at Sizer, as well as Elizabeth Sears Sizer, whose husband fought in the Revolutionary War.
Thirty-nine people are known to be buried at the cemetery.
Katharina Cemetery contains about 45 grave sites, with the earliest burial dated 1855 and the last 1913. Eva Sander Laubenstein, who has the earliest birthdate, was born on Oct. 15, 1797.
The cemetery originally had a log cabin church, which no longer stands.
The VFW replaced the front of the fence around Sizer and shored the sides last year, and the post recently replaced the flag pole at Katharina.
The VFW will continue to maintain the flags at each cemetery.
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