Sons of Jacob Cemetery

View of an unidentified burial mound with six moss-covered rocks detected

Photograph by Shirley LaFleur, courtesy of North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office

Quick Facts

Location:

67th St NE, Garske, North Dakota

Significance:

Religion, social history, agriculture, exploration/settlement

Designation:

Listed in the National Register – Reference number 100001035

MANAGED BY:

Sons of Jacob Cemetery

The Sons of Jacob Cemetery is the only permanent physical reminder of the Ramsey County Jewish farming community and the oldest Jewish homesteader cemetery in North Dakota. It contains tombstones that are clearly distinct including natural field stones with carved art, one of the most notable expressions of traditional Jewish art. This unique culture of stone carving reached a particularly high level of development in the Pale of Settlement where the tombstones were honored as sacred relics in cemeteries and was brought to America by the Eastern European Jews. The Garske Colony was the second settled Jewish rural area of the state with Jewish pioneers arriving in 1882. The first settlement began earlier in 1882 about two hundred miles to the southwest and was known as Painted Woods. Eventually 108 Jewish men and women would file homestead claims in Ramsey County. The property has significance from 1888, the estimated date of the first burial of a Jewish homesteader’s child, through 1935, the year of the last homesteader's burial in the cemetery.