A tale of two Minnesota graves that go way, way back

Stephen Taylor and Mary Armistead Bradford were a couple old-timers who moved to Minnesota late in life to be close to their children. They died here and were buried in graves about 150 miles apart, Taylor in Winona and Bradford in Big Lake.

Their burial sites not only bridge a decades-long gap between American clashes with the British and the dawn of Minnesota state history, they provide surprising local links to two pivotal attacks — one on Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York during the Revolutionary War and the other on Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812.

Taylor is believed to be the only Revolutionary War-era soldier buried in Minnesota, while Bradford was the daughter of Lt. Col. George Armistead, who ordered the original "Star-Spangled Banner" to fly over Fort McHenry — later immortalized in the lyrics of what became the national anthem.

"It is an odd chain of events whereby the War of 1812 would have such a Minnesota connection," Curt Bradford, 80, a lawyer in Hutchinson and Armistead's great-great grandson, wrote me last winter. He later said: "Whenever I hear 65,000 people singing the national anthem before a Vikings game, I think: 'If they only knew.'"

Taylor's grave came to my attention via Steve Steuck of St. Louis Park, who was biking beneath the bluffs of Winona when he came across it near the entrance to Woodlawn Cemetery. Taylor's grave sits within a 9-by-10-foot cement replica of Fort Ticonderoga, which prompted Steuck to ask: "Why such an odd grave marker?"

When Taylor died on his son's farm in Winona County in 1857, he was buried near Burns Valley Creek, according to Kenneth Carley's 1975 article in Minnesota History .

After that prairie cemetery closed in 1865, Taylor's remains were moved to Woodlawn. Cemetery superintendent Matthew Marvin paid for a headstone in 1880 that claimed Taylor "was one of the heroes of Ticonderoga," the British-controlled fort that was taken in a sneak attack by 83 colonial soldiers from Vermont known as the Green Mountain Boys — the first American offensive triumph in the revolution.

Taylor's grave got a bronze marker in 1902, saying he was a New York militiaman. In 1933, the Daughters of the American Revolution pushed for the elaborate fort replica monument, saying Taylor was among Ethan Allen's "immortal band" at Ticonderoga.

But historians have since raised questions about Taylor's role in the war. Records show that he served in Washington's Continental Army from 1781 to 1783, suffering a "rifle ball" injury that would later leave him "subject to fits."

But according to Carley, "it is by no means certain that Taylor fought at Ticonderoga." His gravestone says Taylor was born in 1757, 100 years before he died — making him about 18 when the fort was attacked. But no record of him fighting there exists, and pension records show him born in 1766 — making it more likely he was a 9-year-old boy during Ticonderoga, rather than a Green Mountain Boy.

"It's possible that Taylor may have been exaggerating in the fashion of old men," according to a 1975 Minneapolis Tribune article.

Then there's the granite tombstone in Big Lake Cemetery, about 45 miles northwest of Minneapolis, that marks where Bradford was buried in 1884 — 70 years after her father's famous standoff with the British in Baltimore. The grave connects Minnesota to perhaps the most famous flag in U.S. history.

Armistead was bracing for an assault on Fort McHenry in September 1814 after the British captured Washington, D.C., and wanted a massive flag to give the invaders pause. He enlisted for the job one of the city's best flagmakers, Mary Pickersgill, who with her daughter stitched stars and stripes to a 30-by-42-foot sheet of wool on a brewery floor. After a day-long bombardment failed to dislodge the Americans, the British sailed away down the Chesapeake River just as the huge flag was raised over Fort McHenry.

Armistead kept the flag until he died in 1818 at 38; his funeral attracted thousands, and an imposing statute of him was erected at Fort McHenry. His widow, Louisa, passed the old flag down to descendants until the family donated it in 1912 to the Smithsonian Institution, where it hung for years. Tattered and patched, the flag underwent a $7 million restoration in 2008 and was returned for display at the National Museum of American History in Washington.

Mary Armistead Bradford was born in 1812 just as the second war of independence began. Curt Bradford, her great-grandson, said she spent her last 10 years or so in Minnesota, where her only son John had moved to raise horses.

"It makes one proud to have a connection all the way back to the flag in the 'Star-Spangled Banner,' " Curt Bradford said. "And to have that connection buried in Big Lake, of all places."

Curt Brown's tales about Minnesota's history appear each Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com. His latest book looks at 1918 Minnesota, when flu, war and fires converged: strib.mn/MN1918.