After 81 Years A Headstone at Potter’s Field.
​By David K. Williams 

​Through the early 1950s, Dunn County's Potter’s Field was the burial ground for people whose families were too poor to afford a regular cemetery burial, or for people who were residents at the County's Poor Farm or Asylum for the Chronic Insane. Records in those early years were spotty, and the all-too-temporary markers soon wasted away. Today only a few of those interred at Potter’s Field have their actual burial site marked with a stone marker.

But in October 2018, Andrew Karpenske, who had died and been buried at Potter’s Field in 1937, got a commemorative headstone, 81 years after his death. The how and why of this belated memorialization reflects local efforts to restore Potter’s Field, and Andrew Karpenske’s family's efforts to find his burial site and provide a suitable headstone.

For the past half-dozen years a small dedicated group of Dunn County residents has been working to pull Potter's Field from the obscurity it languished in for the past 70 years or more. The work of prowling local records, old newspapers, and some people's memories to determine who exactly is buried at Potter's Field fell to local historian Sofi Doane. Her persistent research unearthed over 100 names of former Dunn County residents whose final resting place is Potter’s Field.

Meanwhile, Dave Williams has worked to restore the cemetery to the cared-for status every such resting place deserves. Through regular mowings, brush cutting, and planting of perennials and shrubs, Potter's Field now looks like a respectable cemetery. He was assisted for severa! years by Paul Lark, and more recently Kenneth Dicks.

Together Doane and Williams developed a website for the cemetery — www.dunncopottersfield.com, which includes history of the cemetery, and carries a full listing of the known burials, including six military veterans. Through creation of a Friends of Potter's Field group, they raised funds to erect a commemorative sign at the edge of the Field with all known names of burials and a few years later, to establish a Veterans Memorial for those six veterans of the Civil War and World War I.

It was that website and the listing of names that provided the toehold for the research of Andrew Karpenske's descendants. Two of his great-granddaughters, Sheila Sparr of Amery, and Eris Hyrkas of Grand Rapids, MN, determined that their great-grandfather was buried in Potter's Reid. Hyrkas ordered the new headstone for Andrew Karpenske, and delivered it on October 20 for installation at Potter's Field.

Why did Andrew end up in Potter’s Field? He had lived and worked in the northwestern Dunn, southeastern Polk County area. He and his wife Pauline had 15 children. Andrew was working for Weyerhauser in the Menomonie area when he suffered a heart attack and died in 1937. His wife had no money to pay to ship him home for a burial, so he was interred at Potter's Field. The little information we do have about Andrew comes from his only surviving child, 97-year old Dorothy Seeley of Haslett, Ml. Other information came from one of Andrew's grandsons, Bob Karpenske of Amery.

While no one knows precisely where in Potter's Field Andrew Karpenske is buried—no records exist—his descendants are comforted knowing a headstone now commemorates that he is in the cemetery.

To access Potter's Field, visitors can use the new entrance which is described on the home page of this website.  With the new entrance, visitors may view the cemetery any day of the week. We ask only that you close the gates when leaving to keep deer out of the cemetery.