Description of Historic Place

The Fredensthal Lutheran Cemeteries are two rural burial grounds northeast of Emerson. One, the Fredensthal Lutheran Cemetery, is an 8,000-square-metre site alongside a gravel road near the settlement of Fredensthal. The other, the Overstone Lutheran Cemetery, is approximately 14 kilometres east on a site surrounded by cultivated fields and mature evergreen trees. The municipal designation applies to both parcels of land.

Heritage Value

The Fredensthal Lutheran Cemeteries, two well-ordered rural sites, mark the final resting place for many of the German-Russian pioneers who settled in the Rural Municipality of Franklin in the late 1800s. Still in use today, these cemeteries provide descendants with a tangible link to the sacrifices and hardships endured by their ancestors. The sites are also notable for their connection to the same church, Fredensthal Zion Evangelical Lutheran, as a result of congregational amalgamation after Overstone Lutheran closed in the 1960s. As such, the cemeteries, united through the merger of small nearby congregations in a sparsely populated area of southeastern Manitoba, reflect both the challenge and the strength of local faith.

Source: Rural Municipality of Franklin By-law No. 07-02, December 10, 2002

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the site character of the Fredensthal Lutheran Cemetery include:
- the rural agricultural location next to a municipal gravel road on land donated by Michael Jahnke near the community of Fredensthal and the Fredensthal Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church
- the relatively flat, well-treed site and the orderly arrangement of gravesites within
- the wrought-iron and concrete gateway, with the cemetery name, a Latin cross and decorative detail

Key elements that define the site character of the Overstone Lutheran Cemetery include:
- the isolated rural agricultural location near the former site of the Overstone Lutheran Church, with a mature shelter belt of evergreen trees and mature trees within
- the generally flat topography and the orderly arrangement of gravesites within

Key elements that define the heritage character and memorial function of both cemeteries include:
- the burials, including their orientations
- the variety of headstones with engravings
- the public access and continuing use
- at the Fredensthal Lutheran Cemetery the Lutheran Pioneer Memorial, a large angular granite monument on a fieldstone base commemorating the local pioneer experience