"Old Holy Cross Cemetery is a classic cemetery with tall headstones and family monuments. Many old Santa Cruz families are buried in this ground. This cemetery is the burial site for the Santa Cruz mission, and some interments date from 1791"--Introduction.

"Old Holy Cross Cemetery is a classic cemetery with tall headstones and family monuments. Many old Santa Cruz families are buried in this ground. This cemetery is the burial site for the Santa Cruz mission, and some interments date from 1791"--Introduction.

"Old Holy Cross Cemetery is a classic cemetery with tall headstones and family monuments. Many old Santa Cruz families are buried in this ground. This cemetery is the burial site for the Santa Cruz mission, and some interments date from 1791 ..." --Introd.

In the early hours before dawn on October 6, 1907, a raging fire illuminated the sky as the historic chapel that stood on the cemetery grounds for over half a century reduced to a pile of cinders and ash. Lit by sparks from a nearby barn ablaze from an act of arson, the fire destroyed priceless paintings, relics, statues, and artifacts that held sacrament to the area's earliest settlers. So ended the era of the cemetery's obscure past and launched a new era for the little mission?turned?graveyard nestled southwest of Detroit. Detroit's Holy Cross Cemetery is a collage of persons whose immigrant dreams landed them in an area budding with industry. The cemetery's evolution reflects the waves of immigration, from the early French to the Irish, Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and Hispanics. From its 1838 2-acre roots to its current 65-acre span, Holy Cross Cemetery filled the need for a Catholic cemetery on Detroit's west side.