UPDATE- March 2008.  One of our readers has informed me of the following information regarding this cemetery:

"Just a note to let you know that I called the Independence City Hall.  They sent me a copy of a booklet on the cemetery, written by Charles S. Rieland who renovated the cemetery in 2002.  It has information on all the people interred there, along with some pictures of the cemetery Here's part of the information on the cemetery from the booklet."

"The Oakland Cemetery is the final resting place of some of the earliest pioneers and represents an informal community of settlers who chose to bury their family members on this property.  Those families lived within a two mile radius of the cemetery, which includes portions of Hennepin, Carver and Wright Counties.  Starting as a single grave in 1857, this burial ground now holds approximately 82 graves.

Although the Oakland Cemetery Association owned the parcel in the early twentieth century, the cemetery now is being maintained by the City of Independence.  This area was first settled by Euro-Americans during 1854-1856.  Following Minnesota's admission to the Union in 1858, the townships of Independence, Watertown, and Franklin were organized, and Minnetrista in the following year.

Some of the families represented in the Oakland Cemetery were among the earliest settlers in this area.  Listed in the 1870 census are the following families:  Bork, Bryant, Coffin, Cruikshank, Cunningham, Jadwin, Light, Rader, and Waid.  Nearly all of the settlers were born in America and had native-born parents as well.  Many of the settlers followed a familiar migratory pattern in coming to Minnesota; they were born on the east coast, spent a few years in Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois, and continued farther west.

During the 1860s and early 1870s the Bryant family burial ground was transformed into a community cemetery.  In February of 1862, Charles and Isabella, children of Benjamin and Ester Light, died and were buried near the Bryant graves.  One month later, Allen and Mary Hosmer, who lived just northwest of the Bryants, buried their infant son, Edwin, at the developing cemetery.  Two years later in 1864, Sarah Hursh and Mary Bryant died.  Both of these funerals would have been communal events.  Friends and family probably gathered at the Bryant farm for the burials and perhaps congregated at the household afterwards.

In 1864, the Raders lost an infant son and buried him at the cemetery.  By the early 1870s, burials at the Oakland Cemetery began to increase in frequency.  In 1870, there were burials for two people: young Daniel Bryant, and Maria Coffin, the 37-year-old wife of Abel Coffin.  The following year three people, Andrew Cruikshank, Jacob Rader, and Adelbert Merriman were buried there.  In 1872 James Wade and Sarah Durfee were interred.  Burials at the cemetery continued through the last quarter of the nineteenth century with the last burial taking place in 1932, that of William H. Waid.

This cemetery has had three names over the years:  First known as the Bryant Cemetery, then called the Rader Cemetery, and finally the Oakland Cemetery."