Famous people's places / Hamtramck
Jean François Hamtramck's Grave, Veterans Memorial Park
The final resting place of Colonel Jean François Hamtramck, the Revolutionary War officer the city is named for, reburied here in 1962 after four earlier burials across Detroit.
01 / The story of this place
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Jean François Hamtramck was a French-Canadian officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War and later commanded Fort Wayne, and Michigan's township of Hamtramck was named for him in 1798, five years before his death in 1803. His body has had an unusually restless afterlife: first buried at Ste. Anne's graveyard in 1803, moved to Ste. Anne de Detroit's new cemetery in 1805 after fire swept the city, relocated again to Mount Elliott Cemetery in 1866, and finally reinterred in 1962 at Veterans Memorial Park in the city that bears his name, incorporated into a memorial at the park's entrance. In 2022, on Memorial Day, the city dedicated a new grave marker at the site to better honor Detroit's oldest surviving military figure with local ties. The grave remains a Michigan historical marker site and a small, quiet monument to the man behind Hamtramck's name.
- Jean François Hamtramck died in 1803; the city was named for him in 1798
- His remains were moved four times before their final reburial
- Reburied at Veterans Memorial Park in 1962
- A new grave marker was dedicated in 2022
Famous Detroiters
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- Jean François Hamtramck 1756–1803 · US Army officer, first American commander of Detroit
Buried here
His remains and headstone, first buried in Detroit, were moved in 1962 to Veterans Memorial Park in the city of Hamtramck.
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Sources & fact check · Checked: 2026-09-25
An independently written bilingual guide. This collection is not an attendance-based ranking.
03 / Events
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