Famous people's places / Detroit – Southwest Detroit
Holy Cross Cemetery
One of Detroit's oldest Catholic cemeteries, tracing to an 1835 mission in the old Dix Settlement, where singer Sixto Rodriguez was buried in 2023.
01 / The story of this place
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A Redemptorist priest, Father Vincent Baden, blessed a small mission chapel in the Dix Settlement, a rural community southwest of Detroit, in 1835 and named it Holy Cross; burials began there within a few years, and the cemetery was formally dedicated in 1840, making it among the oldest Catholic burial grounds in the city still in active use. The Archdiocese of Detroit has overseen the cemetery, in what is now Southwest Detroit, for generations, though its on-site office has since closed, with records now handled at Our Lady of Hope cemetery. Singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez, the Detroit musician who found unexpected worldwide fame decades after his 1970s albums flopped, as told in the documentary Searching for Sugar Man, was buried at Holy Cross following his death in August 2023. The cemetery remains open for burials and visitation today.
- Traces to an 1835 Catholic mission in the old Dix Settlement
- Formally dedicated in 1840, among Detroit's oldest active Catholic cemeteries
- Singer Sixto Rodriguez was buried here in 2023
Famous Detroiters
Famous people tied to this place 1
Lexicon entries for the people who lived, worked, performed or liked to spend time here.
- Sixto Rodriguez 1942–2023 · singer-songwriter, guitarist
Buried here
Catholic cemetery in Southwest Detroit where he was buried.
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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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