Physical Description:
This cemetery consists of 108 family lots, is 165 ft x 132 ft in size, adjoins St. Paul Lutheran Cemetery to the north, and is surrounded by property zoned industrial by both the cities of Maple Grove and Osseo. Across the highway is Brooklyn Park. The cemetery association contracts mowing services. No gravesite are for sale.

History:
This cemetery is the result of an association that met on January 8, 1862. It is on the border of what was then Maple Grove Township and Brooklyn Township. The founders were part of a family clan that had organized Maple Grove Township 3 ½ years earlier, and included relatives in Brooklyn Township. President Lincoln had called for troops in April, 1861, and at the time of organizing the cemetery some men, such as DeWitt Smith in the First Minnesotans, was fighting, and others were in process of enlisting in the Civil War as Union soldiers. Hence the cemetery's name Brooklyn ~ Maple Grove Union Cemetery.

The first burial was the daughter of Hiram Blowers , Lovina Ewing, wife of William, who was buried in her father's lot while her husband was soldiering. William Ewing, a founder of the cemetery, is buried in the first lot with his third wife, Diadema Brown Champlin- widow of Davis Barnes Champlin, who like DeWitt Smith died as a union soldier in Tennessee.

There are several other soldiers buried in Union Cemetery and many early civic leaders of Osseo—a village which did not officially organize until 1875. The earliest members of the Hartkopf clan are also buried in this cemetery. Many pioneers who had purchased family lots, abandoned their claims and moved on west or back to Michigan.

A Scandinavian community established south of the cemetery, and much of the activity in the cemetery association during the mid twentieth century was by members of the Swedish Lutheran Church. After WWI, the name of the cemetery was referred to as American Cemetery; in 1969 a civic group installed a flag and conducted a dedication ceremony. In 1990, a fence was installed around the cemetery except on the north side where the cemetery adjoins the cemetery of St. Paul's Lutheran Church.

Information provided by Brooklyn and Maple Grove Union Cemetery Association, June, 2011.