Tours and Events
Enjoy a Self-Guided Tour Anytime, a Scheduled Public Thematic Tour, or Request a Special Private Small Group Tour led by our own Dr. Thomas Henthorn
Self-Guided Tour
Experience Glenwood in a unique and fun way, by using our new 'Self-Guided' Walking Tour.
Scheduled Public Tour
We offer guided thematic tours throughout the year, exploring Glenwood’s unique history, architecture, and landscape. These tours are led by knowledgeable guides and highlight a variety of topics—from notable burials to Victorian mourning traditions.
More information, including previous events and tours as well as upcoming dates and topics, can be found below and will be updated as new ones are scheduled.
Premium Private Tour
In addition to public tours, groups may request special, private tours led by Dr. Thomas Henthorn, the Wyatt Endowed Professor of Public History at the University of Michigan-Flint. Dr. Henthorn is a nationally recognized scholar of the public humanities, with deep expertise in cemetery interpretation, historic preservation, and community-based history projects. His work has guided preservation efforts across the Midwest and provided hands-on training to students and community members in the care and interpretation of historic spaces.
These premium, historian-led tours are available for small groups for $150.00 and offer a more in-depth and customized experience.
To inquire about booking a private tour with Dr. Henthorn, please fill out the request form below.
Request a Tour
Interested in touring the beautiful Glenwood Cemetery? Fill the form below.
Upcoming Events at Glenwood:
More events to be announced soon. Please check back. In the meantime, remember that Glenwood is open daily and you are welcome to visit any time.
Also, as noted at the top of this page, various types of tours are always available.
Flint River Watershed Coalition Stewardship Day
Monday, May 4, 9am – 12pm
All volunteers are welcome, no prior experience needed.
Glenwood Cemetery is proud to serve as a host site for Flint River Watershed Coalition Stewardship Day, a community-wide day of environmental care and service. Volunteers are invited to help with light clean-up and stewardship activities that support the health of the Flint River watershed and Glenwood’s historic landscape. Stop by Glenwood to check in, lend a hand, and enjoy
coffee and donuts before getting started.
Women’s work in Flint
June - Date TBA
$15 per person
This guided walking tour at Glenwood Cemetery explores the lives of women whose contributions helped shape Flint but are often overshadowed in traditional histories. Featuring figures such as Maria Stockton, Arabella and Caroline Rankin, Cornelia Clarke, Ruth Mott, Jeanne Stevens, and Nina Jones, the tour highlights education, philanthropy, civic life, and cultural leadership. Together, their stories reveal how women built, sustained, and strengthened the community in lasting ways.
Stillness & Stone: Yoga at Glenwood
June - Date TBA
$20 per person
Take part in a gentle yoga session set among the historic landscape of Glenwood Cemetery. This outdoor practice invites participants to slow down, breathe deeply, and reflect in a space shaped by memory, nature, and time. Surrounded by monuments, trees, and quiet paths, the session offers a moment of stillness and connection in one of Flint’s most meaningful public places.
Mats provided.
Dining with the Dead
July 11, 11:30pm – 2pm
Fee TBD
Bring a blanket or lawn chair and join us for Dining with the Dead, a community picnic celebrating Glenwood Cemetery as a place of memory, history, and gathering. The afternoon will feature live music, docent stations sharing stories of notable burials, open access to the public mausoleum, and a lemonade stand hosted by our friends from the Whaley Historic House Museum at the McFarlin family plot. All are welcome to enjoy good company, shared stories, and a relaxed day on the grounds.
Famous Funerals
July 15, 6pm
$15 per person
What makes a funeral famous? This guided walking tour explores some of the most notable funerals held at Glenwood Cemetery and what they reveal about power, reputation, grief, and public memory in Flint’s past. From mile-long processions and citywide shutdowns to quiet, private services that contrasted sharply with public influence, the tour examines how communities chose to mourn civic leaders, philanthropists, veterans, and pioneers. Together, these stories show how funerals became moments when personal loss and public identity intersected.
Victorian Mourning Traditions
August 12, 5:30pm
Fee TBD
This guided walking tour explores how Victorians made grief a public, highly structured part of everyday life. Visitors will learn how mourning customs shaped homes, clothing, funerals, and the cemetery landscape itself, from elaborate processions to the symbols carved into stone. Through monuments, grave markers, and cemetery design, the tour reveals how Victorians used ritual and symbolism to communicate loss, respectability, and beliefs about death and the afterlife. Glenwood offers a powerful setting to understand mourning as both a personal experience and a public performance.
Advanced Preservation Methods Workshop
September 12, 9am – 3pm
Fee TBD
This full-day, hands-on workshop offers advanced training for those with prior experience in cemetery preservation. Led by experts in the field, the program covers preservation ethics, planning and documentation, stone materials commonly found in Michigan cemeteries, and appropriate cleaning, adhesives, and mortars for conservation work. Participants will also observe demonstrations of safe stone lifting and resetting techniques. The workshop is hosted by the Michigan Historic Preservation Network and emphasizes responsible, ethical care of historic burial grounds.
Gothic Garden Party
October 3, 3-6pm
Fee TBD
Celebrate the season with an afternoon of fall fun at our annual Gothic Garden Party in the historic beauty of Glenwood Cemetery. Enjoy local vendors, food trucks, music, and the chance to explore the grounds in a festive, garden-inspired Gothic atmosphere. Guests are encouraged to dress in themed attire and soak in the community spirit while supporting cemetery preservation and our partners. This beloved fundraiser invites all ages to experience the elegance and history of Glenwood in autumn.
Celtic Halloween
October 9, 5:30-8:30pm
This will be a ticketed event
Explore the historical roots of Halloween through its Celtic origins during an evening program at historic Glenwood Cemetery & Arboretum. Grounded in the ancient festival of Samhain, this program sponsored by the University of Michigan-Flint Department of History examines how early seasonal rituals honoring the dead shaped later Halloween traditions. Using the cemetery as a teaching landscape, the event connects Old World beliefs to local history.
Twilight Tour
October 15, 5:00pm
$15 per person
As evening falls at Glenwood Cemetery, this twilight walking tour explores how nineteenth-century Americans understood death, mourning, and the presence of the dead. The tour focuses on spiritualism and related beliefs that treated cemeteries, monuments, and symbols as forms of communication rather than decoration. Through selected graves and stories, participants see how grief, memory, and hope shaped the landscape of Glenwood.
