Life in the Cemetery
PREFACE
Travelers on Oregon's rural highways pass grim reminders of tragedy in the form of artificial flowers and crosses with or without names placed by grieving family members. Some of these memorials are frequently refreshed and renewed as survivors struggle to find closure, even as they reopen the wounds inflicted by weather or carelessness or any of a plethora of causes that stalk our modern traffic ways. Others, once placed, fade and vanish like the memory whoever they memorialize.
The migration to the Oregon Country was no less hazardous, though at a slower pace. The two thousand miles of the Oregon Trail claimed nearly ten percent of the eager pioneers who started the journey with high hopes and inflated expectations. The fiercest predator that lurked along the trail was disease – dysentery, cholera, smallpox and influenza. Add in the deaths due to accident or exhaustion, and of some three hundred fifty thousand immigrants to the Oregon country, some thirty thousand were buried hastily along the trail. Spaced out, that would be a grave about every two hundred yards.
Many of the graves were in the trail itself. After the burial, the wagon train rolled over the site to obliterate it. It was, by necessity, unmarked. Those keeping a journal of the journey had only rudimentary landmarks to approximate the location. For those buried beside the trail, their monument was often a heap of stones, or a bit of wood, either of which would be wiped out by the next passing cluster of wagons.
The trip west was but a precursor of the challenges that awaited the successful immigrant upon arrival in the untamed Land of Promise. The inflated expectations that survived the Oregon Trail often burst on impact in the new land, whether the immigrants settled in the Willamette Valley, along the Columbia River, or on the Pacific coast. The so-called free land that had lured them west was purchased at the price of sweat, blood, and often, life itself. Land claims had to be wrested from the vegetation and timber that held them captive. The settlers were reduced to the state of hunters and gatherers with little or no knowledge of the local cycles of nature, no time to plant crops, and with little time to learn what foraged foods could sustain them through the impending winter. Expanding clearings held two locations that filled at a similar rate – the hastily constructed cabin that was the family home, and the family burial ground, where hand-chiseled stones replaced the cairns and crossed sticks scattered along the Trail. Disease, harsh living conditions, malnutrition and lack of medical knowledge and care filled tiny graves, and those were joined by accident, carelessness and foolishness in filling the larger ones.
Scattered homesteads, joined by others, became settlements, which grew to towns. The same dangers lurking in the wilderness moved into town, and continued to carry victims to designated burial grounds, sometimes in churchyards, sometimes on a nearby hill. Records of deaths and burials were now kept, but often vanished when the storage burned to the ground.
As towns grew toward city status, one of the legal requirements for incorporation was the designation of a dedicated cemetery. Sometimes, a local family cemetery became the official burial ground. Sometimes, what had been a family cemetery had its occupants disinterred and reburied in the official cemetery. Over the decades, pioneer cemeteries have either been carefully tended and used by local families, or have been abandoned, their memories and stories slowly erased by encroaching nature.
Cemeteries are outdoor museums. History lies between the dates on each grave marker or monument. For some, the careful keeping of the stories is a stewardship, a sacred trust. Those keepers age, grow weary, and will eventually lie beneath the sod they tend. Will others, with a passion for history, a work ethic that is focused on service, a sense of stewardship, take up the tools the present keepers can no longer wield?
My wife, Lynda, and I moved to Greenwood Cemetery in May of 1982. We had a home in the city of Astoria, but wanted to raise our sons in the country. As teachers in a Christian school, we did not earn enough to qualify for a mortgage, according to local lenders. When we were told of the availability of a house we could afford, where the current owners would carry the contract with little down, we were interested. The fact that the house was packaged with a pioneer cemetery that would require maintenance, but had the potential to make the monthly payments from cemetery income was a persuasive factor in our decision to move. We knew nothing about cemetery operations or maintenance. We did not realize that the last weekend of May was the most critical focus of the maintenance program, when crowds of people would descend on the property, expecting it to be perfectly trimmed. And yet, we moved to Greenwood in May.
The following chapters are a compilation of things gleaned from conversations spanning forty years at Greenwood. I have included no footnotes, no bibliography, and no attributions. After so much time has passed, I couldn't tell you who said what. Tidbits prefaced by “I remember my mother telling me...” simply are, and do not come with documentation. General history can be researched by the reader. I have attempted to check what I have been told against historical records, but even those are subject to the accuracy of the historian's memory and bias.
What, indeed, is it like to live and work among the stones? Four decades is a long time. Those decades can demand, but can also teach and entertain. Life in the cemetery...oxymoronic, perhaps. We've lived it. Let me spin you a yarn or two...