Chapter Two -- New Digs
Final resting place, my foot! My mother used to add that when something was contrary to fact. So, my foot! People speak of the grave as our final resting place. History indicates that is not always the case. What goes down sometimes comes back up.
Before the current Greenwood Cemetery was established, locals had been buried near where they died. Some were interred on the family homestead. Records indicate that there were loggers killed in the forest and buried beside the stump of the tree that killed them. Even cemeteries in Astoria proved to be temporary locations.
The oldest non-native cemetery was the burial ground for the trading post established by John Jacob Astor, who gave his name to Astoria, even though he never set foot on the West Coast. That cemetery is now firmly established in its place, being beneath the floor of the Astoria Armory Building, and perhaps extending beneath the old Astoria City Hall (now the Heritage Museum), and is thought to extend under 16th Street. This cemetery was used by Astor's people at Fort Astoria. After the panicked Americans, fearing a British takeover during the War of 1812, sold the fort to the Hudson's Bay Company, the gleeful Brits renamed it Fort George. They continued to use the burial ground until they were squeezed out (more on that in a later passage).
Astoria had another cemetery in the mid-nineteenth century, located above the Catholic Church, first known casually as the Astoria Cemetery. When the Astoria City Hall was to be built at 16th and Exchange, the Fort Astoria/George cemetery was in the way. Some of the bodies were dug up and reburied at the Astoria Cemetery, at what is now 14th and Irving.
As Astoria was expanding, city officials decided they needed the land at 14th and Irving for the living rather than for the dead, and in 1867 ordered the bodies removed, and reburied at the newly-deeded cemetery at 15th and Niagara, at the top of the hill. This cemetery has been variously known as Pioneer Cemetery, Hillside Cemetery and Hilltop Cemetery. The order was only partially carried out. That winter, those who could afford it had their departed loved ones dug up and carried up through the mud to Hillside Cemetery to be reinterred. Those unfortunate enough to have no one to pay for their new location were left behind, and the Astoria cemetery became known as the Pauper Cemetery. Indigents continued to be buried there even after the eviction order, and eventually the occupants of the Pauper Cemetery found themselves beneath houses, yards and shrubbery. For a fortunate few from the Fort Astoria Cemetery who made the move to Hillside Cemetery, this was their second move, and their third resting place.
Astoria had another cemetery in Uppertown. At one time, the Holy Innocents Episcopal Church was located in the area of 34th and Grand, on the hill above Leif Erickson Drive. The church had a cemetery in the churchyard, which was customary for some nineteenth-century churches. When the church was gone, the cemetery remained. But, again, the dead were in the way of progress. Cemetery residents were evicted, to be reburied somewhere else. Some made it to Hillside Cemetery. Again, some were left behind.
Since we are again looking at Hillside Cemetery, we find that the cemetery scramble continued. The Astoria city officials were not finished. In 1897, they enacted an ordinance forbidding any further burials within the city limits of Astoria, and ordering bodies to be removed from town to the new municipal cemetery Astoria established that year near the villages of Lexington and Skipanon across Young's Bay from Smith Point in Astoria in the area that would become Warrenton. The new eviction notices served on the dead said in effect, “Take your tombstone and get out of here.” For some, this was move number three, and the fourth resting place.
Unfortunately for those evictees banished to the new Ocean View cemetery, that was not the final move for some of them. That initial portion of the new cemetery would give way to construction. Some of the occupants of the right-of-way were moved again. Others were disinterred by bulldozers, and their bones gathered and then...there is no record of who they were, or where they went. Some guess they are intermingled in a common ossuary in a sandpit somewhere near Ocean View Cemetery.
The old handwritten cemetery record books a Greenwood Cemetery have repeated notations next to the names of some of the arrivals that read, “Removal from Hillside”... “Removal from Uppertown” … “Removal from Ocean View” … “Removal from Holy Innocents.” Greenwood has been mentioned in documents as being the first alternative to Hillside Cemetery. That one word, removal, is inadequate for the details it obscures.
Having done disinterments, I can assure you that it is a daunting task. In opening an old grave, before a shovelful of soil is moved, the worker must probe to determine the bounds of the grave by detecting the softer, disturbed soil. Probing deeper will determine whether a casket remains or has deteriorated along with the body. Probing even deeper will reveal the depth of the grave. If the casket is detected, the digging can begin. The soil is shoveled to one side of the grave, with the digging becoming slow and cautious as the level of the casket is reached. The worker must not put any weight on the casket itself, lest it break under his feet. Once the casket is revealed, a plank over the top, placed lengthwise, will distribute the worker's weight, and give a platform for the next step.
With a narrow shovel, the soil must be dug from around the sides and ends of the casket, to release the grip the earth has on the departed. Then comes the more difficult stage of excavation. Kneeling on the plank, the worker has to reach down with a trowel and dig under each end of the casket, so ropes can be passed under the ends, and the casket lifted out of the grave.
If the casket has deteriorated, as can happen quickly in the coastal climate, the excavation process is similar, but more...intimate. The soil is removed to within six or eight inches of the bottom of the grave. Once bones are detected, each shovelful must be sifted by hand to recover even the smallest bones, usually beginning at the foot of the grave, and working forward. As the bones are recovered, they are placed in a box, along with any scraps of fabric, casket hardware and artifacts, for transport and reburial.
Woe to the worker who must do a removal during the wet season! Rains usually start in earnest in mid-October on the coast. By December, except in the sandy areas of the county, the water table is often within a foot or so of the surface, and by January, may be at the surface. It then stays high through the winter storm season, finally subsiding in April, but leaving moist soil or mud that is difficult to sift. Oddly, the high water table seems to persist on the hill tops, not just in low-lying areas. At the same time, burials seem to have been done on the hilltops. With a “Nearer-My-God-To-Thee” attitude, the departed were carried up to the very areas that stayed the wettest. Imagine the labor involved in the upward movement from the Fort Astoria Cemetery to the 14th and Irving Cemetery, and then again, in the wintertime, from that cemetery to Hillside Cemetery.
Once the evictions began sending residents from Hillside Cemetery to Greenwood and Ocean View, a local mortician was in charge of the removals. In his accounts of the labors, he noted the soggy nature of the work, and mentioned the effects of the “highly mineralized water” in soil a Hillside Cemetery, claiming to have disintered a woman “perfectly preserved in a state of petrification,” whose stone body weighed some eight hundred pounds!
The frequent relocations explain the death dates on monuments and grave markers that predate the establishment of Greenwood Cemetery in 1891. After the establishment of Greenwood Cemetery, transfers from other rural burial sites started. Researchers interviewing old-timers in rural Clatsop County were told of individuals and families removed to Greenwood from family farms, from Simmon's Field out Highway 202 past the Klaskanie Fish Hatchery, and from the Granger Cemetery on Young's Farm between Highway 202 and Young's Bay. Some of the latter group will show up in the Movers and Shakers chapter. For some, it was not their first move.
Not all, however, moved into Greenwood. The records show many notes indicating some were moved within the cemetery. In some cases, the one moved had been buried as an infant or child. Years later, when one or both of the parents were buried here, the little one was moved to be with the family. I have done a few of these removals to reunite families. After decades, there was really nothing to move. The little one had, indeed returned to dust, and the dust of the baby blended perfectly with the dust of the planet. My solution, since the family insisted on the move, was to dig the new grave, setting the sod aside and loading the soil into a wheelbarrow. Then, at the burial site of the baby, I would remove the sod, setting it aside. Then, I would remove all of the disturbed soil that included the dust of the departed little one, and take that to the new grave, and cover it with the reserved sod. The soil removed to make room for the transfer I then used to refill the space where the baby had first been buried.
There are notations in the record books indicating some were moved elsewhere. Some say “Removed to Ocean View.” Some say “Removed for shipment,” with no indication of the destination. Many notes say “Removed to China,” although some accounts indicate that those Chinese removals, destined for repatriation to China, were found in a warehouse in California decades later.
As a personal note, I do not like doing disinterments. I price them high, with a variety of add-ons for complications, attempting to dissuade people who ask. Knowing what removals entail, I can only wonder at the fortitude of those who relocated cemeteries a century and more ago.