Keeping the Family Together

Family Cremains in a Vault at Portland Memorial

Headstone of the Week

Jay Dee Boyer

Located in what was the wilds of western Washington County, Oregon is the now former town of West Timber, where a Post Office and railroad station were located west of the town of Timber. This is where J D Boyer found employment after moving from Pennsylvania to Oregon in the early twentieth century. The trees would have been big at that time since that was before all the big ones were laboriously cut down, and before the Tillamook burn fires occurred later on a few miles west. What prompted Jay Dee to move from home in Pennsylvania where he was born in 1895 to parents who moved from Germany we will most likely never know. But move to Oregon he did, and found a job working for the Eagle Timber Co., in West Timber.

We know little of Jay Dee's life, other than his parent's names were Chas., and Veronica and they were both born in Germany. We know that Jay Dee was single at the time of his death from heart issues and pneumonia. Jay Dee died at St Vincent's Hospital on 9 October 1927. According to his Certificate of Death he was buried two days after his death on 11 October 1927. A funeral service to which friends were invited was held at St Stevens church at E. 42nd and Taylor on Wednesday, October 12, 1927. Jay D Boyer is buried in the back of the cemetery in Section G.

J D Boyer, 1895-1927

Mr. Lepley and the Quest for Gold

Louis Lepley was a gold miner in Nome, Alaska in the early 20th century. We know that prior to taking up mining he was living in Montana with his wife. He arrived in Alaska during or before 1902 and commenced on finding the stuff that dreams are made of. (See photo of the mining digs. Lepley is the third man wearing the black shirt and hat. Thanks to Eric Larsen for these great pictures.) We know that in 1909 he was taken into care at the Morningside Hospital Mental Hospital here in Portland, where he died in 1919. He is interred, along with many other Morningside Hospital patients in the far back corner of the cemetery.