Headstone of the Week

George was the son of Edison Tanquary and was 48 years old when he died on April 12, 1918. He had siblings named Millie, Nellie, C.M. and L.H. He could have been a victim of the influenza epidemic that swept through Portland in 1918.

Tracking Down the Real Ones

This stone reads "Y Shmoto. The database reads Yashi Smota. Checking with the Oregon Death Index and with an Oregonian article at the time, 1909, tells me that Yoshi Shimoto was a merchant in Chinatown when he was "died suddenly in an apoplectic fury." He died during a heat wave in Portland and was buried the same day. Yoshi's grave is along the back fence of the cemetery, the unofficial "Potter's Field" of Multnomah Park Cemetery.

Headstone of the Week

Infant mortality in the early 20th century was high. Many of the infants in this cemetery have only a cement marker as remembrance. Claude's parents saw fit to mark his brief existence with a marble stone. R.I.P. Claude Haley Cole

Eulogizer

Because of the Oregonian article detailing the 1899 funeral of Mr. O.P. Lent, one of the founders of the cemetery, we know that Mr. Plympton Kelly was a personal friend of his and "handsomely delivered the eulogy of his dearly departed friend." We also know that Mr. Kelly's carriage was in a place of honor in the funeral cortege between the hearse and the family of the deceased. High praise indeed.

Happy New Year

Headstone of the Week

Prostated by Grief

In 1907, spinal meningitis was sweeping through Portland, killing scores. One family it ravaged was the Miller family of Lents. Jacob and Jessie Miller had eight children, and six of them died within the course of one week. According to the newspaper article at the time, the remaining family was "prostrated by grief." Jacob lived for another 11 years and Jessie died in 1957. The two children who survived, Jesse and Alexander went into the U.S. Army during WW1.

This is an URBAN Cemetery!!!

If there is one inescapable fact about Multnomah Park, it is in an URBAN area! Whenever I am there I see hookers, tweekers, bums and other assorted citizenry. Across the street on Holgate is a plasma center that is always busy. Across 82nd is a motel, a car parts store, Starbucks, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Quiznos, Value Village, and right next door is a wholesale used car lot. The cemetery is right in the middle of it all. When the cemetery was deeded back in 1888, all that surrounded the cemetery was farmland and orchards. This photo is taken from just outside Starbucks looking across the street to Walgreens and you can see some of the tall fir trees in the cemetery. A little green oasis in a sea of asphalt.

Thats a New One

Dave and I worked in the cemetery for over two hours today in Section H. We were joined by a lovely lady, Roshelle, who didn't seem to mind the cold muddy ground. We made some great progress. Here is one of the stones we unearthed. It is for Peter Kigandertirk. The name sounds dutch, but is it? Yet another mystery. Also, both yesterday and today there were funerals at the cemetery. One in section D and another in section B. I am told that there are more deaths around Christmas than at any other time of year. Must be the fruitcake!

Baby Foxes

Here are two markers for two babies with one name. Baby Joe Fox, 1910-1912 and Baby Joe Fox 1914-1916. I would like to think that if there were a third Baby Joe Fox, that he lived to a rip old age.

One thing leads to another

Looking at the above photo of a monument in rather poor condition it is hard to tell what it says. I took the photo of this monument on a recent trip to the cemetery on a whim. About the only thing I could easily read is that this person died in Oct. 1906, they were 60 some years old and 12 days, and they are at rest. I figured I should be able to find someone in the database who died in Oct. 1906 so I searched the spreadsheet and found one person: Eliza Fenton Plummer. you can now make out her name at the top Eliza Fenton, probably the words "wife of" and an 'H C'. The surname is still illegible, but there does appear to be an 'E' towards the end of the name. The date of death can be surmised as '28'. Eliza Fenton Plummer is buried near her husband H C Plummer!
Having looked through Funeral Notices printed in the Oregonian, I've learned there's a pattern in when a Funeral Notice is printed after a person's death; and that is usually two days. But for some reason I went to the Multnomah County Library's on-line files of the Oregonian for Oct 31, 1906 to check if I could find Eliza Fenton Plummer's Funeral Notice. To my disappointment it wasn't there. However, there was a Funeral Notice for a Frank Crupy who was being buried at Multnomah Cemetery. I went back to the data base to find a Crupy being buried there and found only one person with that surname. The only information I found in the cemetery database was for a "Mr. Crupy" who is buried in Section A, Lot 17, grave nr 1. At least now we now have a name for Mr. Crupy and we now know when he died, 104 years ago. There is no marker at A, 17, 1 commemorating Mr. Crupy.