Headstone of the Week

Lucinda Armentrout Deardorff,

March 22, 1831 ~ December 28, 1897

Peaceful be thy silent slumber.

We Love Thank-You Letters!

We volunteer at the cemetery because we believe in what we are doing, but it helps when our work is acknowledged. Here is a recent email from a very sweet lady who lives in Illinois:

I was very surprised to see that the grave stone of my uncle Esta Scott Alger has been found with a posting date of April 24, 2011, just a month ago. (Section G, Lot 3-4). That is great and thank you so much.

It was very special yesterday because I had unexpected visitors who were very interested in learning more about the family history. The woman is the granddaughter of Esta Scott Alger and Mabel C. Alger. She and her husband now live in North Dakota. I wanted to show her the site to show her grandmother's grave, and there was her grandfather's also.

When we were in Portland in 2004 we found the grave of Mabel and the babies but were unceremoniously chased out by a herd of very angry bees and had never seen Esta's. And then, although there was a record that Esta was buried there, he couldn't be found. Now it is complete, and thank you so much for posting. It is very much appreciated, especially since we live in Illinois and can't get out there again.

UNDERTAKER: Final Journey Begins Here

Back in the good old days Funeral Homes did not exist. Rather, the people who would frequently undertake the final preparations of a person's final trip would be a furniture store. One of those furniture stores in Portland was the A D Kenworthy furniture store in Lents. They were located on the ground floor of the IOOF Halls on "Main" Street, Lents at what is now the corner of S.E. 92nd Avenue and Ramona Street.

The building still remains, but the furniture store "undertaker", like many of it's customers is now long gone.

Spruce Squadrons - WWI

While wandering the cemetery looking for graves of veterans that will be marked for Memorial Day Weekend I found several gravestones indicating that the deceased was a member of the Spruce Squadron. Having not heard of them - I confess I've not really been all that interested in things military - I decided to learn more about what they were about and was not too surprised that there isn't that much information about them. What I did find out is that during World War I we needed old growth spruce wood to make airplane wings and the Pacific Northwest (Oregon & Washington) supplied the spruce wood to the allies. Robert Swanson (2008) reported that 50,000 soldiers supervised 100,000 lumber workers in Oregon and Washington, while 10,000 worked at building railroads and roads in to the forests.

Carl J Tittle was one of those men who were a part of the Spruce Squadron. He was from Ohio, but served in Company 23 of the Spruce Squadron. Carl is part of the Garden of Untimely demise since he died too soon in a house fire on his farm near Damascus. He left a wife, Mary Esther (Bowder). He is also listed in our WWI garden since he served during the Great War in an important support role. He is buried in Section F, near Arthur Watson who served in Company 64 of the Spruce Squadron.

Memorial Day 2011

Our first Memorial Day event went very well. The sun came out for a little while and the rain stayed away. We met some of the families and learned more about the cemetery residents.

Headstone of the Week: Side by Side

John P. Sheffield March 5, 1897, died one week after his beloved wife of 60 years, Sarah. Here they have been in repose together for more than 100 years.

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.