The Moss that Hides and Reveals

Many of the older stones in the cemetery have moss growing on them; sometimes that it is a good thing because we can read the names. At other times, the moss obscures all.

Lists

We are in the process of going through the list of burials and putting that together with the photos of the headstones. Ugh! After a few hours, my head spins and the names run together. This is going to take awhile.

Come To Me

Dave and I spent last Saturday in the cemetery taking photos of Section B. It was cold and windy and the rain threatened, but held back for a few hours; it is winter, ya know.

Section B is the most exposed section of the cemetery with just a few trees. It fronts 82nd Ave and while going up and down the rows of gravestones, I would look up often and see people walking along the sidewalk and going about their daily stuff. Hundreds of cars whizzed by on 82nd while Dave and I were there.

The headstone of Etta Sigsby kinda says it all. When all the busyness of life is over, come to me, I'll leave the light on.

I can't believe it's been just a few short months since Eric and I have undertaken this project of ours. In this short period of time we have added over 4,000 names to the Find A Grave website database. In the beginning we were transcribing information from photographs taken in the cemetery, but now thanks to Metro we're using data from their database. Still a time consuming process, but it is much easier and quicker using data already on spreadsheets. We've also taken over 5 photos for people with relatives in the cemetery.

During this time Eric has also dug up the history of the Morningside Hospital to which Alaska sent it's mental patients until the 1960's. Several of the patients who died while at the hospital are buried here at Multnomah Park.

This is the marker for Harry Loud, or Lold, who died in 1915. His marker is along the fenceline at the back of the cemetery, along with several other Morningside patients.

Neither Eric or I know where this project will lead us, but we would like to have a user friendly website showing the cemetery and the lots, photos of the markers, and a brief bio of each person. Wouldn't that be grand?!

The Direction of Numbers

Dave and Tom and I met with the Metro Pioneer Cemetery folks yesterday and were presented with the list of burials in MPC, all 11,567 of them!

It is apparent that Rachel and her staff have a passion for the work and I left feeling that the management of the pioneer cemeteries is in very good hands.

There will be gaps in the records and misspellings and the missing markers are sure to drive us across the street to Starbucks to scratch our heads and pour over records over a mocha or two!

Dave is doing an outstanding job of documenting the headstones and our Findagrave page for the cemetery has more than 2000 entries.

Are there really 11K interments in this cemetery? I suspect we will find more.

The Dark Divide is an area of spectacular scenery seldom visited, and little known. It is located between Mounts St Helens and Adams in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
So, what does the Dark Divide in Washington have to do with a cemetery in Portland, Oregon? A lot actually. Because it was while I was on a hike in this wild country that I was introduced to the website findagrave.com by my hiking companion and also genealogist. Had I not been told about that website I probably would not have started posting my photos of tombstones to that website. Had I not started posting photos to findagrave I wouldn't have asked Eric if he wanted to start censusing Multnomah Park Cemetery in our neighborhood of Lents, Portland. Had we not started our censusing project we wouldn't have learned about the Morningside Hospital and the patients and their families in Alaska.
One thing leads to another for a reason.
Dave

Getting Underway

For many years, Dave and I have been working on our family genealogies. That usually entails looking through archives, getting documents and, if we are lucky, photos. One of the more interesting tools to the genealogist is the website, findagrave.com. The folks there have managed to put on-line, the memorials to millions of people who have died and their information made available to the world wide web. It is through our desire to add to findagrave that the Friends of Multnomah Park Cemetery was created.

Dave and I live in the Lents Neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. On the outskirts of that neighborhood lies Multnomah Park Pioneer Cemetery.

Multnomah Park Cemetery was founded in 1888 by O. P. Lent, Gustaf Petersen, George P. Lent, Robert Gilbert and William Kern, all of whom are buried in the cemetery. After its establishment, Mr. Lent operated the cemetery and somewhere around 1906 it was deeded to Multnomah County. The county operated the cemetery until its operation was transferred to Metro in 1996.