The oldest pioneer cemetery in Washington County, outside of
Portland, OR is Hillsboro Pioneer Cemetery, was established during the
homestead period, in 1860. Here lies many of the most notable political figures
that helped establish the town of Hillsboro, including the first mayor of
Hillsboro, several successive mayors, supreme court justices and state
legislators.
What is
most striking is the many plots dedicated to families, something you don’t often
find in modern day gravesites. Cement strips that hold several headstones. Back
in the 1800’s through the early 1900’s, families tended to stay together,
through necessity over anything else, and therefore were buried together. You
just don’t see that these days, as families split apart through divorce and/or
geography. Walking through this cemetery, children who died at 9, 10, 11 years
of age in the late 1800’s are buried next to their parents and grandparents who
died much later.
The
Tongue family…..the family gravestone is a tall spear of marble that towers
over the rest. During a lightning storm, the top was broken off, and was later
mortared back on.
There
were several headstones with the freemason insignia. Flat, unknown grave
markers, weathered stones where you can barely make out the names carved into
them.
One particular headstone of note must have have any decedents who care enough for its upkeep because the neighboring tree has uprooted it.
One of the pictures we took was of
this gravestone of Demarcus C. Williams, who died in 1962 at the tender age of
eleven. On a whim, I Googled this and found that someone else took a photo of
the same headstone and put it on a website named billiongraves.com. It is here
where I discovered that the Pioneer Cemetery is actually two separate
cemeteries stuck together. The other one is called Independent Order of Odd
Fellows cemetery, and each and every one of the graves is documented and on the
website. Turns out that the IOOF and the Masonic Lodge collaborated to create
the cemetery in 1960. Indeed, the freemason emblem can be found on many of the
headstones here.
Rich in history, this pioneer
cemetery holds the remains of civil war veterans (from both sides) as well as
veterans for every subsequent war. Next week we will visit the pioneer cemetery
in Portland, which holds the remains of the city’s founder, Bill Overton.
