References - Linn County Cemetery Histories

Prepared for the internet by Lisa L. Jones and posted on January 6, 2001.

This project was a "labor of love", as I have a particular fondness for pioneer cemeteries.   I've been working on this project  for about nine months now.  I attempted to consult all available resources that referenced Linn Co. cemeteries.  I started this project prior to my relocating to the Oregon area, so much of the my research was conducted in Seattle-area repositories, or during trips I made to Linn County last summer.

Here are some particulars of where I located the information provided on the cemetery history pages:

Established Date:  This corresponds, usually, to the date of the first burial.

Est. # of Burials:  These numbers should be considered estimates, based on my own calculations from published surveys..  Depending on when the cemetery was last surveyed, and whether the cemetery is still active, these numbers may be wildly inaccurate.  They are provided as "ballpark" figures only.

Size in Acres:  Again, these numbers are provided to give you a way to gauge the approximate size of the cemeteries.  This data was gathered from the Linn Co. Tax Assessor's database

Nearest Town:  Determined by consulting a variety of maps, including current maps, the 1878 Illustrated Atlas of Marion & Linn Counties and the 1930 Metsker's Atlas.

Location:  Township/Range/Section, where provided, was gathered from a variety of sources.  Many of the Haskin WPA surveys included this information, as did other published lists.  I checked these listings against physical maps, the Linn Co. Tax Assessor's database, BLM database (currently not available), USGS, and other online sources. 

Lat/Lon: These values were gathered from the USGS GNIS online database.

Driving Directions:  Gathered from a variety of sources, including my own travels to approximately 40 of these cemeteries.  Additional driving instructions were gathered from Ralph Friedman's "In Search of Western Oregon", or from consulting various maps.  Please use these directions as rough guidelines, and consult your own maps before using them to locate any of these cemeteries.  I'd hate to be responsible for lost genealogists, forever roaming Linn County, because I mistyped "turn right" for "turn left"!

Contact Information:  Where available, this information was gathered from the Linn Co. Tax Assessor's database.

Histories:  The majority of the cemetery histories were transcribed from the WPA Cemetery Survey conducted in the late 1930's and early 1940's by Leslie Haskin.  These manuscripts are housed at Oregon State Library.

These surveys were not transcribed in the entirety.  Following is a description of how the  Haskin's surveys were laid out, and which portions were and were not transcribed for these web histories::

   Introductory paragraph, with Cemetery name, original land owner.  Included in its entirety

   Location - Township/Range/Section - Included.

   Driving directions - Omitted.  Given the age of these documents, this information seemed potentially misleading.

   Physical description of the land.  Omitted.  Again, this information in many cases seemed dated and potentially misleading.  Haskin himself commented on "the extreme alteration in physical features about old cemeteries" -- see Bruce/Klum Cemetery.

   Condition of the Cemetery.  Omitted.  In the course of visiting many, but not yet all, of these cemeteries, I found that many cemeteries that Haskin described as in pristine condition are now overgrown and forgotten.  And the opposite case was often true as well.  Cemeteries that were in deplorable condition at the time of Haskin's survey have been re-adopted and are now lovingly tended. 

   Deed information -- when available.  Omitted.

   Historical information - when founded, by whom, earliest burial, oldest birthdate, etc.  Included in its entirety.

   Maps of the area, and a map of the cemetery itself.  Omitted.

    Historical & Biographical Notes of some of the burials.  Included in its entirety.

    Tombstone transcriptions.  Omitted, with a few exceptions.  Most of these cemeteries have been more recently transcribed and are available online.

    I tried to indicate through ellipses (...) wherever I had omitted text.  Additional notes or comments by me were indicated with brackets - [NB:].  Haskin himself included many notes to his text; those are included in parenthesis - (Note).

Please remember when reading these histories that these surveys are more than sixty years old.  Much has changed in that time period.  Still, I found them quite fascinating, and hope that you enjoy them.

 

EOT - End of Trail:  In the 1960's and 1970's a group of researchers known as "The End of the Trail" researchers (later became Lebanon Genealogical Society) published quarterly newsletters.  These newsletters are available at a variety of repositories.  A cemetery survey was published over the course of several additions of this newsletter.  I used these documents to compare against the WPA records as well as other materials.

DAR - The Daughters of the American Revolution conducted cemetery surveys in the late 1940's.  These transcripts are available by microfilm at a variety of repositories.

Maps - These graphics were captured from the USGS GNIS database -- (currently the Tiger mapping service is unavailable).

Graphics - The graveyard graphics file used on all pages was adapted from one provided by Joel GAzis-Sax's City of the Silent - a fascinating and informative website regarding cemeteries.

Please contact me with any questions or concerns you might have about this material.  If corrections or additions are needed, don't hesitate to let me know so I can update the information. 

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Lisa L. Jones prepared and is solely responsible for the content of these pages. 
Copyright 2001.