Cemeteries in SE Oregon

[DianeMP]

I'll be adding to this as time goes on and I get further afield than Klamath County cemeteries.  To start, here is Keno, a tiny berg about 15 miles from KF and just above the California border.  You might agree that the most striking thing about old cemeteries is the tragedy of lost infants and children.  It is heartbreaking to see a child's grave, and at those times I am thankful for modern medicine. 

Here is my small post about it on Google Earth/Maps.  

Keno Cemetery is a wild and neglected clearing under tall ponderosa pines.  As far as I know, I'm not related to anyone here, but my father did go to high school in Keno before WWII.

Veterans...

  

And even a Confederate soldier!  Oregon was on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War, a shocking fact I learned recently.
The old gravestone is behind with a newer replacement in the foreground.  The historical society may have wanted to specify that he was
a Confederate soldier.

  

 I sent this photo to my brother, also named Rolla, who was shocked.
It's apparently an old German name and very rare.  There are only two living in the US - and both my brother an I have searched.  The third
one was deceased long ago - our grandfather.  

Old families...




  I always love these little old-timey fenced "yards" for families.


     

An immigrant from Norway, Haakon "Bob" Jacobsen.  Of course he would be nicknamed Bob in the USA!
Maybe he heard about the logging jobs in the American west.  There were quite a few Swedish men logging here so why not Norwegians?



Winnie (I wonder if Rolla was her son).



A very modest gravestone.



There are also a lot of "pauper's graves" here, which have small metal labels, cement squares or rocks embedded in the dirt, or are completely unmarked.

In an old newspaper article, I read that many of those were infants born out of wedlock. Imagine...not only grief, but shame... The more recent ones were
made by Ward's Funeral Home using drop-in letters. An earlier one I saw was paper inked with "Infant" and an illegible date, of course deteriorating
badly under a piece a glass. 

Pauper's grave, Paula Jean



Tragedies...

  

The worst - two sets of different-aged siblings who died on the same day, or a few days apart.

..........................................................


  

A personal note: my grandson, 11, is freaked out by my occasional cemetery tours because he's afraid of the "ghosts" and the idea of walking around where there are skeletons. He's getting used to it, because it's one of the prices you pay of you want to hang out with grandma a good part of your childhood. Lol! My granddaughter, 7, loves them, thinks they're beautiful and has ideas about how to pay her respects to the little kids. She has a plan to bring her old toys to put on their graves. Last year before her birthday, we were driving through a different one and she said, "I know, I'll have my birthday party here and my friends can bring toys for the dead children instead of for me!"  Good girl!  Maybe she's a Mexican girl at heart, eh, bixa?

Well, her parents had another b-day plan, but this year I'm going to help her sort out her old toys... 

[bixaorellana]

Really beautiful and affecting, Diane! I love the light in these photos, so effective with the weathered stone and the dried grass. It is sobering in these old graveyards to see how many children were so easily lost to disease back then.

Your granddaughter is so sensitive and generous! If she continues to be interested, maybe you all can visit the cemetery on the day of the angelitos, Oct. 31, to leave candy on the children's graves as is done here.

[DianeMP]

Feb 4, 2015 21:42:54 GMT bixaorellana said:

Really beautiful and affecting, Diane! I love the light in these photos, so effective with the weathered stone and the dried grass. It is sobering in these old graveyards to see how many children were so easily lost to disease back then.

Your granddaughter is so sensitive and generous! If she continues to be interested, maybe you all can visit the cemetery on the day of the angelitos, Oct. 31, to leave candy on the children's graves as is done here.

Thank you, Bixa!  Funny thing is, my granddaughter is the less sensitive of my two.  For some reason, she connects with cemeteries in a rather cheerful, but respectful way.  Like I said - she must be a Mexican girl!  My grandson, who is the softy, has a much more Caucasian view - it's all creepy and to be avoided.  That is a great idea about leaving candy.  She will so love that!

[DianeMP]

The Hill Cemetery near Chiloquin, Oregon, is "wild west" style. This is in farm country about 15 miles north of where I live. It appears to have been founded in the mid-to-late 19th Century. There are late 20th C. burials there, but it is so thickly overgrown that I couldn't make much headway in investigating the place. My guess is that there are about 300 graves (and probably a lot that are unmarked), so it was bigger than I expected for being out in the middle of nowhere. I do know there used to be a lot more ranchers and farmers in the area. Two groups are buried at Hill Cemetery: white farming families and Native American families, who seem to have the more recent graves. As always with old cemeteries, there were a lot of children's graves, most notably were several from 1918 - Spanish flu, most likely. One family buried 11-year-old twins, a boy and girl, that year. The same family lost an infant in 1903. A lifetime of grief.

The Barkley Family...







Peaceful farm landscape all around...





Some grave markers were homemade, especially the Native American ones. It is always moving to see what is placed on the graves - usually a lot of stuff!







Some other things on the above grave, scattered around by the weather (pardon my edits)... 





The lovely simple ones...







It was a nice exploration in the weeds on a beautiful day.

[Deleted]

I love these photos, but I'm sure you understand that it would have been much better to do this under the light of the full moon with the headstones wreathed in ground fog, perhaps with skeleton horses and riders standing on the horizon.

There are so many styles of markers and tombstones that I imagine that most of them were special orders to a local stone carver. The area may have been too sparsely settled back then to have anybody really specialised in tombs with some standard models on display.

[bixaorellana]

Not only was I really happy to see new additions to this thread, but it was a pleasure to look at the first part again. I absolutely love your treatment of each photo, capturing the love and grief that lingers on each stone, no matter how remote or now abandoned.

[DianeMP]

Kerouac said: There are so many styles of markers and tombstones that I imagine that most of them were special orders to a local stone carver. The area may have been too sparsely settled back then to have anybody really specialised in tombs with some standard models on display.

Hi, kerouac! The nearby small city of Klamath Falls could probably have had a casket & tombstone seller. Some in this cemetery are identical to ones I've seen elsewhere in the county. I doubt there were any stone carvers of the caliber required. It just wasn't that kind of town (and still isn't). Another possibility would have been mail order from the Sears or Montgomery-Wards catalog. Anything a farmer would ever need could be ordered in those catalogs. (My mother grew up on a remote cattle ranch and just about everything was acquired that way.)  

Hmm...the moon should be full in a couple of nights...

bixa, thanks so much for the compliment! I'm tickled pink that you like these.

[lugg]

Shame on me I missed your report first posts but so glad I have seen them now. fantastic, atmospheric photos.

[DianeMP]

Oct 4, 2015 18:51:13 GMT lugg said:

Shame on me I missed your report first posts but so glad I have seen them now. fantastic, atmospheric photos.

Haha - no shame required, lugg. Thanks very much for stopping by!