[or-roots] Re: [GFO] Powell Grove Cemetery

Eugene Barnes evbarnes at earthlink.net
Sun Jun 20 17:29:06 PDT 2004


Out on 82nd ave and Foster Rd was the old Piggly Wiggly
Market, open but plenty of fresh veggies.  Down the Road
a piece was the veterans hospital on the left side a few
blocks from Raymond Court.  We used to go down an
talk with the Civil War vets.

Down by the BobWhite theater was were the street car
tracks veered of the main route.  Up the street was an old
hardware store that had a two headed fawn in its window.

My grandfather got tickets from the local Signal Oil SS on
pre WWII about SE 66th Ave., and we go to see the Johnny Carson
show in Portland with Vera Vague and all the crew.  In about
'39 I attended the old Arletta Grammar Shcool and had a teacher
that had taught my mother.  I had stayed for a time with my
grandparents due to my mother's illness.

My father worked for the Francis Motor Car Co., and I
can still draw a picture of what it looked like inside.

Gene
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: CARROLLOUC at aol.com 
  To: or-roots at sosinet.sos.state.or.us 
  Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:09 PM
  Subject: Re: [or-roots] Re: [GFO] Powell Grove Cemetery


  Hi Eugene - This is quite a difficult one. if you have the death certificates from WA and CA they might help but would probably not tell you where they were buried. Obituaries? Have you searched for those? One might be in the place death for each and another in the Portland Oregonian or Journal. Also, Parkrose at that time had a small, local newspaper called the Parkrose Enterprise. They might be obtainable from the Knight Library in Eugene through an interlibrary loan.

  Parkrose was out of the city of Portland at that time and I don't recall that there were any mortuaries there. The closest ones I remember were the Colonial Mortuary in the Hollywood District (they handled my grandfather in 1947) and Gables Funeral Home in Montavilla. There may have been some closer but that would take research through the Polk City Directories of those years and I believe phone books were almost non-existant.  One of the local mortuaries would probably have received the bodies if they were shipped to Oregon.

  You are correct in your rememberance of the fuss about the cemetery being moved. 122nd curved off of Sandy on the west side of the cemetrey. It made a slight S curve and then straightened out to head south up the hill towards Halsey. Eventually the problem was reconciled and there is still a curve but with the additonal lanes going straight past the east side of the cemetery, leaving it stranded between the roads in a sort of pyramid shape. Ah, progress.  Some buildings were removed rather than moving the cemetery.

  I graduated from Parkrose High in 1947 and had lived in Parkrose from the summer of 1941 until I married and moved to Medford in 1949. Peior to that time we lived in Montavilla but had lived in Parkrose when I was very small and my grandparents had a dairy farm on 109th and Simpson.

  Carroll (Cooper) Summers
    Hi Carroll,  Living in SW Portland I have been out to this loving little cemetery many times.  

    I also found a letter by my grandfather in the Oregonian complaining about an attempt by the county to move this cemetery because it wanted to straighten out 122nd avenue (I believe). 

    Anyway I have been in contact with the current county administrators of this and the other 14 pioneer cemeteries and she has been very helpful i.e. the 70 pages I mentioned earlier.  But the problem I have incurred is apparently there is no records between the founding of this cemetery in 1848 and the beginning of the county administrator in 1949.

    The Oregon Historical Society has a book about this cemetery but it only lists names that appear in the headstones.

    The issue I have is that my Great grand father and Great grand mother had there marriage annul in 1906.  The actual documents are in the Oregon Archives in Salem.  Both remarried.  He died in Seattle, Washington and she died on Oakland, California.

    Now the dilemma.  When you go the cemetery you see a head stone that says Father and Mother.  It has the dates (Year only) that I have for my Great Grand Parents. (Birth and Death).  But who is really buried there?  

    And because my Great Grand mother died in 1930 and Great Grand Father died in 1936.  Divorces and annulments were taboo subjects during this period in our history and they both remarried.  So my dilemma.

    Eugene Melvin
    SW Portland, Oregon
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