Graveside Musings

The Salem Pioneer Cemetery in Salem, Oregon is the final resting place of many of Salem’s early and prominent citizens. Many of the names one finds on the headstones here are also the names of town streets, parks and schools. One of the missionaries to arrive in Salem in the 1830’s was David Leslie. When the mission to the Kalapuya tribes ended David Leslie stayed in Salem to settle the 640 acres, in what is now South Salem, which he acquired through the Donation Land Act of 1850. As was customary, an acre or so was set aside to bury family members. At the center of this cemetery is the Leslie family plot that began with the burial of one young daughter in 1853 and another in 1854. Sometime in the late 1850’s the Independent Order of Odd Fellows purchased surrounding acreage for community burials and the cemetery grew to over 16 acres. Today the city parks department is the legal steward of the cemetery and it is maintained by the volunteer organization Friends of Salem Pioneer Cemete...

Alice Bingham was born in Salem, Oregon in 1895 to judge George Bingham and his wife Willie Harris Bingham. When Alice was just shy of her first birthday her father bought a grand house on the corner of Mission St. and 12th that is known today as Historic Deepwood Estate. Alice grew up in the house and was wed there in 1915 to Keith Powell, a local banker. The ceremony took place in front of the ornate coal-burning fireplace in the house’s main parlor.  For the past year I have been a volunteer at Historic Deepwood museum and steeped myself in its history and lore and the lives of those who dwelt there.  Alice and her parents were not the only family to occupy the Queen Anne Victorian home throughout its history. In fact, Alice Bingham would not even be the only woman named Alice to spend a significant amount of time there. But after pouring over dozens of photographs of this woman, as a little girl in ringlets and as a beguiling teenager, she is the occupant that intrig...

Thomas Cox came to Oregon from Illinois in 1847 with his wife, Martha, and several children. Mr. Cox owned a mercantile in Illinois and he must have really had a strong case of “Go West” fever because when he could not find a buyer for his store he packed a dozen or so ox-drawn wagons with all of his unsold merchandise and set out on a perilous journey to a land he had never seen, but had heard stories of its fertility and promise. Upon arrival Thomas Cox opened the first mercantile in Salem. His wife, having survived the arduous journey west, died just two years later in 1849 and was the first to be buried in this hillside cemetery, part of the property they purchased around the time that he decided to sell the mercantile and try his hand at farming. Thomas was buried beside her in 1863 and as the years went by Thomas Cox’s children, various other relations and close friends were laid to rest in the clearing that overlooks a spectacular verdant valley that today grows some of the fi...

                                                             Photo by Sid Graves Only recently did I know that there is a name for people like me. We are called taphophiles because we are drawn to, find respite in and are claimed by an abiding affection for cemeteries. I don’t remember when this passion of mine took hold exactly. It built slowly over the years probably by way of a life-long love of listening to my grandmother tell stories about our ancestors while I helped her in the kitchen or garden. At the end of every anecdote I always asked, “And when did they die, grandma?” That question was followed inevitably by, “And where are they buried?” Decades later, as a graduate student at the University of Oregon I was in Knight Library trying to wrap my brain a...