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Grass roots: After 150 years, pioneer cemetery gets a face-lift |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Monday, 11 April 2005 |
When Joel Coffee staked out his land claim north of Lacamas Lake in 1854, he wasn't planning a graveyard. But when Coffee died the next year, his burial there started what is now Fern Prairie Cemetery.
In its 150th year, Fern Prairie Cemetery is enjoying a new life. A columbarium, installed last fall, allows ashes to be stored without disturbing roots of the old oak trees.
The gravel path that loops through the grounds will be paved this year.
Cemetery commissioner William Zalpys sees the efforts as a way to honor the pioneers' memory. "Have you seen all the pioneer cemeteries that look abandoned?" he asks.
"That's because they are."
Zalpys, with two other commissioners and a secretary, make up Clark County's Cemetery District No. 1. Though the office in that district's only cemetery is open just one day per week, Zalpys feels the officials and volunteers have made significant improvements.
Before he joined the commission, Zalpys said, visitors had no access to water. "It seems minor but it's major for a cemetery.
"People come and put their flowers out and there's no water."
Visitors might also notice the grass mowed more often, or dead flowers removed. Zalpys wants to install benches soon, to give visitors a feeling of community.
"It's not like putting a flag down and leaving," he said. "It's coming and visiting and being family."
The cemetery celebrates its sesquicentennial Memorial Day weekend with a homecoming for families. Descendants of the Coffee and Van Vleet families will gather on the land claimed by those pioneer neighbors. In 1856, Coffee's daughter, Elizabeth Angeline, married Lewis Van Vleet, joining the families.
Their marriage produced Louisa Van Vleet, later Wright, who became the first female doctor in Clark County and, according to at least one source, in the entire Washington Territory. Louisa started her career as a teacher before attending Oregon Medical School and finishing her medical degree at the University of Michigan.
Louisa returned to Clark County in 1887, one of only two pioneer doctors with a degree in medicine. According to the collection "Clark County Pioneers: A Centennial Salute," published by the Clark County Genealogical Society, Louisa tended to many American Indians.
An article in the Daily Columbian said Louisa nearly became mayor of Camas. "With no active campaigning and practically no work in behalf of her candidacy she was defeated at the polls by but one vote," read the page-one story following her death.
Louisa died in 1913 when a horse kicked her in the chin, breaking her neck. Some Indian mourners reportedly traveled two days by canoe to attend her funeral.
Louisa was buried in the family plot, near the house she grew up in. That plot still dominates the cemetery's old section, with her uncle Alexander Coffee's obelisk towering above the simpler headstones.
Although the family turned the land over to the public by the close of the 19th century, Fern Prairie still welcomes Van Vleets and other pioneer descendants. Last November, Donald Keith Van Vleet Sr. was buried there 149 years after Joel Coffee.
Most pioneer families have stayed close to Clark County, Zalpys said. "Believe it or not, almost all these graves will be visited on Memorial Day weekend," he said.
"Very few of them don't have descendants here."
Diligent record-keeping has made finding ancestors at Fern Prairie easier. After years of neglect and two fires that destroyed original documents, nearly every grave in the cemetery is accounted for, said secretary Eileen Abernathy.
"We've filled in the records pretty much 95 percent," Abernathy said. "It's unbelievable."
For visitors without a family connection, Zalpys wants to mark notable graves for a self-guided tour.
He's also raising money for a monument honoring all county pioneers.
For a small cemetery of only 1,000 occupied plots, Fern Prairie has been attracting more attention, Zalpys said. The cemetery hosts around 20 burials per year, Zalpys said, up from eight or 10 per year a decade ago.
"People like what they're seeing, so they're coming," he said.
The Columbian
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