“Oystervile Cemetery Sketches”

     My first project for the new year is to digitize the Oysterville Cemetery records.  Keeping track of plot sales and burials is part of the job of the Secretary-Treasurer of the Oysterville Cemetery Association.  That would be me.  I more-or-less inherited the job from Berta Eberhardt in 1979 and, during all the years since, I have hand-written the records in the green spiral notebook that was begun by Berta the year previously.
     Before Berta’s sojourn, Uncle Cecil was the main man.  He kept the records the way he mowed the lawn between the gravestones – the old-fashioned way.  That meant on bits and pieces of paper, old envelopes, napkins or the backs of business cards.  The lawn he kept trim with a scythe.
     I’ve decided it’s time to catch up to the 21^st century and I’m finding it quite a challenge.  Thank goodness for Marie Oesting and her Oysterville Cemetery Sketches, copyright 1988.  It’s a paperback book, now out of print, that lists all the recorded and/or known burials in the old (or pioneer) part of the cemetery, and much, much more.  I think of it as the “Oysterville Cemetery Bible.”
     In the 1970s, the Espy family had donated an acre of land adjacent to the rapidly filling burial ground, effectively doubling its size.  About the same time, Larry Weathers, Pacific County’s Preservation Officer, took a few weekends to prowl the pioneer section and make sketches of every single tombstone, mortuary marker, burial mound and even some of the trees and shrubbery.  He did it for fun and for posterity – thank goodness!
     Using those sketches and searching through old newspapers, the Sou’wester, and the contents of the Cemetery Association’s safety deposit box, Marie began putting together a book.  For almost every gravesite she interviewed old-timers or relatives of the deceased and gathered oral histories which she faithfully transcribed and added to her book.  The result is a charming and informative look at those who have gone before us and who form their own sort of community up there on Davis Hill.
     Of particular interest to me, are the references made concerning relatives or inlaws – information that is seldom clear from a simple look at the names on the stones.  For instance, in the Nelson plot are the graves of Marcus M. Nichols and Fred M. Wakefield.  Mildred Nelson Keith said that Marcus M. Nichols “was married to Victoria ‘Tory’ Nelson, that’s my sister.”  And about Fred Wakefield, Mildred said:  “Fred died about three months after he and my sister Tory were married.  Some people thought it was kind of funny that she’d bury him down there where Marcus is, two husbands together.  But I can understand her feelings…”
       When Marie moved away some years ago, she generously assigned the rights of her book to the Oysterville Cemetery Association.  One reprinting has already sold out.  Time for another!