Rebecca Craig Sonniksen
Walking through pioneer cemeteries, I love to imagine the lives of the people whose names and tributes are etched into the granite headstones. I imagine the late 1800’s, when the school teacher, the farmer, the preacher, the journalist, the well driller, the merchant, all traveled cross-country looking for a better life.
The dates on the stones also invite you to imagine lives cut short by consumption, farming accidents, lightning strikes, drownings and suicide. And the small stones etched with lambs mark the heartbreaking loss of babies and children.
For many of us, they were our ancestors settling in such towns as Grass Valley, Moro, Klondike, Wasco, Antelope, Locust Grove, Monkland, Kent and Shaniko that became the world’s largest inland wool shipping center.
The pioneers who braved these hardships and tragedies set the stage for what many of us take for granted. My great grandfather, Thomas Craig, and members of his Irish-born family homesteaded in Sherman County in the1890s. When my sister and I found out that they were buried in Wilcox Observer Cemetery, a small cemetery located on private land 2 ½ miles south of Kent, Oregon, off U.S. Hwy. 97, we planned a visit.
What we found was a graveyard that had been abandoned and was surrounded by encroaching agricultural land. Pieces of barbwire were rolled up and strewn around the graves. Markers were knocked over and covered in weeds and grasses. Decorative wrought iron fences surrounding some graves were filled with weeds, and the graves and markers had disappeared, sunken into the ground.
We were saddened by this condition and decided to work together with the new land owner to restore and preserve this pioneer cemetery. In addition to the nearly 20 marked graves there is evidence of about 15 unmarked graves. We would like to conduct a search using ground penetrating radar to locate and mark the unmarked graves and reset and repair the damaged stones.
Before we can begin, however, we need the support of other desendants of these 30 or so souls, because only together can we hope to restore this sacred place, which has been neglected for more than 100 years.
To that end we have listed below the names engraved on the tombstones. If you recognize a name or know someone who might be related, or if you are interested in helping us restore dignity to this pioneer cemetery, please contact me at rsonniksen@gmail.com.
If you would like to know more about the Wilcox aka Observer Farm aka old Kent Cemetery, check out the web page www. shermancountyoregon.com.