About WRITTEN IN STONE . . . OR NOT: The stories of Wilsonville’s unmarked graves
Presented by Charlotte Lehan, Wilsonville City Councilor and
Former Mayor, Chair of the Oregon Commission on Historic Cemeteries, and
President of the Pleasant View Cemetery Association.
Find out about our Wilsonville area cemeteries and the hundreds of
unmarked graves in and around our city. Why aren’t they marked? Should they be?
The answers aren’t always written in stone.
In this presentation, we will cover the background of the
cemeteries around Wilsonville and what makes them important to our history.
This will include the basics of cemetery mapping and how to get the most out of
genealogy research in any cemetery one might visit. We will include a segment
on Monuments 101, detailing repair, cleaning, styles, and artwork. Along the
way, there will be a few stories of some of our more colorful permanent
residents.
We will also discuss the unmarked graves of early Chinese and
Japanese individuals, as well as hundreds of other unmarked graves – not all of
which are in existing cemeteries. Should the community make an effort to mark
or acknowledge any of them? Let’s start the discussion.
About the Speaker:
Charlotte Lehan is a Wilsonville City Councilor and former
Mayor. She is currently the Chair of the Oregon Commission on Historic
Cemeteries, and President of the Pleasant View Cemetery Association and has
been working on its restoration for more than ten years. She serves on the
board of the Wilsonville Boones Ferry Historical Society. Charlotte is a
seventh generation Wilsonville resident whose ancestors first arrived in
Wilsonville in 1850.
