VERBOORT CEMETERY HISTORY
By Florence Evers Herinckx
Presented at Visitation Parish's Harris Center on November 7, 2002
To
tell you the beginning of the cemetery, I must introduce my Grandfather
Peter Evers.Peter was born Oct. 29,
1851 in Hollandtown, WI. the oldest of four
children.His father John Evers, a leather
shoemaker died when Peter was 9
years old.Peter grew up
wanting to be a wagon maker but his Stepfather, Bernard Tennison
insisted he be a shoemaker as
his Father was.All the
tools his Father brought from Holland were his.This
he did.He apprenticed under a
William Van Auvel and made a high top shoe
called a leather boot of the finest French Kip leather available. If
taken care of, his
shoes lasted for years.
When the people were planning on moving to Oregon in 1875, Peter had
his eye on Antonia, daughter of Antone
Vandehey, the wooden shoemaker.Her
parents agreed to their marriage on May 29, 1876, before the Vandehey
family
headed for Oregon. To make sure the young couple
would follow, they left their 4-year-old daughter, Ella.In
1877 after the
birth of their first child Petronella on April
14, Peter and his family along with Ella and Peter’s two sisters Mary
and Petronella,
and Peter’s friend Henry DeHair (De Hyer)
traveled to Oregon by train to San Francisco, by boat to Portland
Oregon and by train
to Cornelius where they were met by the Vandehey
family.We do not know the day of arrival but know
they were here for
Petronella Evers marriage to August Van Loo,
December 1, 1877, the first wedding in the new Church, dedicated October
24,1875 as St. Francis Xavier.
On
their journey to Oregon, Henry told Peter “If anything happens to me I
want all my possessions to be given to the
Antone Krieger family.In
return, all I want is a stone or a marker for my grave”.
Peter settled in Verboort on 30 acres where Florence Crop now lives.He bought this land from Adrian
Vandervelden.In 1880 he
bought 45 acres across the road on the Charles Conklin land claim, from
Hubert and Johanna Cop
Bernards.It was a solid
oak tree forest.Peter cleared a small area east
of the present house and built his first house
from a harness shop that he removed from
Centerville three miles away and moved there before Annie (Krieger) was
born there
July 15,1881.
In
the meantime Henry settled on 75 acres south of Banks.At
Verboort a search was on for a suitable cemetery.
St. John’s Catholic Church
of Cornelius was located on Fern Hill and on a sloping hill east of the
Church is their Catholic
cemetery.Verboort
searchers wanted such a site.My Grandpa was a man
of a few words and simply said, “It would
take all day for a funeral to travel so far and
to just visit a grave would be hard to do.If he
had a plan in mind at this time I
do not know.
Henry DeHair (De Hyer) was helping his neighbor John Spiering build a
barn when he fell from the structure, and died
as a result of those injuries in the Spiering
home on October 27, 1880.Henry was the 15th
person to die in the Verboort
community.Peter buried his
friend in a little clearing, that turned out to be 24 ft. west from the
now center of the cemetery
along the north fence.
This land was accepted as a cemetery on January 13 1882, by Washington
County, the State of Oregon, and the
Archdiocese of Portland.The
cemetery consisted of one acre of land given by Peter and Antonia
Evers, and one acre given
by John and Mary Vandecoevering.In
addition, each family donated one-third acre for a driveway.The driveway
was maintained by Washington County for years.In fact, while Herman Mayer was the grader driver, he
would park the
grader on the cemetery driveway every evening.Documents recording the transfer of title of this land
is on microfilm in
deed book “Q”, pages 448, 449 and 450 in the
Washington County Court House.
Father DeLatte noted in his writings dated 1885, that when he first
arrived the cemetery was still covered with brush
and stumps.It only took
one workday to clear the brush.However, it was
William Meeuwsen who removed the
stumps in return for farming the unused portion
of the cemetery.William was able to farm the land
for five years.
By
1885, the 14 buried by the church were being moved to the new cemetery.The first trench was dug starting at
the north fence and includes:
Henry Bastain (1878, child)
Mary Krieger (28 years old, wife of Anton)
Agnes Jasper (May 6,1876, Mrs. Caspar)
Next are the graves of Father Verboort and his parents.I
may note here that the body of Mary Krieger was moved to the Krieger
lot#NE327B in 1911 by my father Albert Evers.
In the next trench starting at Henry DeHair’s
grave is:
Henry DeHair (died October 27,1880)
Johannis Petri VanLoo (died 1-25-1878, baby)
Elizabeth Vandervelden (born 1878, died
8-16-1880)
John Vandervelden (born 1878, died 8-24-1879)
John Proctor (a 1879 child)
Rosa Vanderzanden (died 9-27-1879, 2 years and
27 days old)
These graves listed are outside of the present
perimeter of the cemetery and unmarked.
The
first recorded burial directly into the cemetery was 4-year-old Johanna
Julia Vandehey, daughter of Henry and
Elizabeth Vandehey.On June
21 1885, she died of whooping cough, and is in this second trench.It was common
practice at the time for a family member to dig
the grave next to the last burial.Therefore,
graves are quite close in this area
as most were children.On
the northeast side three Vandecoevering babies, sons of Peter and
Allegonda, are buried beyond
Jacob Cop’s grave.An adult
male is buried in the northwest corner beyond Alick Moder’s grave.Along the northwest
fence are the graves of 35 to 50 unbaptised
babies.Everyone buried their own, records were
kept only on church burials.
In
my growing up years by the cemetery, Henry DeHair’s grave was always
marked with a weathered wooden cross
about two feet high with his name spelled out in
nail heads.Antone Krieger’s second wife, Johanna
Vandecoevering-Krieger, made the marker, and
kept his burial spot clean of weeds.When the
cemetery ground was
worked in 1938 many of the markers were removed.Henry’s marker was never replaced, and his site
remains unmarked,
as do several of the other graves listed above.
It
is easy to understand why that first burial should be considered the
cornerstone that constitutes the foundation of our
cemetery. It is sad to know the one thing Henry
wanted, ‘a marker or stone’ was denied him over 60 years of the 120
years he
has been buried there.
Peter followed his friend’s wishes, and the 75-acre farm was given to
Antone Krieger.Antone kept the farm until
October 11, 1888, when it was sold to Henry and
Mary Vandehey-VanDomelen for $1,087.50.In 1920,
Frank and Nettie
Herinckx bought the farm from the VanDomelen’s.This is the homestead where my husband John was
raised, and the land
is still in the Herinckx family today.
The above report on the
starting of the Visitation Cemetery was given at a Forest Grove
Historical meeting held in
Verboort in the Harris Center on November 7,
2002.
This is a first installment of the cemetery
history.
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