Document text
Cemetery is hidden well, and so is its ownership Jim Craven photo A gravestone for Ellin Hays, who died in 1868, marks one of 47 known graves in the Hays Cemetery outside Gold Hill. What isn�t known is who actually owns the one-acre site. County must clear up mystery before giving it to Gold Hill association By Chris Bristol GOLD HILL � In a field a few miles outside of town, seemingly forgotten but certainly not gone, sits a lonely graveyard that dates back to the mid-1800s. It is a pioneer cemetery. It is, the misspelled sign says, the Hays Cemetary. There are 47 known graves, some of them unmarked. A few are marked but barely, like the following: EMIGRANT BABY BURIED AT NIGHT FOR SAFETY No date. No name. No explanation of the situation. It is a minor mystery best left undisturbed, dating back as it does to a dark era in Oregon history marred by ignorant and often bloody culture clashes between settlers and American Indians. Of more pressing concern these days is another, less tragic mystery. Namely, who the heck owns the cemetery? Acting on the belief the one-acre property was donated to the public in 1897 and then abandoned, Jackson County officials recently initiated legal steps seeking clear title. They want to give it to the Gold Hill Historical Society for preservation as a historic site. But the cemetery apparently was never abandoned. In fact, as recently as 1993 a local woman was buried there. "This is all news to me," Rolen Rosecrans, a descendant of the Hays family and sexton of the cemetery, said of the county�s plan Friday. "We went through all of this a few years ago. I thought we were all squared away with the county." The cemetery was established sometime in the 1850s. It is located about a quarter-mile off Hodson Road, several miles outside Gold Hill on the west side of Interstate 5. Public access is limited � gates block the right-of-way � and the cemetery is landlocked by fields and pastures. The earliest grave site belongs to Jacob Gall, one of the first settlers in the area and namesake of nearby Galls Creek. According to his headstone, he died April 7, 1856, at the age of 55. Among those buried here are Isaac Fredenburg Jr., a native of New York and veteran of the War of 1812 who died in 1884 at the age of 90, and an unidentified "cattle buyer" who was "killed for his money." That�s all his grave marker says. A three-pronged madrone marks the area where many of the Hayses are buried. Scrub oaks dot the landscape. Burrs attach to clothes like velcro. Traffic seen from the freeway, about three-quarters of a mile away, creates background noise that belies the cemetery�s otherwise remote location. Many of the grave sites date well into the 1970s, as the name Hays gave way to descendants such as the Cooks, the Flippens and the Rosecranses. The confusion over ownership of the cemetery apparently stems from gaps in the chain of title, which resulted in the cemetery being left off tax-assessment maps. The glitch is not unheard of; old map lines often diverge from legal descriptions of property. Assistant county counsel Debbie Minder said the existence of the cemetery was unknown to county officials until 1991, when a road crew followed the right-of-way out of curiosity and spotted a graveyard at its terminus. "Nobody knew it was there," Minder said. "The assessor�s office didn�t even know it existed." A title search proved fruitless, the last recorded land transfer being a deed exactly 100 years earlier in which a man named Peter O. Wilson donated a tiny parcel of his property � the one-acre cemetery � to "the public." In 1997, the county foreclosed on "unknown owner" for unpaid taxes. Fast forward to January, when the county Board of Commissioners endorsed a resolution conveying the property to the Gold Hill Historical Society as an unregistered and undesignated cemetery that nevertheless held "significant" historical value. "We would be the best people to have it, if anybody," said Clare Moore, treasurer of the historical society. "It�s a part of our history, and it can�t be replaced." Before the transfer can be made, however, the county has to clear title. To do so, the county has to publish for two weeks a public summons to notify anyone laying claim to the property of its intentions. Minder initially thought there would be no problems. After all, the county has owned the title by court order for three years. Told that Rosecrans claims title, she promised to look into it. The county, she said, is not anxious to make an already confusing situation even worse. "Our only interest here is preservation of a historic site," she said. "We have no desire to give it away to somebody else and then really have a mess." Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA