I went to Portland, Oregon this summer, my first time ever out there. Before I went I tried looking up any monuments in the city and I could not find any. My wife and I were driving up from Oregon City to Portland and my wife gave me directions to what I thought was a coffee shop. Instead, it turned out to be a Civil War cemetery with a soldier’s statue! Michele does a lot better at finding forgotten statues than I do. Of course, she is a librarian and an information specialist.
The statue is contained in the Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery which you can reach by going through the Greenwood Hills Cemetery. The cemetery is at 9002 SW Boones Ferry Road. The reason I could not find it in guidebooks is that the statue went missing half-a-century before.
The Greenwood Hills Cemetery was opened in 1884 as a Masonic burial ground. In the 1880s, the Union veterans organization The Grand Army of the Republic bought some of Greenwood’s lands to use to bury their members. In 1901, a monument to the Civil War Union soldiers was erected.
The monument, made out of bronze looks fairly standard for an early 20th Century monument, but I found out that it was a reproduction of the 1901 statue. In 1967 the statue was stolen to be melted down for its bronze to feed the thieves drug habits. For the next half century there was no statue their, although the base remained in place.
The cemetery has approximately 250 graves of Civil War veterans. While the cemetery had been well taken care of by the Grand Army of the Republic and by the veterans’ children, it appears to have gone into decline in the second half of the 20th Century. A local historian, Craig Jones, noted in 2004 that the statue was missing. In 2005 the Oregon legislature created the Veterans and War Memorial Grant Program. The Sons of Union Veterans applied for a grant to replace the statue and was granted $19,500. The Sons were also able to raise several thousand in additional donations.
In June of 2009 the Sons organized a dedicatory celebration for the new Civil War soldier. Dozens of people came out to support the monument. The Colonel Edward D. Baker Camp of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War led the way to completion of the monument. In addition to the 6 foot 4 inch statue, there is the original granite base, several brass plates that were installed when the monument went up originally, and an additional plaque placed on in 2009.
Many readers know that while Oregon was a “Free State,” its population was divided between emigrants from the North and South. Before the war broke out the state legislature tried to control entry of Blacks seeking to move there. John Whiteacker was the Indiana-born governor of the state in 1861 and he made no effort to support the Union. The governor was also pro-slavery which led to accusations that he was a traitor to the United States after Fort Sumter.
I have seen photos of the original statue and the new one is based on it, but it is a modern original interpretation by a local sculptor using a Civil War reenactor as the model.
On the base, there are plaques from the organizations behind the erection of the monument. The one below is for the Women’sĀ Relief Corp 1888.
Next is the Grand Army of the Republic.
There is a dedicatory plaque from the children of the veterans.
Greenwood Hills is now considered the “pioneer cemetery,” although the first interments took place in the 1880s.
The entrance from Greenwood to the Grand Army of the Potomac is highlighted by two brick pillars which function as a gate, even though there is no wall around the cemetery and no actual gate! The plaque says “The Boys In Blue of the Civil War 1861-1865.”
Here are the two pillars.
The left pillar says “Grand Army of the Republic 1861-1865.”
Beyond the gate are almost 250 graves. None were interred during the Civil War.
While the Oregon state government did not begin recruiting until 1862, most of the observable tombstones say that the grave contains a man from another state who, after the war, moved to Portland. For example, Private Teets was in the 62nd Pennsylvania Regiment.
Oscar Downs served in the 2nd New York Mounted Rifles.
John Wempler was in the 133 Ohio Infantry.
In 1862 there were several Oregon regiments organized. This is the grave of John William of the First Oregon Cavalry. When the governor of Oregon refused to raise regiments, the Union army sent volunteers from California to protect the state. As we see today, people don’t like having troops from other states located in their territory. The first Oregon Cavalry was among the earliest regiments recruited. Rather than function as a unit, it was split between the Washington Territory, protecting harbos in Oregon, and responding to Native American attacks.
Note: All color photos in this post were taken by Patrick Young except as noted.
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