The Clackamas Pioneer Cemetery is one of the oldest cemeteries in Clackamas County. The Oregon State Historic Preservation Office establishes its founding as 1850. Once settled amongst farm fields, today the cemetery is tucked in an industrial park off of Highway 213 in between Interstate 205 and SE 82nd Avenue, it is hardly the eternal rest once envisioned by its earliest inhabitants.



Beginning in 1847, William Tyndall Matlock and his wife, Elizabeth Jane Ballard Matlock, informally allowed the Baptist Church to use the property. In November of 1854, the Baptists, led by Revs David Hubbard and Hezekiah E Johnson, erected a meeting house there. The Matlocks formalized the relationship in 1865 when they gave the church a deed to the property for the meeting house and an adjoining cemetery. According to Cemetery records, the meeting house burnt down on 27 March 1869. In the 1960s Emily Chapin described the incident to a relative as follows: "The church burned when [Emily Chapin's] grandfather Sol Imel...and some men were digging a grave and other men were shingling. An old man decided to burn the discarded shingles and the fire crept underground to the church." Emily goes on to say that the church was rebuilt in town.



There is, however, a second story regarding the fire which destroyed the church. It is described in "Dorothy's Biography - Volume I" by Kenneth Clark Hammill as follows:



"‘Betsy' Elizabeth (Ballard) Matlock, W T's [William Tyndall Matlock's] wife, had bad luck with fires. She started the fire that burned the church-school. Alone, she was burning dry grass around the church when the fire got away, consuming the building, probably a small, bare one. It was never rebuilt. Only the cemetery remained, and still does…"



In either case, by 1880 all remnants of the church were gone and the property fell into disrepair. In 1889 Rudyard Kipling toured the cemetery on his way from Portland to fish in the Clackamas River. He wrote about the experience in Book II of "From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel": "Sometimes we crashed through bracken; anon, where the blackberries grew rankest we found a lonely little cemetery, the wooden rails all awry and the pitiful stumpy headstones nodding drunkenly at the soft green millins." A group of women and teachers came to the rescue, caring for the cemetery until 1909. In 1910, a community group assumed care. The last member of the group, Mike Anderson, recently died and his daughter Ronita Lussier is the caretaker. Ronita can be contacted at [email protected].



The original footprint of the cemetery was enlarged twice. First in 1936 when Balfe B Youmens, the grandson of William Tyndall Matlock and Elizabeth Jane Ballard Matlock, deeded the quarter acre along 82nd Avenue to the Clackamas Cemetery Association. On the cemetery map, this land is referred to as Section B and the graves run a different direction than the rest of the cemetery. Balfe was the eldest son of Matlock's youngest daughter, Almira Marice Matlock Youmans, and her husband Freeman Woods Youmans. Balfe, his wife Belle Potter Youmans, Almira and Freeman are all buried at Clackmas Pioneer.



In 1943, the [Oregon] State Highway Commission deeded a strip on land containing .34 acres along Ambler Road to the Clackamas Cemetery Association. On the cemetery map, the land is referred to as Section C.



The distinction of the oldest marked burial in the cemetery belongs to John Capps who died in 1862. His simple death notice published in The Oregon Argus on 5 April 1862 states: "Of Consumption, at the residence of Isaac Capps, on Sunday, March 30, John Capps, aged 25 years and 10 months." John was the son of pioneers Isaac Capps and Jemima Hubbard Capps who brought their large family of 14 children to Oregon via the Oregon Trail in 1845. All of their children, save one, died of consumption and many are buried at Clackamas Pioneer in a tidy row of simple graves. John was married to Mary Elizabeth Craghead, the daughter of Amanda Newbill Craghead. Amanda was the second wife of Francis L Talbert and the step-mother of Daniel Talbert for whom Mount Talbert is named.



The cemetery is home to many illustrious - and not so illustrious - pioneers of the county and their descendants. William Tyndall Matlock and Elizabeth Jane Ballard Matlock came West on the Oregon Trail in 1847 with 3 wagons full of family, possessions and dreams. Matlock was active with Territorial Legislature, serving as Librarian of the Legislature at one point and Speaker Pro Tem at another point. He served as a Commissary Agent during the Cayuse Indian War of 1848. Abraham Lincoln appointed him to act as Land Receiver at Oregon City in 1861. He also served as a Clackamas County Judge. Charity Mariah Mills Phillips arrived with her parents in 1843 - she is the cemetery's earliest known pioneer, Isaac & Jemima Capps with their 7 children arrived in 1845. Hezekiah & Elizabeth Johnson came in 1845 too. All told, at least 26 pioneers who arrived in Oregon prior to statehood are buried at Clackamas Pioneer. Some of the headstones attest to their journey; like James Roots who was "Born Mar 1, 1819 at Kent, England Married at Chatham England 1849 Emigrated to U S in 1854 Enlisted in the U S Army in 1862 Crossed the Plains in 1869 Died Oct 22, 1902."



The cemetery is home, as well, to 72 Veterans of the armed services: 2 from the Indian Wars, 30 from the Civil War, 2 from the Spanish War, 14 WW1, 10 WW2, 2 Vietnam with the remainder serving during peace time. Civil War Veteran Captain William Henry Smith was born and grew up in Washington County, Ohio. At the age of fifteen, his family moved to a farm in Missouri. When the war broke out, William enlisted as a Private, working his way up through the ranks until he became Captain of Company L, Second Missouri Cavalry. They engaged in many battles and military operations throughout the war in both Missouri and Tennessee. When the war was over, William moved west, settling in Oregon and working in the paper mills near Oregon City. He married Louise Rivers, and together they had four children. Captain Smith died in 1926 and wife died two years later. They are both buried at Clackamas Pioneer, not far from the front gate. In 2017 volunteers installed 6 brand new VA markers for Veterans who were in unmarked graves at the cemetery. A ceremony was held by the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War to dedicate the new stones.



In 2016-2018, a team of researchers spent countless hours researching cemetery records, documenting burials and mapping the cemetery. A new map detailing the location of burials was installed just prior to Memorial Day 2017, as well as a new up-to-date listing of all known burials in cemetery - both marked and unmarked. The website findagrave.com has been updated with headstone pictures of all the marked burials, death certificates and obituaries for all known burials at Clackamas Pioneer. Each Memorial Day all the known Veterans graves are marked with flags and the American Legion conducts a flag ceremony.