Lee Mission Cemetery Salem, Oregon

Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.

The oldest settler-community cemetery in Salem is that which was set aside from the claim of the Reverend Josiah L. Parrish, a member of the Methodist Mission in Oregon. Its first recorded burial occurred in 1842, a year after the mission headquarters had been relocated from its original site on the banks of the Willamette River to a point ten miles to the south, on Chemeketa Plain--the place which was to become Salem.

The cemetery is presently maintained by Lee Mission Cemetery, Inc., in cooperation with the Oregon-Idaho Conference of the United Methodist Church.

On the opposite end of Salem, where the Reverend David Leslie, another member of the Methodist Mission, had taken up a claim, a family burial plot first used as early as 1841 became the nucleus of the town's largest pioneer cemetery. The latter did not become a community cemetery, however, until the International Order of Oddfellows purchased eleven acres at the site in 1853. A hundred years later, in 1953, the Oddfellows' cemetery was transferred to public ownership under the title "Salem Pioneer Cemetery." In addition to those of Methodist missionaries David Leslie and Lewis H. Judson, the plots of many others notable in early Salem society are to be found in the Pioneer Cemetery now maintained by the City of Salem.

The Lee Mission Cemetery is of exceptional significance to Oregonians because it is the final resting place of a remarkable concentration of missionary leaders, preachers and educators whose part in the 19th century evangelical movement was inextricably bound up in the taming of the Oregon frontier. The importance of the Methodist Mission founded in Oregon by the Reverend Jason Lee in 1834 is not just that it was the first among several important missions to the Indians in the Pacific Northwest, nor is it that--at its height in 1841--the Oregon Mission was the largest single foreign missionary enterprise to have been launched from the united States.

The primary purpose of the mission under Jason Lee's leadership was to convert the native population to Methodism, and toward that end, satellite stations were set up throughout the region—at Nisqually on Puget Sound, at Clatsop Plains on the coast, and at The Dalles on the Columbia River. While some tentative success was realized among the Indians of the middle Columbia at "Wascopam," the Methodists eventually were discouraged in their proselytizing efforts among the scattered and decimated tribes of the Willamette Valley, where the base of their operations was laid.

Two major reinforcements of funds, equipment and personnel were raised before the mission was dissolved in 1844—ten years after its founding. Secular departments, including mills, farms and a store used by the settler community, had been established to sustain the enterprise. With the last of the reinforcements, sent from New York in 1840, there were 68 men, women and children connected with the Oregon Mission, all of them supported by the New York-based Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. As part of the optimistic plan for expansion and outreach, the principal station was moved to Chemeketa Plain, where a stream allowed for the construction of a grist mill and saw mill.

The mill, Jason Lee's dwelling place, the Indian Manual Labor Training School, and the parsonage for Gustavus Mines, Preacher-in-charge of the Willamette Station and Director of the Indian School, were the first buildings erected in Salem and among the most imposing in pre-Territorial Oregon.

Returning to the United States in 1838, Jason Lee toured the western border states and the Eastern Conferences to inspire support for the mission and encourage emigration. With a petition from Willamette Valley settlers , he memorialized Congress on the need for government protection for the rights of United States citizens in the far Northwest, which was- -since the Treaty of Ghent- -occupied jointly by the United States and Great Britain. Members of the mission were instrumental in the organization of the Provisiona Government of Oregon, which operated from 1843 until Oregon became a Territory in 1848, and they founded the Oregon Institute, which later became Willamette University- -the first institution of higher education west of the Rocky Mountains. While their primary Christian mission may have failed, the Methodists played a role of utmost importance in the settlement and orderly development of the Oregon Country.

When the many other pioneer cemeteries throughout the state are arrayed alongside the Lee Mission Cemetery in Salem, the special distinction of the latter is clear: it is the ultimate shrine associated with Jason Lee. The Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposi tion, held in Portland in 1905, attracted nationwide attention and made Oregonians conscious of their history as never before. In the Imperalistic and somewhat romantic temper of the times, Jason Lee came to be ranked second only to Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factor John McLoughlin as a paternal figure in the opening of the Oregon Country. In 1844, Lee had been recalled from the field and replaced as Oregon Mission Superintendent in a mood of retrenchment stemming from financial difficulties and the recriminations of a few disaffected members of the mission family. A year later, having never returned to Oregon, but having been resoundingly exonerated of all charges of speculation and misadministration, he died of tuberculosis at his birthplace in Stanstead, Lower Canada. Thus iif was that, in 1906, the National Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church returned Lee's remains to the country which the missionary had sought to civilize with such earnestness and s ingle -mindedness of purpose.

While there is no known contemporary portrait of this best-known of Oregon missionaries, there are two posthumous portraits based on contemporary references to his appearance (for example, his hair was dark; he was bearded and broad-shouldered), and his conjectural sculptured likeness is to be found in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol and upon the Oregon State Capitol grounds.1

The parsonage of the Methodist Mission and "Mill Place," Lee's home on Chemeketa Plain, are the only structural remains of the entire missionary enterprise. Both buildings were hastily rescued from destruction, relocated and restored as features of an historical park near the State Capitol and Willamette University, and they have been entered in the National Register of Historic Places.

The area containing the original mission site, north of Salem, is on the Advisory List to the National Register. Further action on registration of the original mission site awaits confirmation of the exact location through more detailed archeological investigation. It has been thought that, through shifting of the Willamette River channel caused by flooding, a good portion of the site may have been lost to erosion.

Jason Lee was educated at Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts under Wilber Fisk and spent two years as a teacher in the Stanstead Academy and preaching locally before answering the "call from beyond the Rocky Mountains" publicized in the Christian Advocate. He was admitted to full connection in the New England Conference in Boston, was ordained and designated "Missionary to the Flathead Indians" in 1833. Accompanied by his nephew, the Reverend Daniel Lee, and three lay assistants, in the spring of 1834 he left Independence, Missouri with Nathaniel J. Wyeth's second overland expedition, arriving at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia the following September. The notion of establishing a mission among the Flatheads of the interior having been abandoned for practice reasons, Lee followed the advice of Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factor John McLoughlin and established his mission that fall on the banks of the Willamette River, some 60 mile south of the Columbia.

Cyrus Shepard (1799-1840), a native of Massachusetts, was one of the lay assistants who accompanied Jason Lee to Oregon in 1834. Having regained his health while teaching school at Fort Vancouver for a year, Shepard rejoined the missionary party in 1835 and continued his teaching for the Oregon Mission. Following are others buried in the Lee Mission Cemetery who figured importantly in Methodism and Oregon history.

Alanson Beers (1804-1853), a native of Connecticut, was recruited as a lay missionary and blacksmith for the first reinforcement to the Oregon Mission, 1836-1837. He had charge of the farm at the original Willamette Station. In 1843, with David Hill and Joseph Gale, he was elected a member of the first executive committee of the Provisional Government of Oregon. Following liquidation of the mission, he and former mission steward, George Abernethy (Provisional Governor of Oregon 1845-1849) formed a partnership and acquired the Island Milling Company's flair and lumber manufactories at Oregon City, thereby assuming responsibility for the debts of the mission.

The Reverend Alvan F. Waller (1808-1872), a native of Pennsylvania, was a member of the Oregon Mission's "Great Reinforcement" of 1839-1840. He was assigned to the station at the Falls of the Willamette (Oregon City) upon his arrival, and in the fall of 1842 he initiated a public subscription campaign to finance construction of the first Methodist church in Oregon. Thought to be the first Protestant church erected anywhere on the Pacific Coast, it was opened for use in 1844. By this time, Waller had been rotated to "Wascopam," the station at the Dalles of the Columbia. He was Pastor at Salem from 1847 to 1857. He was instrumental in obtaining the Territorial charter of 1853 for Willamette University in Salem--successor to an earlier Methodist enterprise, the Oregon Institute. University Hall (1867), the first permanent building of the University was renamed Waller Hall in 1912 to honor the agent who had successfully raised funds to cover the building's construction.

The Reverend Josiah L. Parrish (1806-1895), a native of New York, was a member of the Oregon Mission's "Great Reinforcement" of 1839-1840 and was a trustee of the Oregon Institute in Salem — the forerunner of Willamette university. Parrish participated in meetings leading to formation of the Provisional Government of Oregon. In 1843 he was rotated to the mission station at Clatsop Plains near the mouth of the Columbia. Upon dissolution of the mission in 1844, he acquired the farm at the Clatsop Plains station. He was an Indian Agent from 1849 to 1854. The original Lee Mission Cemetery parcel was set aside from the claim Parrish settled in Salem.

The Reverend Gustavus Hines (1809-1873), a native of New York and a member of the "Great Reinforcement" of 1839-1840, became Preacher-in-Charge of the Willamette Station and Director of the Indian Manual Labor Training School at Chemeketa Plain shortly after his arrival in Oregon. He was active in meetings leading to formation of the Provisional Government of Oregon in 1843, and, together with his wife, he raised Jason and Lucy Thompson Lee's daughter following Lee's death in 1845. Hines described his missionary experiences in A Voyage Around the World, published in Buffalo in 1850. The book was brought out again in the 1880s under the title Wildlife in Oregon.

The Reverend Harvey K. Hines (1828-1902), brother of Gustavus Hines, was appointed to the newly organized Oregon Conference in 1852 and arrived in the Pacific Northwest in the following year. He organized the First Methodist Church of The Dalles, and was presiding elder for the Salem, Puget Sound, Walla Walla, La Grande, and Boise districts from 1859 to 1879. He founded Blue Mountain University in La Grande, in Union County, in 1873. He was president of the Washington Territorial Council; editor of Pacific Christian Advocate 1880-1888; and was professor of theology at Willamette University 1890-1891. His published works include Illustrated History of the State of Oregon (1893), Illustrated History of Washington, Missionary History of the Pacific Northwest (1899), and Life and Services of Jason Lee.

The Reverend James H. Wilbur (1811-1887), a native of New York, was appointed a missionary to Oregon in 1846. His early work was concentrated in Oregon City and Portland, where he organized the Taylor Street Methodist Episcopal Church in 1849. In 1851 he established Portland Academy and Female Seminary. In 1853 he became Pastor at Umpqua (later named Wilbur in his honor), in Douglas County, and a year later founded Umpqua Academy--a "feeder school" for Willamette University and the first academic enterprise of its kind between Salem and Sacramento. Jason Lee had pinpointed this part of southern Oregon as a prospective field of labor during a reconnaissance prior to his departure. Wilbur was appointed Superintendent of Education on the Yakima Reservation in 1860 and became Indian Agent at Fort Simcoe. He served on the Reservation in various capacities through 1880 and died seven years later in Walla Walla.

Jesse Quinn Thornton (1810-1888) had been admitted to the Virginia bar when he came overland in 1846 in a party led by Jesse Applegate which pioneered the Southern Immigrant Route of the Oregon Trail. In 1847 he was elected judge of the Provisional Supreme Court of Oregon but resigned his post to become the Provisional Governor's official emissary to Washington for the purpose of promoting legislation to create the Oregon Territory. He practiced law in Oregon City, Portland and Salem, taking an active part in public affairs and promoting Willamette University. Oregon and California in 1848, his two-volume work describing his early career and experiences on the Oregon Trail, was published by Harper and Brothers in 1849.