Earlier this month, our collections team joined Phil Andrus on KPTZ’s Attention Please! to talk about our recent research on the Jefferson County Cemetery.
While this property north of Laurel Grove was platted in 1899, the story of county-managed burial grounds in Port Townsend dates back to the 1870s with the last possible burial in the County Cemetery occurring in 1945. The property has been largely obscured by overgrowth in the years since, but was the subject of an archaeological assessment in 2020 and most recently, a JCHS research project—both commissioned by the county.
Check out Phil’s conversation with our own Research and Collections Coordinator Reed Barry to learn some of what we know and still don’t know about the County Cemetery. Reed discusses what the research tells us about who was buried there, what county burial records (or lack thereof) can tell us about class and race inequalities in the past, and how cemeteries can shape the dominant historical narratives that get preserved and perpetuated.
Historic image from JCHS collection: Jefferson County Cemetery (ID 2011.1.995)