Cemetery Wants to Donate Land For State Hospital`s Unclaimed Remains

They wish to give back part of the land donated to the Jason Lee Mission Cemetery by the Oregon Insane Asylum in 1887. Now, Momyer says they are willing to give back 1.5 to 2 acres of the donated property so the hospital can lay to rest the remaining unclaimed remains.

Photo By: Tim King

(SALEM) - The Jason Lee Mission Cemetery is offering to donate land to the Oregon State Hospital, as a final resting place for the nearly 3,600 unclaimed remains of psychiatric patients from the late 1880`s to the mid 1970`s.

Cemetery board member Jim Momyer, said back on August, 29, 1887 the Oregon Insane Asylum, which changed it`s name to Oregon State Hospital in 1919, donated 6.5 acres to the cemetery located on D Street. The cemetery paid $50 for the land.

Now, Momyer says they are willing to give back 1.5 to 2 acres of the donated property so the hospital can lay to rest the remaining unclaimed remains.

The payment, the state must maintain the gravesites and property.

Maynard Hammer the hospital`s deputy superintendent says the ashes of former patients are housed in copper urns in the `cremains room" of the hospital. Most can be identified by an urn number that corresponds to patient`s medical record.

There are burial records for 1,539 other patients who died between the time the hospital opened until 1913 but no indication of where the remains are now.

The records show that the legislature directed that patient remains buried in the Oregon State Insane Asylum cemetery during that 30-year period be exhumed for cremation in 1913, but the record ends there Hammer said.

Last year, hospital workers were able to help 36 families reclaim the remains of relatives.

Also located on the cemetery`s property are hundreds of remains of unnamed babies who died at the hospital from child birth complications.

The graves are marked only with the word `Baby".

A volunteer work group appointed by Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney is seeking input from Oregonians to choose a final resting place for the remains.

A 31-question survey lists five options: on the current state hospital site, on a new state hospital site, in a cemetery, or other (specify).

Feedback from the survey will help the work group make recommendations to state mental-health officials and lawmakers on what should be done with the remains.

The cemetery is named after Jason Lee.

Rev. Lee was a Canadian born, Methodist missionary who is remembered as the first missionary to bring Christianity to the Indians of the Pacific Northwest.

Born near Stanstead, Quebec, Canada on June 28, 1803.

The son of Daniel and Sarah Lee was educated at Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts, and served in the local ministry from 1830 to 1832.

Following his ordination, the Methodist Episcopal Church assigned him to be a missionary in the Flathead Indian country of the West.

After arriving at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, Lee was told by Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factor John McLoughlin that the Flathead Indians were too dangerous.

He instead suggested a site about ten miles north of present-day Salem, Oregon on the Willamette River. Lee founded a school at the Mission Bottom site to educate the local Indians in what he considered a proper, Christian manner.

The results contributed to a growing sense of futility. There were fourteen Indian students the first year, of whom seven died and five ran away.

In 1836 there were twenty-five students, of whom sixteen fell ill. Only one of the surviving students converted

The first person to be laid to rest at Jason Lee Mission Cemetery was Lee`s first wife, Anna Marie Pittman who died during child birth June, 26, 1838 less than a year after the couple was married.

Pittman was born in New York City in 1803. She was a Methodist missionary who came to Oregon in 1837. She was met by Rev Lee, and two months later they were married.