Grave Stories, Part 3

In this third part of a multi-part series, I discuss the information posted online for the Hultin-Thrush Cemetery. (Aerial view of cemetery posted in Grave Stories, Part 1.)

As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, John Thrush, Jr. is my great-great-great-grandfather who died in the 1890 landslide at Randolph. I didn’t know the exact location of the Hultin-Thrush Family Cemetery until beginning this project. I now realize that as a child I walked past the site of the cemetery many, many times while walking with my sister along North Bank Lane to its junction with Seven Mile Road.

I remember that a small vacant house stood in a clearing between North Bank Lane and a dilapidated barn. The small house was briefly inhabited (a year or two?) in the 1960s or 1970s, before eventually being torn down (in the 1970s or 1980s). I don’t recall the barn in any detail except that it eventually crumbled to the ground. In the 1970s another family built a house on the hillside west of the site.

Unmarked Graves

The following information was collected by a local historian, Alice Wooldridge. The cemetery data was later transcribed by volunteers for Coos County on ORGenWeb. The snip below is copied from the listing of cemeteries with less than five graves:

Woolridge’s description of the cemetery includes the following additional information: “There are not stones, one grave with a broken down picket fence. The cemetery is covered with St. John’s Wort, and no graves are visible. The names were given by the Hultins who were born and have lived there all their lives.”

Since the publication of the 1971 book, there now appear to be more than four interments. Another family history researcher posted similar location information to the Find a Grave website and listed eight individuals at the cemetery:

While reading information posted to the John Thrush memorial page, a Thrush descendant identified another possible burial at the cemetery. This ninth possible interment was posted by a great-granddaughter of Clementine Thrush McCue. Lightly edited, she wrote: “I believe there is another person buried at the Hultin site. It would be Catherine Mary Hutchison, daughter of Clementine Hutchison McCue and first husband. She died young of catching her hair on fire. My grandfather [Charles H McCue] told me about her. There are records of her burial by a traveling Catholic priest named Henirich.”

The above information about individuals interred in the cemetery appears to have been obtained through at least three personal conversations with Hultin-Thrush descendants. Except for one probably misremembered name and a couple of minor discrepancies (spellings and dates), the evidence I’ve examined suggests that the above information is reliable. In the next part of this series, I will start to present family history information for the nine individuals identified above.

What do you know about the Hultin-Thrush Cemetery or the individuals laid to rest there?

I would appreciate the opportunity to make corrections or additions to what I’ve written above. Please contact me or leave a comment below.