THE FRIENDS of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery (FOJHC) concluded this year’s History Saturday in the Cemetery season in September with a look-back to the time it all began and a talk on “Native Americans—the Rogue Valley’s First Residents.” Presented by Friends board member and History Saturday program coordinator, Ellen Martin, and Friends […]
IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE we’re in October already and it’s time again to give the Jacksonville Cemetery a final cleanup in preparation for winter. Details of our upcoming Fall Community Cemetery Cleanup Day are below. We look forward to your help as we rake up and bag the […]
OUR HISTORY SATURDAY presentation for July, “Fire! The History of Fires in Pioneer Jacksonville” featured sisters and popular History Saturday presenters, Ireland and Roan Reed, who got everyone’s attention immediately by beginning their talk with a pop quiz!
We soon learned that Jacksonville’s five major fires between 1867 and 1888 were largely […]
JUNE’S HISTORY SATURDAY presentation by Pam Smith and Lynn Ransford explored the fascinating history of two of the seven sections of the Jacksonville Cemetery: the Improved Order of Red Men and the Independent (German) Order of Red Men. In costume as Amelia Schmitt and Hanoria Cimborsky, the ladies traced the Order […]
FOLLOWING a much needed and successful Cemetery Cleanup on May 2, the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery (FOJHC) hosted our first History Saturday talk and tour of the season, one week later on May 9: “The German-Speaking Settlers of Pioneer Jacksonville.” Presented by Carolyn Kingsnorth and Steve Corelis on a beautiful […]
WE OFFER A SINCERE “THANK-YOU” to the many volunteers who attended our Pre-Memorial Day Community Cemetery Cleanup on May 2nd. Besides helping keep the cemetery neat and attractive, these cleanups help to reduce fire danger particularly in drought years like this one. We also appreciate the work of Cemetery Sexton, Rick […]
WE BEGIN with a sincere “thank-you” to the many volunteers who attended our Spring Community Cemetery Cleanup Day on March 21st. It was a beautiful morning to be out and about, and some fifty volunteers with rakes, weed whackers, and mowers of all sizes filled the City trailer […]
IN NEXT MONTH’S column we’ll have news of our Spring Clean-up (March 21), which began the process of readying the cemetery for recurring FOJHC programs starting in May: History Saturday in the Cemetery (May 9), and Marker Cleaning Workshops (May 16).
And before those programs begin, our Pre-Memorial Day […]
SPRINGTIME IN THE CEMETERY—What an unusual winter we’ve had so far. After some initial rain, it turned cold and dry and, as we write this column in early February, there appears to be little wet weather yet to come. Still, when the occasional fog lifts and the sun […]
WELCOME TO 2026… we hope you enjoyed the holiday season!
We begin by highlighting some key accomplishments of the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery from the year just passed, with thanks to all those whose efforts made them possible:
History Programs:
FOR ALL OF US who enjoy taking part in the Friends of the Cemetery’s spring and fall clean up events, October’s Fall Cemetery Clean Up brought both good news and bad news. The bad news was the arrival of an “atmospheric river” overhead that brought heavy wind and […]
HISTORY SATURDAY in the Cemetery concluded in September with another excellent and enthusiastic talk by Pam and Teresa Smith entitled “Early Farmers and Ranchers in the Rogue Valley.” The “Smith Sisters” (no relation) looked the part in farm overalls and Fedora and straw hats (with pitchforks at the ready) as they […]
OUR AUGUST History Saturday program, Jacksonville’s Jewish Community in the 1800s, featured two pioneer ladies describing the many contributions of early Jewish residents to our town’s civic and business life. In period costume and presenting in the conversational style of Meet the Pioneers, the talk by Lynn Ransford and Anne Peugh […]
VISITORS to the cemetery on the morning of July 14 enjoyed a lively History Saturday talk by docents Roan Reed and Ellen Martin (Ellen is also an FOJHC Director) on “Victorian Etiquette from Birth to Death.” While the Victorian Era began in England prior to Jacksonville’s founding as a gold rush […]
ON A BEAUTIFUL summer morning in June, the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery hosted the second installment of this season’s History Saturday series, “Scandalous Stories in the Cemetery.” Presented by local historians Carolyn Kingsnorth and Steve Carolis, the talk reminded us that the Victorian Era was a time dictated […]
WE KICKED OFF our 2025 summer season on Saturday, May 10th, with an informative and entertaining History Saturday presentation on the Chinese in Jacksonville during the 1800’s thru the mid 1900’s. Our speakers were Lynn Ransford and Anne Peugh, beautifully dressed in period costumes, who […]
JUNE 20th marks the official transition from what has been a beautiful spring to what will likely be a warm (but hopefully not too hot or smoky) summer season.
To help prepare the cemetery for summer visitors, the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery held our second clean-up of the season on May […]
MAY BRINGS MANY EVENTS—After an unusually cold and wet winter, it’s time at last for a busy season of outdoor events at Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery! Our recurring History Saturday in the Cemetery and Marker Cleaning Workshop programs, plus the annual Pre-Memorial Day Community Cemetery Clean-up and Flags for our Veterans events […]
SPRINGTIME in the Jacksonville Historic Cemetery will be especially beautiful this year thanks to the hundreds of daffodil and crocus bulbs planted in the cemetery as a joint effort by Judy and Jim Finses and the Jacksonville Garden Club!
The “planting party” took place in early November and, funded by the Jacksonville […]
IT’S BEEN A CHILLY and wet winter so far, but spring is on the way and will be here before we know it!
Meanwhile, the first scheduled event of the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery’s 2025 season, our customary Spring Community Cemetery Clean-Up Day, March 22nd, […]
WELCOME TO 2025… we hope you enjoyed the holiday season!
We begin by highlighting some key accomplishments of the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery from the year just passed, with thanks to all those whose efforts made them possible:
History Programs:
• Five History Saturday talks and tours, coordinated and emceed by Ellen Martin:
LAST MONTH we highlighted the September conclusion of our History Saturday in the Cemetery program (second Saturdays, May through September) and planned to write this month about the conclusion of the Marker Cleaning Workshop program (third Saturdays, same months). It was quite a finale! Just before the last workshop, Christmas […]
THE FRIENDS’ final History Saturday in the Cemetery presentation of 2024 took place on another beautiful September morning with Fall in the air and an audience eager to hear the sequel to June’s talk on Courtship and Love Customs in Early Jacksonville.
Continuing the theme, this time with Love and Marriage in […]
CEMETERY HAPPENINGS!—Our August History Saturday presentation, “Let Us Entertain You – Entertainment and Leisure in 1800s Jacksonville…from bloomers to bicycles,” brought an enthusiastic group of visitors to the cemetery on a beautiful summer morning to hear another interesting chapter of local history!
In period costume and using historic photos to illustrate their […]
JULY IN THE JACKSONVILLE HISTORIC CEMETERY saw warmer weather, and, with it, an onslaught of Madrone leaves often obscuring the markers our visitors seek when touring or paying respects to departed family and friends. While city staff does their best to keep up, all of us as Adopt-A-Block “parents” need to […]
THE FRIENDS OF JACKSONVILLE’S HISTORIC CEMETERY’S “2nd Saturday” activities for June began with a wonderful turnout for the plaque dedication in honor of Dirk Siedlecki. Located on the north side of the Sexton’s Tool House in an area beautifully landscaped by the Jacksonville Garden Club, the boulder-mounted plaque provides a brief […]
OUR BUSY MAY schedule got off to a rainy start with the cancellation of the Pre-Memorial Day Cemetery Clean-Up due to unusually cold weather and nearly an inch of unexpected rainfall! Fortunately, members of the cemetery team from Jacksonville Public Works had been mowing the paths and open spaces in anticipation […]
ON A RAINY MORNING IN APRIL, Cemetery Sexton Rick Shields, together with members of the Friends board and the Jacksonville Public Works Department staff, placed a monument in the cemetery commemorating the life and work of Dirk Siedlecki, late founder of the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery and long-time President of […]
WITH “APRIL SHOWERS” behind us, it’s time for “May flowers” and the beginning of a busy season of outdoor events at Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery! Our recurring History Saturday in the Cemetery and Marker Cleaning Workshop programs, plus the annual Pre-Memorial Day Community Cemetery Clean-up and Flags for our Veterans events make […]
APRIL IS A QUIET MONTH in the cemetery but also one of anticipation and transition from the cold of winter to the blooms of spring and, eventually, the warmth and long days of summer. By the time you read this, we will hopefully have completed our first Community […]
ONCE AGAIN, I’m happy to report that we’ve come through another cold, dark and (mercifully) wet winter and, depending on when you read this, spring is either here or about to be!
With Easter coming a bit early this year, we’ve scheduled the Friends’ Spring Cemetery Clean-Up for Saturday, March 16th, just […]
2023 REPORT CARD & LOOKING AHEAD—We hope you enjoyed the holiday season and found some quiet time to reflect on what’s right in our increasingly hectic world. For the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery (FOJHC), the past year was one of transition, and we’re grateful that, with the help of our […]
After Mountain Iron Works recently put the finishing touches on the installation of custom iron fencing to replace the original surround of the Pape/Prim block (Masonic 273) that had been stolen, some new details came to light. First, while the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery contract with Mountain specified a […]
New Fences and Faces!—We recently highlighted phase 1 of the FOJHC’s restoration of the Pape/Prim block (Masonic 273) … but there’s more to the story! The block was once surrounded by an iron fence atop the sandstone curbing and between the bollards, with a matching gate at the entrance. With no known photographs showing the […]
Early October is normally the time “a small army of volunteers” is working non-stop to put the finishing touches on stories, costumes, and logistical details for another chapter of Meet the Pioneers, our special Living History program where costumed Players share the rich history of Jacksonville and the Rogue Valley on two evenings of one-hour […]
In each of my eighteen summers in Jacksonville, there has always come a morning sometime in mid-September when suddenly there’s a slight crispness in the air, and it becomes clear that our typical hot summer days will soon be giving way to the cooler weather of early fall.
September also marks this year’s final sessions of […]
A key mission of the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery is the restoration of damaged monuments in the cemetery. Many headstones, and even entire blocks, have been restored over the years. A recent example is the Pape/Prim block (Masonic 273), restoration of which began in 2022. Project completion is expected by year-end.
Paine Page Prim was […]
With winter behind us, beautiful spring weather provided the opportunity for two significant community-wide cemetery clean-ups. Thanks to the help of some seventy volunteers, including individuals, entire families, and members of religious, fraternal, and service organizations, much was accomplished with the first clean-up on April 29th. Then, a second clean-up, on May 20th, put finishing […]
By the start of June, summer will officially be under way everywhere, including the Jacksonville Historic Cemetery! But first, a sincere thank you to the nearly seventy of you who came out for our Community-Wide Cemetery Clean-Up on April 29th. What a difference you made!
June features the first installment of this season’s History Saturday in […]
Honoring Veterans in May—May is the heart of springtime in Jacksonville and typically a very beautiful month in our historic cemetery. With winter behind us, and Memorial Day coming at month-end ready to mark the beginning of summer, May offers one more opportunity to make sure the cemetery is tidied-up for the outdoor season ahead.
May […]
By the time you read this, the Cemetery should be looking good and almost ready for spring, thanks to last month’s Community Spring Clean-Up Day and the ongoing Adopt-A-Block program where some 200 volunteers maintain “adopted” cemetery blocks—on their own schedules, as time permits.
We shared the news, last month, of the untimely passing of Friends […]
Cemetery Work to Continue—As you may have read elsewhere in this edition of the Jacksonville Review, Dirk Siedlecki, your usual columnist in this space, and the long-time President of the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery (FOJHC), passed away on January 31st after a brief illness.
Dirk, with his wife Mary, founded the FOJHC in 2009 and, […]
The year 2022 did not end well for our friends and fellow volunteers with the Central Point Cemetery. Sometime on or around Tuesday, December 13, vandals entered the cemetery grounds and proceeded to topple more than two dozen headstones and family monuments. Unfortunately, this was the second act of major vandalism that has occurred in […]
Sincere appreciation and gratitude to all our dedicated volunteers and many supporters for making 2022 another successful year for the Friends of Jacksonville’s Historic Cemetery. Our History Saturday in the Cemetery programs, May through September, were very well received and were enjoyed by all attending. Several […]
Three years ago, a select group of pioneers, lying in peaceful estate at the Jacksonville Cemetery, roused to enjoy the limelight and tell about their lives. Others have waited patiently for their chance to be heard. Now, a handful of residents from the Silent City on the Hill are free to speak, and believe me, […]
Well, it’s fall in Jacksonville with the return of Meet the Pioneers on the hill overlooking Jacksonville where many of the stories we have featured over the years took place. The program which was first presented in 2006 has shared the rich history of Jacksonville, the Rogue Valley and Southern Oregon in approximately one-hundred and […]
Thank you and our sincere gratitude to all our volunteers who contributed 140 hours of volunteer labor in the month of July 2022. The hours include: cemetery fixture restoration, marker cleaning, conducting tours, and general cleanup and maintenance items. Add to this number the many hours contributed by our Adopt-A-Block workforce who do so much […]
Thank you and much appreciation to our volunteers who cleaned headstones in the Jewish section of our cemetery during the months of May and June. On May 21 volunteers cleaned thirty-seven headstones and on June 18, another twenty-nine were cleaned. In total sixty-six headstones were cleaned with volunteers contributing seventy-seven hours in volunteer labor.
On June […]
My sincere appreciation to all our volunteers who put in so many hours of work in helping to prepare the cemetery grounds for the Memorial Day holiday. Thank you to our city employees who went all-out to help us in this endeavor. While we were unable to get to all areas of the cemetery, we […]
I am pleased to report that our restoration work on the Love block in the Masonic section of the cemetery was completed on April 29. The rainy weather delayed our finishing up the project but like you all, we were delighted with the much-needed rain and snow in the higher elevations.
It was the biggest project […]