Buried Beneath the Stones: Part II explore the stories below the headstones
Buried beneath the stones
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
By Virginia Kyle
What's that? It sounds like heavy boots tromping about. Don't be surprised if you can't find an earthly cause, especially if you're on Grinnell Road in Palouse or visiting the cemetery. Tell old-timers what you heard, and they'll likely just nod slowly, all the while knowing those boots probably belong to farmer and Civil War veteran Roland Johnson, regarded as a devoted family man.
He's buried in the cemetery right next to his wife Louisa, 38, and son, William, 13. Also, there is his daughter, Ora, and Louisa's mother, Mariah McConnell.
Some say perhaps the farmer cant rest because he served his family a pitcher of lemonade and strychnine one summer day in 1889.
Heres how Bob West, a family member, and author, wrote about the local legend he calls The Tale of the Haunted Boots.
Upon Roland Johnson's discharge from the Army, he migrated to the Oregon Territory where he met and married my great-aunt, Louisa McConnell, 17 years his junior, West wrote. Louisa was a sister to my grandmother, Mrs. George (Olive) West, who some in this area will remember. A son, William, was born to them in 1875. A year later they moved to the Palouse country and made their homestead on Cedar Creek, a few miles north of Palouse City. A daughter, Ora, was born in 1882.
What happened July 6, 1889, shocked everyone. One of the neighbors was on his way to Palouse City to pick up supplies and, being a good neighbor, he stopped to see if the Johnsons needed anything from town. He knocked on the kitchen door several times. Nobody answered. He turned to leave when he thought he heard someone crying softly. Opening the unlocked door, he saw no one, but again, heard crying. It seemed to be coming from upstairs. He climbed the stairs and was horrified when he saw the body of Roland Johnson on the hallway floor. He had been shot in the head.
He stepped over the body and looked in one of the bedrooms. Ora was lying on the bed, covered with blood. The body of her mother was on the floor. In another bedroom, he found the body of 13-year-old William. Seeing that Ora was alive and needed immediate help, he frantically ran out of the house, got into his wagon and went for the town. He informed the city marshal of the event and together they found a doctor and headed back to the farm, West wrote.
Ora, 7, was still alive, though she had been shot in the head, the bullet passing back of her left eye and exiting through the right one, 24 hours earlier. The county sheriff and coroner pieced together what happened. Johnson, 55, made a pitcher of lemonade, adding a lethal dose of strychnine and extra sugar to help hide the taste of the poison. William and his mother must have died almost at once, but little Ora could not keep the lemonade down so she did not get enough poison to take her life, just enough to make her very ill, West wrote.
It was assumed that after he had served the drink, he went back downstairs, wrote a note about what he had done and why (he thought he and his family would be in a better place if they were no longer on this earth) and tacked it on the front door. Going back upstairs, he found the bodies of his wife and son, but Ora was on the floor writhing in pain. He then put the pistol to her head and pulled the trigger. Thinking he had completed the job, he stood in the hall and turned the gun on himself, West wrote.
The Grinnell Roadhouse the Johnsons used to live in became known as the Haunted House on Cedar Creek. Neighbors and even some townspeople reported seeing someone walking from room to room at night carrying a lantern. Some people even claimed they heard moaning and sobbing sounds coming from inside the house. The house mysteriously burned to the ground one night.
Before the fire, at the auction sale, a nearby neighbor bought a pair of fancy, very expensive boots.
He immediately put them on and wore them for the rest of the day. At bedtime, he took them off, left them on the living room floor and went upstairs to bed. About midnight he was awakened by a strange noise, like someone walking on a wooden floor wearing heavy boots. Convinced he was dreaming, he went back to sleep. This happened several more times during the night. No other members of the household heard this strange noise, West wrote.
He said that after hearing this several nights in a row, the farmer sold the ghostly boots to his hired man for a dollar more than he paid for them. After hearing the story in a local saloon, the hired man, barefooted, walked to the bank of the Palouse River, threw the boots in and watched them float away, West wrote.
The oldest sister of Louisa and her husband were wealthy farmers in Heppner, Ore. and were appointed Oras legal guardians and administrators of the estate. Ora also inherited her mother's share of the McConnell estate in Lane County, Ore., and graduated from the Washington State School for the Blind, West said. She spent her summers and vacations with her friends and relatives in Oregon and Palouse.
My dad told me he could remember her visits and she was a very happy person and seemed to enjoy life like anybody else. In her mid-20s she was diagnosed as having epilepsy, and since there were no treatments for the disease at that time, it was just left to run its course.
She died in 1920 at 38, the same age as that of her mother when she died. Ora is buried beside her grandmother, Mariah McConnell, and the three family members she lost on that day.
Olive McConnell West replaced the headstones of young William and his father after vandals destroyed them in the 1940s. The original stones for the women still are standing.
The innocuous Johnson family headstones held just one hint of the tragedy: the shared death dates for three of the five. While walking through the cemetery on a cold February morning, I asked my guide, Palouse resident Don Myott, what had happened. He didn't know. We wondered if perhaps a fire was to blame. He said he'd find out and uncovered West's tale of the haunted boots.
While most stories of those buried in the Palouse Cemetery aren't as dramatic, many are just as compelling.
Back in the cemetery, Myott stops at the grave of Thomas Proctor, who Myott learned about from a family member.
Born in 1908, the teenager was kicked by a horse and died in late December, making for a very sad Christmas in 1925, in the words of a family member who once shared the story with Myott.
Near Thomas is the headstone marking another family tragedy, the death of newborn Hubert Dean Proctor, who died Feb. 10, 1944. There is no birth date, just a pair of baby shoes toppled over the way they do after an exciting day of exploration.
While some headstones are poignant, others proudly offer a proclamation: Orra V. Brown, Life Everlasting, Began Dec. 27, 1926; Born Oct. 27, 1867.
That one threw Myott. I thought it was a mistake at first, had to read it a couple of times before I realized what it was all about.
There's the grave of Susie Jewett, wife of George Jewett. She died at the age of 29. Her husband was a cashier at the Security State Bank. Myott remembered seeing old newspaper advertisements through which the Jewetts were looking for a girl to help out while Susie struggled with her illness.
As a wife devoted, as a mother affectionate, as a friend everlasting and true, reads her stone. There are empty plots reserved next to hers. You see that sometimes, Myott said. Often someone remarries and the new wife doesn't want the old plan.
He points out a marker that must have been hand-hewn from iron and tin in the shape of a cross. It says Dick Poleis, 28, lies there.
There are other distinctions. Moses Pearson Jr., who died June 8, 1868, at 57, is the earliest death represented in the cemetery. Palouse's first mayor, Charles Farnsworth, also is buried there. Most people traveling Main Street don't know its 100 feet wide because he wanted to be able to turn his team of four horses through it, easing the operation of his livery stable located there.
Jennie Poe Wilsons grave (1871-1940) is there. She was in Palouse Highs first graduating class in 1890, one of six seniors that year. Clark Bagott, born in 1887 and died in 1939, was in the first of the fourth-generation car dealership still thriving in Palouse.
Another Civil War veteran, Isiah Hughes, of the 9 Illinois Cavalry, has a headstone. But, like many of the military headstones, space is taken up by service information rather than life details.
Most of them are like that, said Myott. Maybe its because the military often paid for them.
The highest-ranking officer in the Palouse Cemetery is Charles Morris Ankcorn, a brigadier general in the 157th Infantry, World Wars I and II.
A famous potter, Robert Cox, (1855-1926) owned Cox Pottery, once located a mile south of Palouse. Thomas Landow Butte, (1853-1919) ran the first mail route between Lewiston and Spokane in the 1870s. Ladow Butte, north of Palouse, is named after his parents, who are buried beside him.
Although not the most illustrious person buried in the Palouse Cemetery, the story of L.S. Phillip's journey to his grave here is by far the most interesting to Myott. Born in 1857, Phillips died in 1935. He was supposed to be buried next to his wife, Hannah S. Phillips, (1865-1905).
The way Myott remembered it, the man's two great-nephews sent a photo of Hannah's headstone, and after it was matched to the Palouse Cemetery, the pair dug up L.S. and brought him to Palouse in their motor home.
That one ranks as one of the most unusual stories for me, Myott said.
Cultural trends are reflected in just about any cemetery, and the Palouse is no exception. For a while, especially in the West, people wanted their state of birth on the headstone.
For more years than not, married women were listed as Mrs. (insert husband’s first and last name here), often without the woman's name at all.
Myott noticed marriage dates are a relatively recent trend, as are photographs of the deceased.
Names that today sound dated or just plain unfamiliar can be found throughout the cemetery, offering a snapshot of which were the most popular of the day, and those that have so completely fallen away. Many a girl answered to Minnie, Emma, and Kate, as did boys to Hanibal and Thaddeus.
Albin, Arleigh, and Gage? Well, perhaps not.
The prevalence of the influence of fraternal and other organizations on the culture of the last couple of centuries also is clear from a walk through the cemetery.
Many a headstone bears the symbols of wheat, tools, and words distinctive to the grange, Free Masons, Woodmen of the World and Women of Woodcraft.
As membership in many of the old and influential brother and sisterhoods slowly, quietly fade, so does the demand for plots in the Palouse Cemetery.
Fewer graves are being dug because the less expensive cremations are becoming more popular, Myott said. Plus, times have changed in other ways.
The old-timers sometimes wanted an open casket to make sure the person was really in it.
