For nearly 145 years, a pioneer mother has rested in a grave encircled by a wooden fence on a hillside in the North Hanaford Valley between present-day Bucoda and Centralia.
But she may not have rested there alone. And she’s never been forgotten.
When construction of the Centralia Steam-Electric Plant began in 1970, Chronicle staff writer John Martin wrote several articles about the lonely grave of Mary A. Cogdill, stories that elicited information from a great-niece in Centralia and great-granddaughter in Salt Lake City.
Martin’s stories and modern-day technology help piece together the story of the young mother who died at 29.
Mary Ann Edwards was born April 8, 1842, to Josiah and Permelia (Westfall) Edwards on a farm between St. Joseph and Kanas City, Missouri She married Jacob Cogdill, born in November 1837, and the couple moved west by covered wagon to Brownville, Nebraska Soon two young sons arrived — William E., in February 1861, and Josiah P., in April 1863.
The family — along with their parents, grandparents and other extended family — soon decided to travel the Oregon Trail to establish new lives in the west. In the lumber community of Auburn, Oregon, now a Baker County ghost town, Mary Ann gave birth June 25, 1865, to her third child, a daughter named Maggie Belle.
After arriving in Portland Oct. 15, the Cogdills and their relatives sent Mary’s brother, Ishom Edwards, north to look for farmland, according to Cogdill’s great-niece, Hazel Riley. He spent the winter in the North Hanaford Valley, where he discarded old potatoes that sprouted new plants by spring.
The Cogdills and Edwards families settled in the valley in 1866. Two years later, on May 5, 1868, Mary Ann gave birth to another girl, Mary D. The 1870 Washington Territorial census showed a busy family living on land worth $400, with her parents and siblings nearby.
That fall, Mary Ann grew sick with either scarlet fever or diphtheria. Her 2½-year-old daughter contracted the illness and died Jan. 10, 1871, according to an Ancestry.com record. Nine days later, Jan. 19, 1871, Mary Ann also died.
A wooden marker read: “Mary A. Cogdil, wife of Jacob C., died Jan. 19, 1871. Age 29 years, 9 ms., 11 days. Took sick Sept. 1870.”
She wasn’t buried alone, but rested beside her baby girl, a fact asserted by great-granddaughter Rebecca Price of Salt Lake City in 1970.
Her mother’s death left 6-year-old Maggie Belle to cook meals and keep house for her father and brothers, at least until 1878, when Jacob Cogdill married Sarah Belle Frost, a Lane County, Oregon, native born in 1863. They moved to Lewis County, eventually settling near Forest.
Over time, the wooden marker rotted. But in the late 1930s, when Riley visited the gravesite with an aunt, they found a wooden fence erected around the plot and the old marker leaning against the posts. In its place, two stone markers were set in the ground — one reading “Mary A. Cogdil, Died 1871, Age 29 Years” and the other simply “Cogdil, 1871.”
Riley said her family figured county or Works Progress Administration crews widening roads constructed the fence and carved the tombstones. It seems more likely a family member did so, perhaps Maggie Belle, who died in Eugene in 1935, or even Jacob Cogdill’s second wife, who died in 1944 and was buried beside her husband at Fern Hill Cemetery.
Family members, perhaps even strangers, have cared for the grave through the decades. On Monday, Sarah Cogdill’s descendant Gordon Harper, 73, of Centralia, with his son, James, and four granddaughters replaced pieces of the white picket fence smashed when a tree limb broke.
And between Sunday and Monday, someone placed a red plastic rose on Mary Ann’s headstone.
•••
Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
