Visitors to Bayview Cemetery might see some graves that are so old, they’ve sunk into the ground, the tops just barely visible.
Which begs the question: what’s the oldest grave in Bayview Cemetery?
Kolby LaBree, co-owner of the Good Time Girls, said the answer is a bit more complicated since the public cemetery opened in 1888.
“The oldest date on a marker for someone’s death I have found there is 1864,” she said. “Prior to the cemetery being created, people were still dying and being buried somewhere.”
LaBree said she’s found newspaper notices from the late 1880s asking people with deceased relatives buried in the streets of Whatcom to remove the bodies to Bayview Cemetery. Folks buried at Graveyard’s Point in Fairhaven were also moved to Bayview.
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, during a two-hour stroll of Bayview Cemetery, a Cascadia Daily News reporter found the grave of Eugene Jasper, who died March 19, 1868, at the age of 29. Sadly, Jasper remains lost to history with no digital public records noting who he was.
As for who was the first to be buried in Bayview — that honor goes to Rev. John Dobbs, according to LaBree. Dobbs died on June 7, 1888, a month shy of his 58th birthday. His wife, Mary, who died in 1912, is buried alongside him.
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Annie Todd is CDN’s criminal justice/enterprise reporter; reach her at annietodd@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 130.
