The Oregonian
Saturday, May 29, 2010

It is a hill not unlike other hills scattered across Eastern Oregon -- in spring lush with green, perhaps dotted with wildflowers, then increasingly cast in brown as summer's sun beats down before giving way to the barrenness of fall and winter.

To the casual passer-by, it might not seem the ideal place to put down roots, much less spend eternity. However, azure skies and wide-open spaces east to the Blue Mountains speak not only to the here and now but also to the everlasting.

The sign over the gate reads in large letters "Hardman Cemetery," flanked in smaller script by "IOOF" and "82." The graves range in orderly rows, although somewhat scattered as befits family associations.

The settlement that gave the cemetery its name is a couple of bumpy miles east, 20 miles south of Heppner on Oregon 207. It grew out of two competing hamlets in the early 1870s.

One, according to "Oregon Geographic Names," was named Dairyville but known to locals as Rawdog. The other was called Adamsville, but similarly dubbed Yallerdog.

In 1881 homesteader David N. HARDMAN started another settlement about a mile away from Rawdog. With postal officials' sanction, he named it after himself. In 1882 the Hardman post office moved to Dairyville and took the name with it. The Adamsville post office closed in 1885.

The relocated Hardman kept its canine aura with the nickname Dogtown. At its height it boasted about 900 residents, enjoying "a skating rink, two racetracks, a jailhouse, a dance hall, four stores, four hotels, four churches, a school and a newspaper," the Hardman Homestead, according to a history on the Hamell.net website.

Progress gradually passed Hardman by. Today its population is listed as about 30 full-time and 20 part-time residents.

Through the cemetery gate, six or seven rows along on the left side, stands a dark granite obelisk marked "GRAHAM." Beneath it lies Thomas Porter GRAHAM, born 1856, died 1910. Beside him, with a more modest monument, is his wife, Mary Jane GRAHAM, born 1855, died 1919.

In most ways they are typical of those who came to Morrow County in the 1880s in search of a better, or at least different, life. But in at least one aspect their story is unique.

The young couple left their farm near Mount Ayr, Iowa, in 1881 with a son and daughter, two mules and a team of gray horses. Thomas worked his way west helping build railroads. The son, Eddie, about 5, died of cholera along the way.

They arrived in Eastern Oregon and filed for a homestead in 1883. Three more children were born here.

Family history says the couple prospered from growing wheat on Rock Creek between Hardman and Condon, and harvesting timber south of Hardman. Life was good, lacking only one thing: the child they left behind.

She was Etta Mae, born shortly before Thomas and Mary started their westward trek. The prospect of taking a baby on such a journey greatly disturbed relatives. In their conception Oregon was still the wild West. Etta Mae could be massacred by savages or eaten by wolves, The couple was persuaded -- pestered is perhaps more accurate -- to leave her behind.

Etta Mae was given over to her maternal grandparents. The plan was that she would join her parents when sufficiently mature to make the journey. For some reason that never happened. She grew up, taught school, married and started a family in Mount Ayr. She and her mother wrote each other voluminously. Whose attic all those letters wound up in, if they survived, is unknown.

In 1913 she and her husband, Galva Benoni "Ben" WATTS, and children embarked on their own westward journey, following much the same path as her parents. They were living in Weiser, Idaho, when word came that her mother was gravely ill.

She boarded a train and headed for Hardman, but arrived too late to see her mother alive. It was a sad end to the long-delayed reunion of my grandmother, great-grandmother and great-grandfather.

Nevertheless, on that hilltop rest those who first planted my mother's family roots in Oregon. When all is said and done, we know it's where they wanted to be.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, November of 2010