Nearly hidden Pioneer Cemetery   Courtesy Google Maps If you are north bound on Auburn Way North, a main thoroughfare in Auburn, south King County, Washington, and stop for a traffic light, you may glimpse a small cemetery to your right at 8th Street NE.  This is the Auburn Pioneer Cemetery, on land donated for that purpose in 1878.  Grave of a Civil War veteran, M. P. Hopkins Courtesy Kristy Lommen "The marker commemorating the Auburn Pioneer Cemetery’s only Civil War veteran is disappointingly vague. It includes no dates, neither birth nor death. The soldier’s name is included, but in abbreviated form. And to add insult to injury, the sparse information that  is   displayed has been mis-transcribed and published incorrectly on several online genealogy sites. Fortunately, the stone does include the fact that Mr. Hopkins served in Company B of the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry—and that single fact was enough information to discover much of his life story."1 Recently the...

By Gordon Stowe—February 10, 1968 I remember of Dad clearing the field north of the house. I think the orchard area had been cleared before – but to this land clearing – I only wish I had the words to explain the hard, manual labor involved.  It was my job to bring Dad a drink of water (in a 2 quart lard bucket) mid-way in the morning and again in the afternoon. He was grubbing out the brush, small trees and etc. Not only the brush had to be removed, but the roots as well, (big ones). This land had to be broken with a horse-drawn plow and you didn’t have any other power here, so you had to have it in good shape before you started with the plow. His procedure was to walk backwards into a clump of brush, push hard against it to lean it back a little and so he could stand straight, raise the grub-hoe over his head and swing it sideways and also glance back – to be sure he didn’t take a mighty swing and hook onto a branch behind and get hurt. Then, all set – he sunk the hoe int...