Stories live on at Everett’s Evergreen Cemetery

A cemetery is a biography of the community, where headstones offer a glimpse into not just when someone died but how they lived.

Take, for instance, the Evergreen Cemetery in Everett, the home of the Rucker pyramid. The Rucker brothers were entrepreneurs who helped found Everett at the end of the 19th century and built the landmark to honor their mother.

Four governors and the city’s favorite son, U.S. Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, also are buried here in well-known, well-cared for graves.

Yet it’s often the unknown, ordinary people buried next to them who capture people’s imaginations, Everett historian David Dilgard said.

He leads tours of the cemetery about once a year, pointing out graves of regular people with fascinating stories. Here are two of those stories.

Family honored baker’s wish

A tombstone not far from the cemetery entrance reads: “W. H. Mescher, 1867-1905.”

The north Everett baker is known as the man who was buried on his couch or, as a boy on the cemetery tour once remarked, the real couch potato, Dilgard said.

To honor his wishes, Mescher’s family buried him on a hand-carved oak couch made specifically for that purpose, according to an Oct. 8, 1905, article in the Everett Morning Tribune.

Mescher was paralyzed after an accident, although it’s not clear when or what exactly happened, Dilgard said. Toward the end of his life, Mescher was wheeled around on a kind of reclining wheelchair.

His wife and the neighborhood women made cushions and pillows for Mescher before the funeral. According to Dilgard’s research, Mescher was buried at 5:30 in the morning to avoid a crowd of onlookers.

A native of Glendorf, Ohio, Mescher lived with his family in Everett for 12 years. He and his brothers moved to Western Washington and opened their own bakeries in Everett, Sedro-Woolley, Puyallup and Auburn, Mescher’s great-granddaughter Helen Ziebell said. Mescher called his bakery “Vienna.”

Ziebell, 68, lived in Everett when she was a schoolgirl. She and her sister also spent time throughout their childhood at their grandparents’ house in north Everett.

The old house where Mescher lived with his family was on Hoyt Avenue, on the same block as the library.

Ziebell, who lives near Wenatchee, has taken several trips to Everett to research family history. She was delighted when she found out her great-grandfather was part of the Evergreen Cemetery Tour.

“The people who came before us, to me, they are very important. Without them, I wouldn’t be here,” she said. “I feel like my great-granddad is not totally dead. He’s not just gone and forgotten, because David Dilgard has kept his memory alive.”

Mescher loved to bake and was known for his musical skill. He sang and played the violin, Ziebell said. He was loved and respected in the community — a source of pride for his great-granddaughter. That’s why people made all those pillows and cushions for him to take into eternity, Ziebell said.

The story of Mescher’s burial is something Ziebell grew up with.

“When you are a little kid, you get used to accepting things as if there’s nothing different about them. If I heard this story as an adult, it would have been a totally different thing,” she said.

Man’s arm has a story of its own

Not far from Mescher’s final resting place, a grave marked only with a small cement plate holds another story.

A little girl named Pearl Goldthorpe was buried at the site in 1899. The family didn’t have much money, so there is no tombstone, Dilgard said.

The Goldthorpes had another child, Alvin, less than a year after their daughter’s death.

When Alvin was a boy, he was hunting birds with a friend when he took a shotgun blast to his right arm. His damaged arm had to be amputated.

The family buried the boy’s arm in his sister’s grave.

It was not unheard off at the time to bury limbs, Dilgard said, although the cemetery has no record of the burial.

Alvin got a prosthetic arm and as he grew up, managed with it so well that children gathered to watch him roll cigarettes with his arm.

Patty Pederson, an executive staff assistant in the Everett School District, was about 10 when Goldthorpe, her grandfather, died in 1958.

“I don’t remember a lot about him, except that he was fun,” she said. “He used to tell us kids that a cow bit off his arm, and we believed him.”

Alvin Goldthorpe was captain of a tugboat that plied the Snohomish River, pulling log rafts to sawmills. He used to tell a story about the time he found a whale in the river, Pederson said.

Goldthorpe’s house stood where the U.S. 2 trestle now stands. He died of lung cancer in 1958 and was buried at Cypress Lawn Cemetery with his wife.

His arm still rests with his sister.

Katya Yefimova: 425-339-3452; kyefimova@heraldnet.com.

Podcast

A podcast of the Evergreen Cemetery Tour is available on the Everett Public Library website, www.epls.org.