A cemetery was started in Wingville in 1878 after a diphtheria epidemic made a cemetery a necessity. The Wingville Grange No. 150 purchased ten acres from Thomas Bailey and his wife for a two dollar gold piece on 8 April 1878.
On 8 December 1883 the trustees of the Wingville Grange 150 for fifty dollars deeded 2 ½ acres in the northwest corner of the cemetery to the Wingville I. O. O. F. Lodge No. 69.
The cemetery is reached by taking a side road off of U. S. Highway 30 Westerly about 3 ½ miles to Wingville, follow the road through town to the end, turn left for ¼ mile, then turn right ½ mile. The cemetery is approximately ten miles northwest of Baker (City).
Grounds are neglected and the cemetery is in poor (good) condition. Individual graves are cared for by relatives and friends. A caretaker is (not) employed. There are many unmarked graves in this cemetery. The following list of burials, as taken from the tombstones by a pioneer resident of Baker (City), was given us in 1965:
Wingville Cemetery, Baker County Oregon
John T. Parkinson, died 7 October 1862 when en-route to Oregon. He is buried in an unknown grave somewhere in the Willow Creek section. The grave was marked with the end gate of a wagon with name and date carved on it, however, no one was ever able to locate it again.
There is a private fenced cemetery about three miles directly west of the Big Flat Cemetery on the original Frank Hardman homestead. There are two graves here, one is that of an infant daughter of Ben Hardman, the other is that of Grace Hardman, the six-year old daughter of Frank Hardman.
About three-fourths of a mile south of the junction of Highway No. 7 and a county road west of Hereford there is a small fenced cemetery containing the graves of two of Tom VanCleave’s children, Edwin and Charles. These boys died of diphtheria in the early 1900’s.
There are two infants buried on the old Jim Fleetwood ranch on Burnt River, approximately three miles east of Hereford on Highway No. 7. The graves are on a narrow ridge about 400 feet north of the highway and approximately 800 feet northeast of the bridge crossing Cow Creek. Buried here is the baby of the Jim Fleetwoods and the baby of their daughter Alice Tetreau. The graves are not marked but there is a layer of rocks covering each one.
[box]Source: These cemetery records were provided by Gary Jaensch and the Family History Center, Baker City, Oregon.[/box]
