When a horse fatally kicked Breckenridge Wooldridge in the head in 1864, he was buried on William Miller’s property. That marked the first internment in the Missouri Flat pioneer cemetery that today occupies some three acres off North Applegate Road.
A cemetery association has looked after the site since 1922.
Chuck Lewman, president of the association, told the Medford Mail Tribune that the name Missouri Flat came from Missouri residents who moved to Southern Oregon in the late 1850’s to escape the Kansas-Missouri Border War between those in favor and those opposed to slavery.
As a designated historic cemetery since 2014, the site qualifies for heritage grants from the Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation.
Lewman said the graveyard receives three to five burials a year. He said there are some 1,200 remains in the cemetery, many of them of veterans from the Civil War through World War II and Korea.
Lewman gave two examples, including a relative, Thomas Howard Lewman, who was a Union soldier wounded and captured twice during the Civil War, and John Slagle, a Confederate.
Sources: Boom, Tony. "Missouri Flat tales." Mail Tribune, 13 Oct. 2016 [Medford, Ore.], local ed., p. A3.
