It’s a pretty nasty affair.”

Mark McCauley Jefferson County Administrator

Jefferson County, the city of Port Townsend, and the Redmen Cemetery sexton are at work trying to sort out the illegal grading and clearing on the cemetery property at the corner of 25th Street and Discovery Road in Port Townsend.

On the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 14, a city employee and several concerned community members reported that heavy equipment was being operated on the Redmen Cemetery grounds, and that no permit validating the work was posted on site.

Additionally, a large fir tree had been felled and cut into multiple pieces. It is yet unclear whether the tree was on the privately owned acreage of the Redmen Cemetery, or on the adjacent land owned by the county, known alternately as the County Cemetery, the Chinese Cemetery, and the Soldiers and Sailors Cemetery.

City Code Compliance Officer KT LaBadie confirmed that the clearing, grading and tree removal was illegal, since a clearing-and-grading permit is required to do such work in city limits.

She also said that no one has come in to the office to obtain the appropriate permit since the stop work order was posted on Sept. 14.

LaBadie added that she had been in contact with Felix “Jack” McLarney, one of the sextons of the cemetery, and that she had sent him the appropriate paperwork.

“Someone needs to submit for the grading permit after the fact, unfortunately,” LaBadie said. “As far as the city is concerned, we really want to make sure they get the permit for future work.”

LaBadie wanted to make sure to clarify to the public that people are allowed to construct fences up to
7 feet high on private property without needing a permit.

“We legally can’t keep them from building a fence,” she said.

But the recent work at the Redmen Cemetery goes well beyond what was originally meant to be a fence project.

Not only was vegetation stripped along the proposed fence line — on and off the cemetery property — but grave sites were used as storage spots for debris removed during the clearing, and multiple grave markers were pulled up and scattered.

The infraction is complicated because multiple agencies are involved, including the city, the county, and potentially the state, which can invoke felony charges for the disturbance of graves located at designated historic cemeteries.

“It’s not just a city issue,” LaBadie said.

Regarding complaints about milling the approximately 120-year-old fir tree into lumber at the cemetery with a portable sawmill, LaBadie said that “city code has no provisions for millings.”

“We don’t have the authority” to stop the process, she continued. “We just have to follow city code.”

POTENTIAL CONSEQUENCES

County officials were told about the damage at the cemetery earlier this month.

“I first came to learn about this when Shelly Leavens sent an email,” said County Administrator Mark McCauley.

Leavens, who is the executive director of the Jefferson County Historical Society, has been in touch with the Department of Archaeology & Historic Preservation  regarding policy about grave disturbance on historic cemeteries.

In an email Leavens forwarded to The Leader, Assistant State Archaeologist Lance Wollwage wrote, “It is my understanding from Dr. Tasa [the state physical anthropologist] that Jefferson County Cemetery is a Historic Cemetery. Historic Cemeteries are protected under [state law] and may contain significant archaeological materials.”

McCauley visited the site and took photographs. He said the grading and clearing appeared to have gone “5, 6, 7 feet to the county side,” and that they had removed all of the vegetation in that area.

The only way to have done it was with heavy equipment, he said.

“It’s a pretty nasty affair,” McCauley added.

If the fir tree can be determined to have been on county property, McCauley said it’s possible that the removal could be investigated as timber theft.

The disturbance on county property  is particularly problematic because very little is known of where graves are located on the property.

In a sketch dated 1899, provided by the Jefferson County Genealogical Society, and prepared by J.B. Hogg, the county surveyor at the time, general plots are listed for “British Seamen” “the Chinese,” the “Coast Seaman’s Union,” the “Fireman’s Union,” the IOGT (Independent Order of Good Templars), the IOOF (Independent Order of Odd Fellows), and the Knights of Pythias.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

Redmen Cemetery sexton Felix “Jack” McLarney said last Friday he had mailed the appropriate permit materials back to the city that very morning.

“It should actually have been prepared by the contractor,” he said.

However, he said he has not spoken with Aubie Middleton, the man he said he hired to do the fencing and brush removal, since the project began.

McLarney had told Middleton that he wanted to travel from Portland to Port Townsend for a visit, but Middleton had told him he would be traveling out of the country at the time McLarney was considering a trip.

Middleton, a retired contractor and former owner of ARM Construction of Sequim, purportedly works as a handyman, and had volunteered at the cemetery in the past.

The project was supposed to begin in August, but Middleton contracted COVID and delayed the project by five weeks, McLarney said.

“I have no idea where he is at the moment,” he said.

He was certain that Middleton would be reaching out because he has still not received payment for the job.

The Leader contacted Middleton’s son, Noah, via a phone number provided by McLarney. He stated that his father was in Mexico “getting his teeth fixed,” and said he would pass on a message to his father.

McLarney is as confused as everyone else about the ownership of the Redmen Cemetery. 

“I do not know,” he stated when asked who owns the property.

“For all intents and purposes, it’s been abandoned,” he said.

The Improved Order of Red Men, an on-going patriotic fraternity chartered by Congress, uses Indigenous language and iconography — yet was only open to white men until 1974 — appears to have founded the local Redmen Cemetery.

McLarney explained that a religious affiliation was required to be buried in church graveyards and cemeteries, and that the Red Men were not religious. The Port Townsend lodge disbanded in 1933.

“The lodge had nothing prepared to underwrite the care of the cemetery they created,” McLarney said, adding that he had contacted the main headquarters in Waco, Texas to obtain records. He was told no records had been kept.

It appears the next step toward building a case, or not, in regard to the cemetery scandal, is waiting, as McCauley said, “for the mobilization of city and other assets.”