Guild Lecture Series Presents: True Tales from Medford’s Silent City: The Eastwood/I.O.O.F. Cemetery

“True Tales from Medford’s Silent City” with historian Bill Miller is the next topic of the Guild Lecture Series on Wednesday, September 20 from 12 Noon – 1:00 p.m. in the Large Meeting Room of the Medford Branch Library, 205 South Central Avenue. 

For nearly 200 years our ancestors have been calling cemeteries Silent Cities. To the Southern Oregon pioneer, a cemetery was indeed a Silent City—a community garden where the living visited with relatives and friends who had already passed on. In a time when there were no public parks, the cemetery was a peaceful and comfortable refuge. Unlike our sterile, modern memorial parks—a pioneer cemetery teemed with life—family picnics and parents strolling with children amongst the marble and granite stones—pausing just long enough to tell stories of lost cousins, grandparents—little brothers, and little sisters. As one unknown writer put it in 1875: “A cemetery is not merely a place of the dead. It is the shrine of living hope and faith. Its markers are as sacred as the hearthstones of a home. All of our past lives lie there.”

Miller, a former historian with the Southern Oregon Historical Society, a former reporter and history columnist with the Mail Tribune, and author of three books, including, Silent City on the Hill, the history of Jacksonville’s historic cemetery—will bring Medford’s Silent City back to life. Hear the history. Discover a war hero. Walk among the unknowns and visit with those who shared our Valley.

The Guild Lecture Series is proudly sponsored by the Friends of the Medford Library. Light refreshments will be served. For more information, contact the Medford Library at 541-774-8685 or visit jcls.org.