COLD SPRINGS UNION CEMETERY

By Byron Bovey

Cold Springs Cemetery started out as an area set aside for a school house to teach the children of families in the immediate area and the children of families who worked at the Bailey Sawmill, which was located in the draw below where the school house was built.  History of the area states that Mr. Bailey owned the property and built the school where his daughter, Mrs. Bell Nixon, taught.  When Mrs. Nixon died in 1899, she was buried in the schoolyard.

It also appears that B. F. Bailey died around this time as he does not show up in the 1900 census for Nez Perce County, but Dora Bailey does and is living with several children. According to a funeral home record on one of Dora’s children, her husband was named James Bailey, so B. F. may have been the grandfather of Thomas J. (John Thomas) who was listed as the head of the house in 1900.  It is said that shortly after the first burials, the school was moved to Chesley, and the area was used solely for cemetery purposes.

William August "Gus" Patton and his wife Mary bought the Bailey land and on November 1, 1916, deeded the property to the Cold Springs Union Cemetery for one dollar and other valuable consideration.  The legal description is:  "Commencing at the Northeast corner of the Northeast quarter of Section 22 in Township 34 North of Range 2 West of the Boise Meridian; thence South 190 feet; thence West 142 feet; thence North 190 feet; thence East 142 feet to the place of beginning."  The deed was recorded on June 26, 1917, at the request of M. H. Paige.

Mr. Carroll Parkins kept the records for the cemetery for many years, and then they were passed on to his son, Major, who helped fill in a lot of information on the people buried in this cemetery.  Major passed the records onto Louise Durst Bateman in the mid-1990s.

The Cold Springs Cemetery has 28 blocks and each block contains 6 lots.  The lots are 10 feet square and of course will accommodate more than one burial, and several contain more than one burial.  The streets between the blocks are 12 feet wide and run east to west.   The alleys are 4 feet wide, and there is a 4 feet wide strip around the outside the cemetery.

For more information, please contact the Ilo-Vollmer Historical Society, Box 61, Craigmont, Idaho 83523 or Shelley Kuther, skuther@camasnet.com  208-790-7890 or Byron Bovey, bdbovey@wildblue.net  208-924-7336.

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