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A community effort to remember what was lost.
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This project is an attempt to recover and honor the stories of those buried in Snohomish’s first cemetery.
Led by local historian Taylor Russell and a team of dedicated volunteers, it builds on decades of intermittent community interest and research. Public concern about the "Snohomish Pioneer Cemetery" has come and gone. In the 1960s, community groups organized a large-scale cleanup of the site, and several individuals worked to document its history. But then, the cemetery faded from memory.
In 1996, a descendant of John and Lydia Low—and great-grandniece of Mary Low Sinclair—visited the site, only to find that a building now stood where headstones once marked graves. Shocked, Ruth Moore took action. She and her daughter Carolynn Crawford began assembling a list of burials using funeral receipts, obituaries, and county death records. They took the matter to court to fight for recognition of the cemetery’s significance.
In 2005, a court ordered the City to excavate and archaeologists uncovered nearly 100 bodies. The buildings were moved, but no further action was taken.
Memory of the cemetery continues to fade.
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Nearly two decades later, in 2022, Taylor Russell began writing an article about the forgotten burial ground. The more she researched, the more she knew this story needed its own book. In 2025, Lost & Forgotten: A True History of Snohomish's First Cemetery was published, along with an online index of burials.
Drawing from Moore and Crawford’s first burial list, Taylor and a team of researchers traced names, located headstones, and uncovered biographical details through newspapers, probate files, census records, photographs, and more.
Over 300 individuals were identified, with fragments of their lives pieced back together.
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We will never know how many were buried at the Snohomish Cemetery, nor exactly who still lies beneath—but the work to remember them continues.
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