Dr. James Hawthorne, who co-founded Oregon’s first mental hospital. The Oregon Hospital for the Insane, also called the Hawthorne Asylum, operated in Portland from 1861 to 1883. It was widely believed that Block 14 had been the location of burials for both people of Chinese ancestry and patients of the Oregon Hospital for the Insane. However, records showed that many patients had been buried at Block 10, about 150 feet north of Block 14.
This block was called “the asylum grounds” in old cemetery records.
In January 1867, the first recorded OHI patient was buried at the cemetery. The OHI had a contract with the cemetery to bury deceased patients who were unclaimed by family. It is believed that Hawthorne personally paid for 132 patients to be buried within Lone Fir, when family could or would not pay for burial. In 1889, the old Hawthorne Asylum building burned to the ground, leaving few records of the patients who – whether willingly or unwillingly – called it home for so many decades.