National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (ELIZABETH ELLINGTON DAR)

In January 2023, the Elizabeth Ellington Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution started looking for a local project that would help celebrate America’s 250th birthday in 2026. After hearing about the great need at Seabeck Cemetery and understanding its importance to Washington State’s history, the Elizabeth Ellington DAR Chapter decided to commit to preserving, restoring and historically marking the Seabeck Cemetery.

Founded in 1860, the Seabeck Cemetery currently sits on 1.25 acres of land up the hill from Seabeck Bay on the southern edge of the Seabeck Conference Center’s property. Two lumber mills were built in Seabeck Bay which drew people from as far away as Maine and Ohio, even immigrants from Ireland and Norway.

Over the last 160 years, the cemetery has been maintained on and off by caretakers, historians, and most recently by the Seabeck Conference Center. Unfortunately, the cemetery has seen its share of vandalism with stones being pushed over, broken, and stolen. The ever encroaching salal has been cleared several times, but has now overtaken the whole grounds again.

The first task is to clear the grounds of the cemetery of the salal and other invasive plants. We intend to have the whole cemetery scanned with geo-radar mapping to identify where all the graves are and create a new plot map.

The headstones will be properly cleaned with D2. With the communities help we will raise, reset, level, restore/preserve, fix if we can, and clean, the headstones and markers. Unmarked graves will be marked and headstones that are no longer there will be replaced with like headstones per historical photos or in keeping with their appropriate time in history.

The Elizabeth Ellington Chapter volunteer genealogists have been researching the families and creating biographies of the 170+ known burials in the cemetery.

This information will be put into a database with a QR code on a dedication plaque at the cemetery so visitors can learn more about people in the cemetery like Nathaniel Sargent. Once an enslaved man in Kentucky to a beloved Justice of the Peace of Seabeck. Learn about the pioneers who established the Seabeck community, the workers of the lumber mills, the children who died too young, veterans and 2 Civil War soldiers buried in the Seabeck Cemetery. Many of these folks had family ties back to the Revolutionary War Patriots and we intend to honor them all.

Keeping history alive is important to future generations and we want to tell their stories.

There is a lot of work to be done. 100% of the money raised goes directly into purchasing supplies for the restoration work. The cost to have the Seabeck Cemetery geo-radar mapped is approximately $9,500. Cleaning supplies, gravel, sand, special epoxy, mulching, replacement headstones and markers all come with a cost. You can help make a difference with your donation.

We ask our community to consider partnering with the Elizabeth Ellington Chapter, NSDAR to save this piece of Seabeck history.

Follow us on Facebook at the Seabeck Cemetery Restoration Project page.