Swedish Cemetery

GPS Coordinates: 47.766268, -122.212738
PLSS Coordinates: Sec. 06 T26N R05E
Location: Bothell, King County
Record count: 39

Ownership: City of Bothell

Directions: Swedish Cemetery is contained within a one-acre lot on a hillside off NE 191st Street, in Bothell. Containing approximately 40 graves, seven of them bearing stone pedestals with missing headstones, the cemetery is bordered by hedges, low wire fences, and iron railings. The site suffered deteriorization and vandalization between 1927 and 1982. City Parks staff and volunteers have maintained the site since 1982, established a path with a simple rail fence, and marked the entrance with a sign reading, "Swedish Cemetery, 1893". In 1987, Bothell Eagle Scout Todd Reese, age 15, built and installed a picnic table at the site as a Boy Scouts of America service project.

Background: Johannes (St. John's) Swedish Lutheran Church was founded in Bothell in 1893 and a church building was completed two years later on the northwest corner of NE 183rd and 103rd NE. Charles Erickson, charter member of the church, donated one acre from his homestead for a cemetery along what would become the south side of NE 191st Street in 1900. Swedish Cemetery contains the graves of important Bothell pioneers who came to Bothell prior to 1885. The first burial was that of Johannes Johnson in 1901. Subsequently, Alfred Pearson and Eric Jacobson, other charter members of St. John's Church, gave permission for transients to be buried in the cemetery; their graves were usually unmarked. The Swedish Lutheran Church disbanded in 1927. Title to the cemetery went to Bethany Lutheran Church and then to Augustana Lutheran Retirement Home, now called Columbia Lutheran Home, in Seattle. As of 1982, the cemetery became property of the City of Bothell.

Burial Records

• Register Application Transcription, by Interment.net, June 2010, (39 records)

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