A Silverton and Oklahoma City resident, Freda Carley Peterson was born in Kansas. She first visited the Silverton area in 1940, returned countless times over the years and became well acquainted with the people and the mountains.

After becoming interested in genealogy and finding there was no record of persons buried at Hillside, she compiled and published such a listing. The 200 page compilation, documenting 1,750 burials, was published in 1981, and consisted mainly of tombstone data.

Through many years of additional detailed research in official and other records including microfilmed newspapers, she discovered more than 2,000 burials at Hillside had no markers. Many Silverton-connected people also furnished valuable family information, and the second version of her work (1989, 728 pages) included more than 2,600 known burials plus additional detailed information for each person in the cemetery.

Both those books are now out of print, superseded by the current two volume version, The Story of Hillside Cemetery, which contains detailed data on more than 3,000 documented burials.