by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The Boom of the Eighties, largely propelled by a direct transcontinental railroad connection by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and mostly taking place during the 1886-1888 tenure of William H. Workman (nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste) as mayor of Los Angeles, included a major population increase significantly comprised of Protestant migrants, so that the Angel City was described as “more Midwestern than Western” and the spires of Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches were notable in period photographs.
It was small wonder that, in addition to Evergreen Cemetery, which was established in 1877 on the eastern edge of city limits in Boyle Heights, Rosedale Cemetery, located west of downtown in 1884, as the area was already experiencing substantial growth, was the next important burial ground in the burgeoning community. While the Catholic population increased, it was not nearly at the levels of Protestants, but, after four decades in its location at the base of the Elysian Hills (near today’s Dodger Stadium), Calvary Cemetery was becoming increasingly crowded, as well as somewhat neglected.
Boom-time references to the burying ground include the 22 August 1887 edition of the Los Angeles Times noting that “a horrible rumor . . . that some native [Spanish-speaking] Californians had found a hole in the Catholic cemetery in which bees had made a hive, and had taken the honey out and peddled it about the city.” It was found that ground squirrels, always destructive, made their way “through the coffin, and, after having cleared the coffin of its contents, had surrendered it to the bees, who made a treasure trove of it.”
When a reporter went out to Calvary (that name only recently found to be used, at least according to media mentions,) it was learned that the sexton, or caretaker, was only a few days in to the job and was unaware of the situation. Altagracia Bodoa, the wife of José Jesús Childs, the previous sexton, told the journalist that “some Californians had been in the cemetery with vessels, and that she had heard they had taken out some honey from near there, but did not know anything more about it.” A police officer was aware of it, but offered that, because he didn’t eat honey, “he had paid but little attention to the matter,” which seems a more than curious way to approach law enforcement!
Because our region is occasionally prone to heavy rains in the winter (as expected with this year’s Super El Niño), it is not surprising to find in the 6 January 1888 number of the Los Angeles Express the report that, “several of the graves in the Catholic Cemetery are reported deeply sunken” and that “the caving in was occasioned by the heavy rains of the past few days.”
A remarkable feature appeared at the end of the year in the Express, by its co-owner Edward R. Cleveland (his partner was Henry Z. Osborne) under the heading of “With the Departed” and “A walk Through the Cemeteries of Los Angeles.” The article began with the observation that,
Shafts, sepulchers and monuments erected over the remains of the departed are not, as a rule, entertaining objects of the average wayfarer, but when those who sleep in or beneath them were more or less prominent in business and society, and made part of the history of the country, the subject loses some of its sombreness [sic] and takes on an interest befitting the theme.
Cleveland observed that the oldest Angel City cemetery was at the Plaza Church, but “the march of trade, however, forced its removal to a more remote quarter” so that “the consecrated ground of the Catholics is now located on an elevation north of what is known as Sonoratown, and west of the Southern Pacific depot [the River Station where Los Angeles State Historic Park is today].”
The piece continued that “here is [sic] the ashes of many who were prominent in business and society,” though “some have monuments, some sleep with no mark of identity above them.” As photos, including a couple in earlier parts of this post, show, “at the western side of the cemetery rises a little hill” where “its sies are dotted with graves, and modest headboards note the simple fact when the departed were born and when they died.” It was remarked, moreover, that “on the summit is a large wooden cross, which is surrounded by scores of graves of priests and [nuns of the] Sisters of Charity.” The view of surrounding regions from this elevation was also noted.
Cleveland went on to offer that “a glance at the numerous tombs convinces one that no extravagance was practiced at interments in the early days” even among the wealthy ranch owners, while “the landscape gardener was indifferent to taste, as is evinced by the irregular manner in which burial plats [plots] are laid out.” There was also a death of “tombstone poetry,” though “in an obscure corner, long neglected, is a grave with a small headstone” inscribed with,
Here rests old Bill Taylor,
Who was in life a sailor,
For thirty yeas he plowed the sea,
And died in September, fifty-three
As for a couple of prominent personages mentioned by the Express owner, Jonathan Temple was recalled in some detail, but it was noted that he moved to San Francisco where he is buried, while William Wolfskill also merited mention, but all that was said was that “he lies buried in this city,” though whether at Calvary or the old City (Protestant) Cemetery on Fort Moore Hill, where the Cortines visual and performing arts high school is now, was not stated.
Cleveland did remark upon an inscription for María Ignacia Alvarado, the wife of 87-year-old Pío Pico, last governor of Mexican California, and it was observed that this was “on a substantial mausoleum in the Catholic cemetery in this city.” The tomb “is built of iron, painted black, and surrounded by pepper trees.” As to Don Pío, it was noted that he “retains much mental and physical strength” and “can be frequently seen upon the streets of this city” although he “is comparatively poor.”
Another “handsome tomb” was that of María Jesús Lugo,” daughter of the prominent ranchero Antonio María Lugo, who died in 1860 and was interred at the old Calvary, and her husband Isaac Williams, who took possession of Don Antonio’s Rancho Santa Ana de Chino in modern Chino and Chino Hills. Their final resting place was “a large structure of brick material covered with cement” and a brief biographical statement was made about Williams.
Calvary was also the resting place of the remains of Abel Stearns, who came to Los Angeles in the late 1820s, soon after his fellow Massachusetts native Temple, and of whom the newspaper publisher wrote “experienced some remarkable adventures” in business, ownership of a vast domain of several large ranchos, and politics. Cleveland added that “by his side rests his old friend, Don Juan Bandini,” also Stearns’ father-in-law, who was, in 1888, the wife of Robert S. Baker of Santa Monica and Baker Block renown.
Bandini was lionized for his development of the region, hospitality and as “a staunch friend of the Americans,” while his two wives were accounted ” ladies of rare beauty and of great accomplishments.” Cleveland went into some detail about the report that two Bandini daughters made the first American flag in California during the American seizure of 1846.
Other prominent persons buried at Calvary included Felix (mis-identified as Louis) Signoret, whose “family mausoleum is a handsome one” as “the interior is elaborately decorated having a beautiful altar ornamented with gold and silver candlesticks, crucifix, etc.,” and Andres Briswalter, whose $25,000 chapel was soon to be built and of which nothing was said in the article.
Richard Garvey, a prominent landowner in the San Gabriel Valley, built “a magnificent tomb . . . of blue gray marble, lined with Irish and Italian marble” for the body of his 23-year-old wife, Teresa, who died at the end of 1885. Natives of Gibraltar, the brothers John and Mathew Lanfranco, in whose Main Street business building William H. Workman and his brother, Elijah, long operated their saddle and harness business, were mentioned.
So, too, was French Basque sheep-raiser Gaston Oxarart of the Rancho Encino, whose Greek Revival monument, some 30 feet high and which a carved “canopy, in which is an exquisitely wrought figure of a shepherdess, in the act of dropping a flower upon a lamb,” was considered “one of the handsomest” in the city. Cleveland briefly referred to the fact that “the Fosters, the Lugos and the Sepúlvedas have handsome tombs,” these also in Calvary, also recently described as the “Buena Vista Cemetery.”
The article also discussed the Swiss-born Hoovers, who long resided in France, and their last resting places at the Fort Hill cemetery; the Yorba mausoleum at the still-existing family cemetery in Yorba Linda; the Bryson mausoleum at Rosedale; the burial plot of Ygnacio del Valle at his Rancho Camulos in eastern Ventura County; the Fort Hill marker of Tombstone, Arizona mining magnate Ed Schieffelin; and the Rosedale monuments of Phineas Banning and Remi Nadeau.
Cleveland also devoted some ink to the founder of the Homestead, recording that,
William Workman was another prominent citizen in the early days of Los Angeles. He was a shrewd business man, and although poor when he arrived in 1841 [a talk at the Museum on Sunday, 8 November covers his migration and that of others on the Old Spanish Trail], soon amassed a fortune in lands and buildings.
Some of Workman’s history was elucidated, including the failure of the Temple and Workman bank and the fact that “the reverses prayed [preyed] upon Mr. Workman’s mind to such a degree that he became deranged and in that condition meant a violent death [by suicide].” Cleveland inaccurately recorded that “years previous he and Rowland built a handsome chapel at Puente,” this being built by Workman and named St. Nicholas’ for his wife, Nicolasa Urioste.
The account did inform readers:
[St. Nicholas’ Chapel] was beautifully decorated, many of the figures and works of art being modeled after the rich treasures in old cathedrals. There [in a surviving cast-iron fenced plot] their bodies repose. The attachment these two men had for each other was very marked, and was frequently the subject for comment.
in April 1889, a heartbreaking incident took place at Calvary, reported in the Los Angeles Tribune of the 20th under the headline of “VISITED ON THE CHILD WERE THE SINS OF THE GUILTY PARENTS” and which stated that the city’s health officer, Dr. D. Granville McGowan was told that “an attempt has been made to inter the body of a child in the Catholic cemetery on Buena Vista street [now North Broadway]] without a permit.”
McCowan was unable to attend to the matter so assigned Dr. James J. Choate, who “immediately drove out to the burial ground where he was met by two Mexican women” who “stood close to an open grave and a tiny coffin lay on the ground at their feet.” The younger of the two, Juanita Duran, told the physician that the baby, who was no relation, died at the home of her mother and, suspicious of the circumstances, Choate took the coffin and drove back to the city and left it with the Orr and Sutch mortuary.
He then went to the house specified as where the infant died and found Juanita’s parents, where he learned that she “had been taking care of a child for someone else,” but would not reveal the identity. The infant was in the Duran home for some two months, always being ill, and that a Doctor Hepworth told the family that the child would not survive. Moreover, it was reported that the unnamed mother sent $15 for expenses a few das prior, but had no other contact with her child.
Choate learned that the Durans resided at another location not long before, so he found the landlady and was told that “Juanita, had adopted a baby boy, which was then about a month old” and was cared for by a Mrs. Flores on Upper Main Street in Sonoratown, not far from Calvary. Señora Flores was visited at her home, actually on Bellevue Avenue west of Upper Main, and told the doctor that, in late January, an elderly woman and a man, newly arrived from San Diego and returning there, asked her to care for a baby in a basket they carried. They were willing to pay $30 monthly and left $10 as an advance, but nothing was heard from for some time after that.
Flores told Choate that the infant “had evidently not received the proper attention at birth and was sadly in need of nourishment,” though, with her ministrations, the child improved somewhat. Unable to continue caring for the baby, Flores found that Juanita Duran was willing to do so, but afterward the man who brought the baby from San Diego returned and told her “the child’s mother was a married lady at San Diego and that the baby was the result of [a] too-inmate relationship with a gentleman other than her husband.” Consequently, the child was taken to Los Angeles to avoid the detection of the out-of-wedlock birth.
Choate conducted an autopsy and found that the three-month-old child was “in a shockingly emaciated condition and presented a sickening spectacle,” weighting under 10 pounds, and that death came from inflammation of the intestines, apparently from “feeding on condensed milk at the time when it should have had its natural food.” The article mournfully concluded that,
In all probability, the grave which was open to receive the parentless waif yesterday will be closed today, and the story of its short but unhappy life will be all that the world will ever know about it.
Not quite four months later, a strange story was reported upon with a headline of “A Wild German” in the 13 August edition of the Los Angeles Herald. The piece commented that “the police were notified last night of the peculiar actions of a crazy German and two Mexicans, who visited the Catholic cemetery . . . and had stated their intentions of returning again.”
Specifically, it was recorded,
The German’s mania consisted of a fanatical belief in his powers of finding buried money among the graves of the dead. He had obtained admission to the cemetery by means of some excuse or other given to the sexton, but had acted so strangely as to lead those who saw his performances to believe that a species of Voodooism was being carried on.
A pair of reporters showed up at 10 o’clock at night and hid behind a vault as “the three fanatics came to a halt right in front of he vault” and the Latinos kept watch as “the crazy Dutchman [?] pulled out of his capacious pockets a bottle of holy water and a Bible.” After making the sign of the cross on his compatriots as well as himself, the gent “made a circle upon the ground large enough for him to stand within,” and a candle and a piece of paper with hieroglyphics was buried, while the “high priest knelt down and read a chapter from Exodus.”
One of the reporters, seeking a better view, made a noise heard by one of the Latino men and decamped to the shade of a stand of trees, while the German, unperturbed by his companion’s report of intruders, said that he saw “a friendly spirit coming to show him where the money was buried.” After a skunk came on to the scene “and made its presence suddenly known by a most unpleasant method,” the ritual was unceremoniously ended, but the German, identified as San Bernardino mattress maker Edward Smith remarked that he would return, though the sexton, only known as Syndon, had him arrested and sent back to his hometown.
We’ll return tomorrow the carry the story into the 1890s including the decision to establish a New Calvary Cemetery, so be sure to join us then!