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Sonoma County, a dynamic county combining agriculture and industry, City and country, creating unique and varied challenges for its citizens join us as we present some of the information and services provided by the county of Sonoma to help us as we move into the 21st century. Welcome

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to Sonoma County in the 90s with your host Dana Torrico. Hello, I'm dana d'Errico and welcome to Sonoma County in the nineties. Today we're going to be talking to some people who are highly involved in the rural cemetery in the city of santa rosa. So let's

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join Bill Montgomery, who is the deputy, the director of city Parks and Lynn Faustine, who is a volunteer in lovely costume today. Welcome to the show. Um lin you, you're just in such a cute costume. I'm afraid our viewers wouldn't even know that you had a

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costume on. Um I know nothing about the rural cemetery, but I've been hearing rumors about what's going on over there. I think I first heard about it at memorial Day and you have several other events. So shall we start with you, Bill, and could you tell

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me a little bit about what's going on? Okay, well, the city of santa rosa owns a cemetery and the cemetery is the santa rosa rural cemetery, which is on franklin Avenue and uh that cemetery has is the city's pioneer cemetery. It's from the first burial place

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of the pioneers in this community. Starting from 18 54 it was a series of private cemeteries over the years. However, in the seventies, the city took it over because the condition was so bad. And since that time we've been embarked upon trying to make it better?

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And our whole cemetery programs and our improvements and our volunteer activities or towards the goal of trying to, to maintain and to improve that cemetery. Okay. Um you might, for our viewers sake, the franklin cemetery is on franklin Drive, correct? It's on franklin Avenue, the major

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gate is at franklin and Monroe. And there is confusion there because there are actually two cemeteries in a row. There's the santa rosa rural cemetery, which belongs to the city, which is the old pioneer cemetery. Then immediately north of there is santa rosa Memorial Park, which

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still is still a private operated cemetery if it has lawns and it's green, it's the memorial park. If it has no lawns and it looks a little ragged, it's probably santa rosa Roll cemetery, the rural cemetery. So in that cemetery we have some very historic figures.

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Uh uh the first burial in santa rosa as the new town was in 18 54. And from that day until actually, now the cemetery is still a viable cemetery. There's still burials taking place. Most of the pioneers in santa rosa buried there. So most of the

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tombstones in the cemetery will correspond to street names in the downtown area. We have rights and to Turks and and uh ha almonds and Holland's career, those, all those folks created this cemetery. Um So it started in 18 50 for who was the first person? Do

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you know who the first person was? We do. The first person was Thompson mayes. And Thompson mayes arrived in santa rosa by covered wagon in august of 18 54 and in november I believe was 18 54. He drowned and he was a young man of 30

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to 31 or 32 with several Children. Uh So for for a long time, we were curious as to what the circumstances of his drowning were. Uh we, the people involved in the cemetery made up all kinds of heroic stories for Thompson. We thought maybe it was

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helping unload a lumber schooner out of bodega bay or maybe it was crossing a rain swollen Russian river to bring food to his kids. Unfortunately, that's not exactly the way it was. Uh we ultimately came up with the coroner's records. They had actually coroner's inquest in

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18 54 with a little town of about 400 people And it actually Julio Korea was one of the members of the coroner's inquest. And it's reported that one night in November in 1850 for a candle time, which we read as a time when people started putting

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candles out that a young man was seen uh staggering around Santa Rosa? Downtown Santa Rosa and Babbling incoherently the following morning a body was found in a little pond near Santa Rosa Creek. And apparently Thompson Mayes was so drunk that he fell into a pond and

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drowned. So that's the story. It wasn't not heroic at all. I was hoping it was a little more heroic than that. We always did too. But we always say in our tours that I suppose that since he had just crossed the plains in a covered wagon,

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spent four months doing that and I believe he had four little girls and most of his in laws in those covered wagons and maybe by the time he got here, he really needed a drink. But that's probably a bad joke. Ah um That's an interesting story

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though. It sounds like it's just, there's all kinds of history over there now. Prior you said you took this over in 1983 1979 the city took it over by eminent domain because the private military companies had gone bankrupt way back in the twenties and thirties. The

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volunteer group had tried to keep it going and with some success from the thirties until 79. But the conditions were so bad at that point that the city felt they just needed to step in. What condition was it in? Well, 79, between 79 and 93, when

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the current volunteer group started, the conditions probably didn't get much better when the city took, because the city took it over, but had no money to maintain it. So in from 79 to 85, the city took a few steps one as they fenced it. So no

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longer could vehicles just drive in there wanting Lee. And they did set up a walking tour, the first walking tour and they had several volunteer work parties, but it still continued to deteriorate over time. So by 93, which is the time when the current volunteer group

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dates from uh condition was such that of probably 3000 tombstones in the cemetery. Probably 1800 of them were either destroyed or at least down. They were in some way damaged. Probably three quarters of the cemetery was completely overgrown with vegetation. Uh, you know, blackberry and mule

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fat and other bushes. To the point where you really couldn't get through or finding locations, a lot of trash, a lot of beer bottles, it was the home of drinking parties at night, it was just really a disgrace to the community. Yes. I recall that there

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were a lot of complaints by residents in the area about Um, what was going on there um, prior to taking over or taking an interest in it. Um, how did, how did the volunteer group get started? Well, that's an interesting story and it shows the power

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of the media actually, it was 93 I believe it was that the Culture Heritage Board, the city called Heritage Board asked for a tour of the cemetery because they've been hearing the stories about how bad it was. So, since the cemetery was in, under the jurisdiction

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of the Parks department and I had a little bit of knowledge of it. I took them on the tour. Uh, a reporter from the press democrat went along on that tour and during that tour they took pictures of some of the tombstones down in the conditions.

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And at some point during that tour, we talked about what could possibly happen to make this situation better. So I mentioned that since the city had no money, the only possible solution would be if we had a major outpouring of volunteer support to do something about

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this project. The article appeared in the paper and I think for the next two days we logged 250 phone calls from people calling in wanting to do something about the cemetery and that was the genesis that group we called to a meeting ultimately aboard got organized

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and ultimately a whole series of activities started based upon that comment to the newspaper. So this is a volunteer project. The city puts very little money into it and sometimes donated, which is a little bit of my time to coordinate the effort. Did you find that

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there were descendants of individuals from that cemetery that were highly involved or not at all. Has it been, there are some descendants, but the majority of people that heavily involved have no relations at the cemetery. In fact, most of them, except for Lynn seem to be

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people that are relatively new to santa rosa. They have more the history, the desire to treasure the history of this community, how has progress been going on this project? Lynn maybe Lynn would like to see the progress has been incredible. You know, the volunteers really have

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moved mountains. I'm an old Santa Rosen and was raised in this community. And as a child, we used to go up there. Um, so I do have vague recollections of what it was like in the 50s and when I was in the cemetery in 1993 for

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essentially the first time in about 30 years, the vegetation was as high as I am. And we all felt like urban archaeologists, you know, cutting down poison oak and you know, and finding these tombstones, we just got all excited about. It was very exciting to just

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identify things and find, you know, a tombstone, we didn't really know where it went or what it was. And we found the walls that go around, um, the very front of the Mcdonald's gate, which was very exciting. And so it was just little treasures that we

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found. And we started out just doing that on one saturday a month with these work parties and by the next saturday, everything that we've done with no water and no electricity up there had grown back. I mean, it was, it was like this really, we started

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in october. So hands across Sonoma County really helped us to kind of launch, you know, this re effort of the volunteers now hands across Sonoma County. Um, you're just saying people, yeah, that one work day in October. You know these bodies of people, I think that

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we maybe had 20 or three people come out and cut down things. But it just made for a wonderful awareness of those cemetery. I'm curious were there any maps showing who was buried where? Because if there had been a lot of damage and vandalism to the

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cemetery, which I recall that that was the case. I would think that tombstones were missing on the wrong grades. Were there any maps or anything? How did you? It's that's been part of the volunteer effort. Uh, there were some, there's some information available, although the basic

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records for the cemetery have disappeared. Uh, some people say the 19th earthquake destroyed. Some of them, others have just gone. So part of the volunteer effort has been to try to recreate those records. And there's been detailed surveys of the cemetery itself, tombstone reading has been

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review of coroner's records to the point where we now have this book which is documentation of some 5500 names. Yes. Well, I see you have a handout here also. That that's interesting. But you have 10,500 names of people that are buried in the cemetery. And we

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have the actual location for about 4500. There's about 1000 we know they're there but we don't know exactly the location, you know their names. But you don't know where. So I see there's about 1000 people that you know, they're buried in that cemetery and you know

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who they are, but you just don't know which one they are. Still have some mysteries to solve. What mysteries do you have to solve? Well, you know, like on finding the stones and finding the proper place, I'm really where they were buried. Do you think that

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you're going to find the stones? Do you think they've been removed or do you think you're going to come across then? Still in? Well, we've had wonderful stories about how stones have been returned to us. Yes. You know, so there's always possibilities or family members know

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of something or somebody knows of something. Um So really this is an outcry to any family members or descendants. If you know of, have any information that they should contact. One interesting story about a tombstone showing up. Uh There was a tombstone missing from a little

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child's gravestone and the family was still maintaining the gravesite. So when the tombstone turned up missing, they put a new tombstone in her place. Uh several, many years later uh the cemetery group happened to be taking a tour of a local collector's home and he had

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some tombstones that had been given to him and one of the tombstones he had there, we traced back to our cemetery, the story on that particular tombstone was that this particular gentleman had been active at Sonoma State University and when the lake at Sonoma State was

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drained many years ago, this tombstone was found the bottom of the lake. He saved it at that point, not knowing where it went. We then saw it at his home and restored it to the cemetery, tombstones have been taken away and we're still looking for those.

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So if anyone has a tombstone we'd like to have it back or or a tombstone that you have no idea where it goes or it's just an old tombstone. Contact the world cemetery because you have the list of names. Obviously we could trace it down and

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probably tell you, yes, that belongs in our cemetery. Oh wow. Yeah. That's exciting. It's almost like a treasure hunt. It is. And we do actually kind of have a treasure hunt. Just find the foot stones that go to them. A couple of Saturdays. We've just taken

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the information and wonderful volunteers. The phoenix do Mississippi needs it, writes the newsletter and then Allen her husband is a retiree and he and the gang that goes up there on Tuesday and Thursdays they work in the cemetery physically were we need to take a break

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here. Stay tuned. We'll be right back with Sonoma County in the nineties, if you have diabetes there are a world of reasons to get a dilated eye exam because diabetic eye disease doesn't have to take away your sight if you need any more reasons. Just look

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around you welcome back to Sonoma County in the nineties. We are talking about the rural cemetery and the great renovation project that is going on there in our city of santa rosa. So let's rejoin Lynn and Bill Lynn. You were talking about the finis and the

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group that goes up to the cemetery on Tuesdays and Thursdays I believe. Yeah, there's work parties on Tuesdays and Thursdays very informal and um these men have just been very generous with their time and they go up and first of all they started cutting down vegetation

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and cleaning up that was their way of offering. And now over the period of time that they've done some stone restoration. And just as the time has progressed, whatever the need has been, then they come forth and they work. But there's so many volunteers that are

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so generous um who people do what they can and what they like to do up in the cemetery. Like Margaret Feeney, she writes the newsletter and some people like cleaning up in the um the cemetery and the genealogical society as part of they made it possible,

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they physically went out and researched um all the burial sites and brought up the book um what we call the book on and did incredible amounts of work up there. So they were more interested in the families in the genealogy. We have people that have joined

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the friends of the rural cemetery and financially support us. Um, they come in as donations have come in as far away as massachusetts and Hollister and I mean just real interesting places and people, you know, we have dog walkers that are up there that are very

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strict about their cemetery and making sure that, you know, their eyes and ears look out after us. And uh, then we do, um, as fundraising again in a cemetery awareness, we do walking tours. Uh, we do about four a year where we take people through again

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and we try and have costumes on. Your costume is just too cute. Well, we usually try and take on characters up in the cemetery. So what character would you be used? The idea about in 1910, I really enjoyed that period of time and I like the

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sailor look and on how the women would have dressed. That dress is just too cute. Now tell us about the dress. I'm talking about the walking the walking tours. Well, I'm always scouring for costumes and I have several costumes that I have acquired for the the

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walking tours. It was the first one we all decided it was a great excuse to dress up to be a docent and um, I was commenting to build and he didn't have on a sergeant's outfit. Usually he's in his civil War uniform and we have a

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nurse and we have a grave digger and then we have the morning outfits, you know the victorian mourning outfits that are very fabulous, A couple of the women have done and the military uniforms are fabulous that people come up with for our military. Um We do

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a very special event which was started by a man by the name of Ray Owen. He did the research for Memorial Day and so we do this wonderful tour after the memorial park, does the avenue of the flags in the morning. And then usually around 11

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or 12 we like to do something with our veterans to honor them. And we have veterans in our cemetery, the world cemetery from the war of 18 12 and the spanish american war all the way. We have one stone. That's interesting from Vietnam but the soldier

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is not actually buried there but we have a stone. So that's another mystery that we need to solve but it's very interesting to see the history that is up there um between the founding fathers that are buried up there of santa rosa. Um Mr Doyle man

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field, Doyle is buried there frank's father of Doyle scholarships and his entire family is there. So we have a lot of people that are connected in some way. Well even the been fabulous yes there they would be buried there and assuming well Julio Corio who was

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Maria creoles, youngest son who was the actually the designee for the ownership of all the real property is buried there. In fact his tombstone was recently vandalized and is currently being restored and put back in place. He did not have a tombstone there for for many

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years. His original tombstone was probably was disappeared whatever about three years ago, his tombstone was replaced and then about three months ago it was vandalized and now it's been restored. We haven't had a lot of vandalism since we started the restoration but once in a while

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we'll get someone come in and they'll destroy or damage of analyzed five or six tombstones. Maybe I should mention what has resulted since 1993 when the volunteer group began to today. At this point of the say 3000 tombstones that are still there, probably 99% of them

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are now up and in relatively good shape some of them are just non restore a ble all the pathways open, All the obnoxious vegetation, the poison oak and blackberry is almost all gone. So you can stroll the cemetery. Are there a lot of like antique roses

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in the springtime? There's quite a bit of old vegetation as we cleared out all the blackberry and such. It was, it was fun to see the old vegetation that was still there to kind of revive. There's a lot of old roses there there's iris, there's lilac

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bushes, there's cypress trees there, magnolia trees, all of which survived for 8200 years without any water and Ernie care which is now being uncovered. So in a way it's also a garden site besides being an historic site. Yes. Um let's talk focused on the events, What

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events do you have every year? Why don't we just start at the beginning of the year? Um Is the first one. My understanding is Memorial Day, or do you have something prior to a memorial Day because the weather conditions? Um it's not really, you know, january

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and february are pretty cold months and pretty sloppy up there. So we usually start with Memorial Day. That's, this is will be the second year that we have done a big tradition up there. Um then that's what's that called, Memorial Day, Memorial Day, we call it

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decoration day like they did in the old days and we try and get the flags out on every soldier's grave to identify them and then um we give tours again and the families of the descendants usually start coming in before Memorial Day to clean up the

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gravesites. Now, is there a fee for the tour? And how long does the walking tour take? It's all by donation and just donation, donation we encourage and the walking tours depend on your tour guide, but plan on a good hour and 15 minutes to be in

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the cemetery now. I should clarify that on Veterans Day this year we did something called a trail of veterans and we had probably a half hour tour. And what we did in that tour was, took the visitors to graves of veterans representing each of the wars

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whose veterans are buried, their war of 18 12 Mexican war, Civil war, spanish american war, First World War, Second World war Korea Vietnam. And we talked a little bit about those wars. We also during the year have traditional walking tours which are scheduled on Saturdays or

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Sundays, where there's a general cemetery tour and those take about an hour and 10 minutes and in all cases you're led by a dosage in costume, we represent the character and tries to make it much more interesting. So where should you go? Should you go to

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the main gate at the cemetery, like on a Saturday? Well, we advertise the tours, usually both in the media, and also we have a poster at the, at the cemetery itself. Okay, so there's a poster poster and, and the media or you can just usually in

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the city's adventure guide. The recreation park publication will have a schedule of those tours like this year, I think we did one in june one in august and one in october. Okay, so there's specific dates to have a saturday morning usually, and we've also done them

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on sunday afternoons. Okay, so now that's the memorial day event then you have, we do the walking tours and then then we go into lamplight tour, which is very special because this is a major fundraiser for us and it's, this is the third year going into

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the fourth year of lamplight and it's always in september, we have to call the National Weather Bureau to find out when sunset is, so that we're just at desk and it's 7 32 or something that we can go up there and it's light enough and the

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moon is in the right place to have these tours. So you um, you incorporate full moon. We try to, it depends on the day. So there is much light because there's no electricity or water up there. And, and it's a living history event where we start

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out, you have tour guides that take you with gas lanterns through the cemetery and you stop um about eight different sites And um, the characters come out and their vignettes that about 68 minutes long about the history of that person. And we featured civil war vignettes.

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Uh, Annabelle Stewart, who was the first woman doctor, we've had Children um who have died and she was from Healdsburg. Right? Annabelle Stuart. No, she was Dr. Dear. She was our first woman doctor. She died in 1914. So this is way back. And so it was

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very exciting because of the different vignettes. We researched the history of the people and then we make up the place according to the fun. So that's the September that you just had it. So that's over. And then you have another one. Then we do walking tours

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in october and october 2nd, wasn't it? You just had that. And what is that? Just the normal walking tour? That's saying that you have in august and it's a daytime tour essentially where we have all the characters. This lamplight sounds like so much fun. That that

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is our big fundraiser. I mentioned a little bit money earlier. The city puts a little bit of money into the project 4 to $7000 a year, which is kind of a teaser I guess to help the volunteers out. So the group has taken on fundraiser is

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a big activity. One of the goals is to set up an endowment fund so that there can be some regular money coming into the maintenance of the cemetery. And the big fundraiser has been for the last several years. The lamplight tour because these tickets sell for

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$20 each. Okay. Um, we're getting towards the end of the show here and I want to make sure I get this in. Where can someone contact you? If they would like to become a volunteer or would like to make a donation? Do you have address and

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phone number for any of those? If you like to be a volunteer, give donations. Find out about the events. Get on our list for a newsletter, you would call the center Rosa recreation parks department at 5433292 and then we would provide you the information necessary to

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do whatever you desire to do with the cemetery. So if you were to become a volunteer, what are the types of things you may be doing besides being adult possibly or cleaning or give me a list of what activities you get to choose from. I think

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you have manual labor. You have tombstone repair which has been done still more to do your vegetation maintenance and cleanup. And these can be done on your own time. If you adopt a specific plot or with a group, we then have the history interpreters, the docents,

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the people that helped with the special event. We have people who do research that are researching the issues about various folks in the cemetery and we have people which we have more than who are working on fundraising. Like Lynn for example, is in charge of the

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friends program, which is a new program which raised $4,000 this year, which is a really neat way to the outreach from our publications, the cemetery in you get informed about different events. Plus also it's a communication tool for people that have family or adopters or anything.

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They're always emailing or calling or saying, you know, they provide a lot of the pieces that come back in about things, things that are, that are happening. We're out of time. It sounds like a great thing. And um, I'm looking forward to that lamp light tour

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next year. So, um, thank you for being with me and maybe we can have you on again in the future and see how this progresses. Thank you for joining me. I'm Dana Derek. Oh, and this is Sonoma County in the nineties. I look forward to seeing

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you the next time.