Burial Place Finally Found!

Burial place finally found – thanks to indexing volunteers who helped get the Holy Cross Cemetery records online at SFGenealogy.com!

Joyce Morey

One of the people I started researching when I first became addicted to this hobby was my husband’s great grandfather, Cherubino Mariotti.  He immigrated to San Francisco from Corsagna, Italy around 1870. He married Maria Fischer in 1880 and sadly died in 1883 at the age of 33.

I searched for his burial place for a long time.  I had been to Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma numerous times as this is where most of the family had been buried.  I had asked them if he was also buried there but was told they had no record of a “Cherubino Mariotti”.  (My fault – I could have found him sooner if I had known way back then to be very specific with my request and not so specific with the name but to look for variations in spellings and to get a list of everyone with the same surname.)

While visiting the cemetery with a cousin a couple of years back we asked them to look up a gravesite for us.  They told us that the index was now online so we could look it up ourselves next time.  The index is online at http://www.sfgenealogy.com/php/cemetery/cemeteryindex.php  I was able to look up the other family members on it so I thought I would try to find Cherubino again.  This time I know better than to rely on any specific spelling, however, I got lucky with my first try on the last name Mariotti – there was one listing but it listed the first name as “Columbus”.

Well another lesson I have learned over the years is to look at the image itself which fortunately was attached.  Sure enough it did say Columbus BUT the other information was a good match for Cherubino.

Line 8:

Name: Mariotti, Columbus

Nativity: Italy

Married/Single: Married

Occupation: Laborer

Residence: 424 Fulton

Parish: St. Bon

Death: Typhoid Fever? (hard to read)

Died: 1883 Nov 28

Age: 31

Purchaser: Catherine Mariotti

While the first names are not correct I believe this is Cherubino.  The residence 424 Fulton was his and Maria’s address at that time, their parish was St Boniface.  St. Boniface was a German parish and while Cherubino was Italian he attended this church with his German wife.  The death date is the same and age is very close.  This register would only have been as correct as the information they received from the informant at the time.  The informant may not have even been his wife, since she was 22 years old and 8 months pregnant at the time, someone else may have helped her provide the cemetery with info for his burial.   (And in all of my research I have never come across a “Columbus” Mariotti in San Francisco).

Mount Calvary Cemetery was originally part of Lone Mountain Cemetery (cousins have said this is where they were told he was buried) which was located between Geary Blvd, Turk ST, Joseph's and Masonic Avenues.  His grave was among those removed and reinterred at Holy Cross. There are no individual grave markers, only three crosses standing at the top of the mound.

Inscription on base:

Interred here are the remains of 39,307 Catholics moved from Mt. Calvary Cemetery in 1940 and 1941 by order of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Rest in God's Loving Care.

The Removal Record was also found on this website. Cherubino was reinterred on 24 April 1940.  The family was still living in San Francisco at that time. I wonder if the family could not be found and that’s why he ended up with the other people who had not been claimed instead of in a separate grave with the rest of the family buried at Holy Cross.

It’s possible that his surviving family could not be located.  Even though they still lived in San Francisco, the family changed their name from Mariotti to Morey in 1911…but that’s another story!

Register was found at SFGenealogy.com under Cemeteries.

"San Francisco Colma Cemetery Index," database, SFgenealogy. (http://www.sfgenealogy.com/php/cemeterysearch/cemeteryindex.php : accessed 29 Jan 2013), entry for Mariotti, “all collections” searched .