The Life and Times of Dennis Martin

We all know the excitement of finding information on our families, but Bo Crane has gone a step beyond.  He has delved into "The Life and times of Dennis Martin", not because he is related, but because he wondered why a creek bore his "full" name.  His interest led to a fascinating study of one of the earliest settlers in the area that eventually became San Mateo County.

If you missed the SMCGS meeting last Saturday, you failed to hear how he found an 1883 map showing the buildings on his land.  Of course by then he had lost the land through the final 1864 Supreme court decision in Greer et Al vs. the Arguellos.

Bo delved into that land decision as well as all other aspects of the life of Dennis not only in San Mateo County, but in his journey from Ireland to Canada, and by wagon train to California in 1844.

The back of the book provides the following summary, "Dennis Martin, an Irish immigrant, died as a broke old man in San Francisco and was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in his own abandoned cemetery wiles west of the Menlo Park depot. His estranged daughters refused to attend his burial. His times spanned the Irish immigration to the New World, the Westward movement from the Missouri River to across the snowy Sierra, armed power struggles between Alta California factions, the Bear Flag revolt, the Gold Rust, the Railroad Big Four and the Silver Bonanza Kings, the demise of Searsville and Mayfield along with the growth of Menlo Park, Woodside, Redwood City, Portola Valley, Palo Alto and Stanford University, as well as the beginnings of Atherton, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos Hills and San Francisco

In gathering information for the book, Bo visited with family members and historians. He gathered maps and pictures from Stanford, the San Mateo County Historical Association, Bancroft Library and more. His list of primary sources fills five pages.

This well researched, well written book goes well beyond the story of Dennis Martin and his family.  About halfway through the book, you run into the appendix,  "Historical Background - Chapter by Chapter." The background discussions cover everything from Woodside, Searsville and SLAC to Ireland, early Canada, Missouri, and the O regon and California trails.  There are notes on many early families in the county, early churches, early cemeteries.  You can read about the Greers, the Mezes, the Hopkins and many other early players in the county's history.

Although you can find the book in the SMCGS library, it is well worth adding to your home library. You can order a copy by sending an email to bcrane65@comcast.net, visting his website dennismartin.net, or on Amazon.


Denis Martin Cemetery

San Mateo County Cemeteries: St. Denis Cemetery

WMD 2016 (2) 

Today all that remains of St. Denis (Dennis Martin) Cemetery is an obelisk standing within the grounds of the Stanford Linear Accelerator.  
In 1850 Dennis Martin settled on 1000 acres of Rancho Cañada de Raymundo that he purchased from John Coppinger.  A young Irish immigrant, he was a good Catholic who invited missionary priests to stop in his house and say mass.  Feeling need for a church he remodeled a redwood building that had been used as a school house, creating a church in the shape of a crucifix.  The church was dedicated as St. Denis, his patron Saint, by Bishop Alemany dedicated it on 8 June 1856. (1)

St. Denis Cemetery was laid out about 300 feet from the church.  

WMD 2016

A lawsuit filed by Maria de la Soledad Ortega Argüello and Jose Ramon Argüello claimed that the land was in fact part of Rancho de Las Pulgas, rather than Rancho Cañada de Raymundo In 1864 Dennis Martin, along with the estate of Coppinger and other purchasers of land in the vicinity lost their final appeal to the land. (3)  

The loss of his land included that on which the church lay.  Dennis moved to a smaller farm that remained in his possession, but never fully recovered from the loss of his thriving business. In 1882 he moved to San Francisco.  When he passed away in 1890, estranged from his daughters,  his remains were buried in St. Denis Cemetery. (4)

In the meantime St. Denis which was originally in the care of the Jesuits passed into the hands of Rev. Denis F. Dempsey, the pastor of San Mateo.  It was one of the established missions, which also included Colma and Redwood City. With the dedication of Church of the Nativity in 1872 the church was abandoned. By the time Dennis Martin was buried there, the church had been torn down, replaced by straw sheds and the cemetery lay neglected.

Eventually the land was purchased by Senator Leland Stanford who ordered that the cemetery be maintained.  However, by 1953, it was in ruins.  That was the year that the cemetery was exhumed, originally housing was to be built there. That plan was abandoned and eventually SLAC was built in 1962. 

One hundred and seventy four grave sites were identified at the time of the exhumation of St. Denis Cemetery, but remains were found for only 24 individuals.  The remains of Dennis Martin weren't among them.  All remains were re-interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Menlo Park.   There is a stone marker in Holy Cross commemorating the burials and a stone and brass marker located at the entrance to 3000 Sand Hill road.

In 1950 Father Thomas McKeon of Church of Nativity provided a list of burials found in the records of St. Denis Church to Palo Alto Historian, Guy Miller.  Dennis Martin Cemetery, which lists 45 burials between 1856 and 1862, has been digitized and is available on FamilySearch. If there were in fact 174 burials in the cemetery, I have not found a listing of the rest.  Perhaps the cemetery includes burials that were not Catholic. 

See the Menlo Park Historical Society's Notes on the Dennis Martin Cemetery  for further details and maps of the location.

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1. Parish History - St. Denis Parish, Menlo Park & Portola Valley provides a more detailed history of the parish.
2. Pictures by William M. Donovan for this blog. You will find up close pictures of the obelisk, plaques and some maps on St. Denis Cemetery by Jym Clendenin.  This page is linked to Notes on the Dennis Martin Cemetery mentioned above.
3. This case was discussed in a previous blog post, NARA: Private Common Law Case Files 1855-1863 
4. Bo Crane has written a biography, The Life and Time of Dennis Martin, San Mateo Pioneer which is available on his website or from the Menlo Park Historical Association.  Bo will be the speaker at the SMCGS Meeting on Sept. 24, 2016