The Mystery Woman in my Great, Great Grandparents Grave

by Jean Ann Carroll

Several months ago, I paid a visit to Holy Cross Cemetery with the goal finding my maternal great grandparents grave, Mathew & Julia Maloney. 

I haven’t been to the cemetery for a long time; it’s too close and easy to do research. I had the location and set off looking.  No such luck. There are no markers, signs, area maps or other visuals to find a grave.  Then, I headed off to the office. I have found staff less than helpful on a variety of occasions so my expectations were low.   A nice woman looked up the location (even though I had it and gave it to her).  She looked up the name and printed out the information.

Here is the amazing part:    She gave the paper to a man standing at the counter and said he would escort me to the gravesite!  I was astounded.  He asked me to follow him in my car.  We parked; got out and he pointed to a gravestone and said, “There it is.”   I said, “No, it’s not; that says Mahoney; not Maloney.   Ohh..

He gets out a walkie talkie and asks the woman the location of where we were standing.  She gave him the location; we walked back a row and he pointed to a patch of unhealthy grass and weeds and said, “That’s it.”  There is no tombstone or grave marker.  The area is quite large.  I began to take photos of the surrounding tombstones for orientation.  The one very large raised concrete block with a center of unhealthy grass right next to the Maloney plot had one name on it:         CARROLL

I said, “Holy Sh@t!!”   He walked away from me and said something.  (Didn’t hear him.) I asked what.   He said something on the order of chastising me for language unsuitable for a cemetery.

I explained.  He said, go back to the office and ask for the names of the people who are buried in these two graves.  I did and received a copy of the two plots:  Maloney & Carroll.

The graphic showed the names and burial dates of those in each of the graves within the plot:

 GRAVE 1:  Mathew Maloney 1-5-1893; Margaret Glynn (sister to Julia)  7-12-1920

 GRAVE 2: James W. Maloney (son)  10-22-1894

 GRAVE 3:  Mary West 5-30-1906    Julia Maloney   8-9-1910    John Maloney 7-30-1927   

And, the question is:  Who is Mary West???

I made a “contribution” to Holy Cross to cover my good luck; then started researching the new mystery

person.

Turns out Mary West is Mary Maloney West, sister to Mathew, native of County Westmeath.  She was married to Charles West who has his own interesting story; or more precisely, demise.

San Francisco Call - October 25, 1897

Then, on to find what happened to Mary West.  I was able to track her with 1900 census and city directories.

She lived in various boarding houses in in San Francisco.  And, then there was the obituary of May 30, 1906 containing facts and an another emigma!

No mention of a funeral or mass or burial.  The plot information says she was buried on May 30th.  Died in April; buried late the next month?  What’s going on here?

My conclusion is she was badly injured in the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, found and taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital where she died on April 24th.  Then, possibly put in “cold storage” along with hundreds of other unidentified bodies until relatives could negotiate with city authorities in the awful confusion the resulted from the quake.  It’s the best I can do until I summon up the patience, courage, and energy to go to San Francisco and negotiate the dysfunctional office of public records to get a death certificate.

Jean Ann Carroll; September 7, 2018

P.S.   Not related to Carrolls in adjacent grave.

San Mateo County Cemeteries: Sunset View

SUNSET  VIEW CEMETERY

 Cemetery for the Paupers

and the Indigent of San Francisco

 Colma, California

Russ Brabec has authored another great treatise on San Mateo County cemeteries. This one covers the creation and demise of Sunset View Cemetery which was the replacement for pauper burials when City Cemetery (Golden Gate) was closed to further burials.

You will find a well researched article that includes newspaper articles, maps, and a good share of controversy including probate problems and undertaker wars.  Below is the table of contents, click on the link to read the entire publication.

SUNSET  VIEW  CEMETERY

CONTENTS

Part  I -  The Early Years

Part II - The Cause

Part III - The Problem

Part IV - The Participants

Part V - The Result

Part VI - Epilogue

Lot Maps 1899 – 1961

1992 Parcel Map

• Read the entire article
• Original Sunset View Blog Post - with links
  
  
  
  
  
  

San Mateo County Cemeteries: Holy Cross Catholic - Menlo Park

The current Holy Cross Cemetery started as a town cemetery in the late 1860s.  It was purchased by the Church of the Nativity and converted to a Roman Catholic cemetery in 1883. 

When Stanford University moved those interred in St. Denis's Catholic Cemetery, many of the bodies were moved to Holy Cross.  There is a historical plaque near the entrance commemorating those burials.  

Holy Cross is still an active cemetery with up to 100 burials a year.  The interment register includes over 5400 names.

A quick walk through the grounds reveals names with a multitude of origins....Italian, Samoan, Irish,Tongan, Mexican and many more. Like many of the older cemeteries there are some unique plots and tombstones reflecting the mix of cultures.

Interment.net lists burials through 2005 provided by Fred Kemmerle and FindAGrave lists 4191 burials with 90% having photographs, and the burials 


Cemetery Records, which may include:  date of death, place of death, date of burial, date of birth or age, place of birth, parish from which the person was buried, and mortuary, can be obtained by submitting a Genealogy Request Form.The cost is $35. The website reminds us that cemetery information does not include maiden names, children, or death certificates.  The mortuary might, however, have that type of information if it is included in the cemetery records.

Cemetery Map                                         

Holy Cross Cemeteries 

Holy Cross Cemetery on Twitter

The Cemetery Office is located at  Saint Raymond Catholic Church, 1100 Santa Cruz Ave, Menlo Park  650-323-6375

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 .