Monkey Block San Francisco's Golden History
Monkey Block San Francisco's Golden History
Part 2 Interview with author Terry Hamburg "Land of the Dead, How the West Changed Death in America"
This is Part 2 of my interview with author Terry Hamburg, author of "Land of the Dead, How the West Changed Death in America".
In this episode Terry tells us how the four main cemeteries dealt with evicting the dead by the 1940s. I assure you, it's a fascinating story and it will give you historical reference for many parts of San Francisco as well as Colma's necropolis history.
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Oliver: Before we begin today’s episode, on behalf of Girlina, I’d like to thank Marnie in Monterey and Jules in Orange County for their contribution to the Monkey Block project. Marnie and Jules, while your contribution seems like a small gesture, it is important validation that encourages us to continue doing what we do. Thank you for your kind words and contribution.
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Today’s episode is a continuation of the interview with Terry Hamburg, the author of “Land of the Dead-How the West Changed Death in America”.
A little refresher from the last episode. A chance meeting during a wine tour through Cypress Lawn Cemetery, yes cemetery, turned into Girlina meeting Terry, which led to an interview that was supposed to last 45 minutes, but became a fascinating 2 hour discussion.
As a note of caution, this episode discusses cemeteries and the disinterment of the dead in San Francisco. We treat the topic with respect and come from a place of historic curiosity.
With that said, let’s jump right into today’s episode. Take it away, guys.
Terry: And there were four cemeteries, the Catholic Cemetery, the Oddfellows, the Masons, and Laurel Hill, the secular cemetery. That's where people went. It was the only wonderful public park in the city, and even then it was out from the city. So all of these garden cemeteries served as public parks until public parks were officially built in these cities.
Girlina: I learned in your book that there were cable cars that were specifically like funeral cars that would take bodies to Colma from the ferry building.
Terry: It was a very big business.
Girlina: That there were like three cars one was for like the deceased and their close family and then the second car was for friends and extended family and those cable cars would go from the ferry building. All the way out to Colma, like to Cyprus Lawn?
Terry: There were railroads, street cars.
Girlina: Okay.
Terry: Not cable cars. Just people have a vision of cable cars.
Terry: And they were very price oriented. I mean, you could do something simple or something very elaborate. These existed primarily before the automobile and the hearses came into popular use, which would be the 1920s.
Terry: So, Colma's nine miles away, but it's a rough nine miles, and the automobile traffic didn't really exist. Horses and cars and caravans didn't exist before the 1920s. So, the railroads were the only way to transport a body and mourners from San Francisco to Colma.
Terry: Mission and El Camino and there was a regular streetcar and rail transportation and there would even be feeder lines into the cemeteries so the trains would go into the cemetery, drop off the casket and the passengers, and then go back out.
Girlina: Oh my gosh, help me map this. So from the Ferry Building, they'd go down Market Street.
Terry: Yes.
Girlina: And then to Mission.
Terry: And then to Mission, and there were streetcar lines down Mission, and there were also railroad tracks, the Southern Pacific and other railroads got in on the business.
Girlina: The funeral car business.
Oliver: San Francisco had two funeral train lines. The 40 Valencia line went down Valencia Street, but is no longer around. The 14 Mission line was created in 1894, seven years after Holy Cross moved to Colma, and two years after Cypress Lawn was built.
Oliver: In addition to funeral service, these lines doubled as everyday service lines to the public. These trains while on funeral duty, took both the bodies and the mourners from the Ferry Building, down Mission Street, or Valencia Street, and to Colma for final burial.
Oliver: While the 40 Valencia no longer exists, the 14 Mission still exists. And, it mostly follows the original path from the day it was created in 1894. Think about that the next time you ride the 14 Mission line. You are traveling the path that many travelled in death.
Terry: The funeral car, it was, for more than 20 years, it was the major transportation route from San Francisco to Colma. And remember, after 1901, there were no burials in San Francisco. None. And in 1901, there were very few automobiles. So, 20 years, that was the main transportation.
Girlina: So when I'm walking out here, when I'm going to Malloy's, that bar, I am walking or driving the path that many people traveled in death, to get to their final resting spot.
Terry: Yes, and if you're talking about Molloy's, when you go into Molloy's, they had all kinds of wakes there, they had sores and the memorial, um, eating and drinking.
Oliver: The original name of Molly’s bar, which was just mentioned, was originally called the Brooksville Hotel. Built by Peter Brooks in 1883. For context, construction on Colma's first cemetery, Holy Cross, started three years later in 1886.
Terry: Some people think that that's somehow a desecration of the dead. It's not at all. And it was never seen that way. It's you're celebrating the life of the person who lived and that's not a modern idea. I mean people had celebrations for honoring the dead and they drank and they talked about the deceased and a lot of that happened Right there.
Girlina: I shouldn't be as fascinated as about this as I am, but Uncle Joe, you know, we had the money to put them in one of the really nice plush cars. I saw some of the photos in your book. So we were able to take Uncle Joe from the ferry building, down market, down mission, out to now Colma, bury Joe and then go to Molloy's and we all would get together and do a celebration of life.
Girlina: And because, we didn't drive, we could then take the funeral car back to the Ferry Building.
Terry: No designated drivers. I think Malloy's was so popular, you know, it's right across from Holy Cross, I think it was so popular that they actually had a feeder line that went right to Malloy's, so you could go from Holy Cross, right to Malloy's, and do the celebration.
Girlina: Did you have to change cars to get to Cypress Lawn?
Terry: I'm not exactly sure how the navigation worked, but there was a minimal amount of walking. They had feeder lines going to most of the major cemeteries.
Girlina: Were there other restaurants or hotels that opened up around this business?
Terry: There were a few. Molloy's was the best known.
Girlina: Did they open up because of this funeral business or did they exist before that?
Terry: I think they may have, I'm not sure, but I think they may have existed before and then, saw that, the opportunity was there and expanded.
Oliver: Terry is correct. The Brooksville predates the cemeteries by 3 years. While the Brooksville may have housed, fed and provided drinks to the cemetery workers, it’s hard to believe the existing legacy that someone built the Brooksville Hotel specifically for the cemetery workers, three years before ground was broken, to create the first cemetery in Colma.
Regardless of legacy, that doesn't sound true. The Brooksville was at the right place at the right time and the building still survives today, as Molloy’s in Colma.
Girlina: Granted, there are so many fascinating things in your book, one of which was learning so much about Colma, and how early it really had its thumbprint in San Francisco history. Which was much earlier than I realized. I knew about the necropolis history it had, but I guess I didn't realize that there was already dead being buried in Colma before we had stopped allowing for burials in San Francisco.
Girlina: It was just a foreshadow of what was coming.
Terry: Well, it was, it was clear to the people in San Francisco as early as the 1880s, when there was a lot of anti-cemetery sentiment in San Francisco. The sentiment was a lot of the very good land is being taken up by cemeteries. At the time, the cemeteries were built in the 1850s everyone thought San Francisco would never expand. Out to that point, and so that land would be coveted. It was very short sighted. And, but everything in San Francisco history is short sighted because everything happened so fast.
Terry: There were a lot of decisions made about building and expansion that were based on premises that turned out not to be true. You couldn't predict how many people were coming in or what would happen. So the first cemetery in Colma, was Holy Cross.
Terry: It was 1887. The Archbishop in San Francisco knew that sooner or later Cavalry cemetery burials would be cut off and then the unthinkable would happen that the dead would actually be evicted. But in 1887, this is like 14, 15 years before the ban, he went to Colma, which was then agricultural land, It was the produce basket for San Francisco.
Terry: There were goat farms and pig farms and a lot of flowers being, produced.
Terry: They were exporting flowers to other parts of the country and to Europe. So he went to a potato field, what was a potato field, in 1887 and said this would be perfect for a cemetery. And it wasn't common in those days to have cemeteries too far removed from the city. And nine miles out. No automobiles. Trains were just becoming popular for going out into that area.
Oliver: Even before cemeteries, Colma was known for growing flowers. Much like the Brooksville, the flower nurseries were at the right place at the right time. Both existed before the cemetery business came to Colma and both did well because of the change.
Terry: People said, that's a terrible place to build a cemetery, and people aren't going to come out there.
Girlina: Or by horse and buggy, like, that's not an easy path.
Terry: No, and it wasn't an easy road. But he said this is the only place, so he bought the land. He consecrated the land for the Catholic Church in 1887 and started burials almost immediately.
Terry: There was still room in Calvary and people could be buried there until 1901, but a lot of people chose to be buried there in 1887. Then the three Jewish cemeteries, a couple of years later, they were all located mainly in what is now Dolores Park, and they also knew that it was just a question of time before San Francisco stopped burials and then again, do the unthinkable.
Terry: So they took land that is right near adjacent to Cypress Lawn and built a cemetery Hills of Eternity, three Jewish congregations. That was 1887. Then Hamden Holmes Noble comes along a few years later in 1892 and says, well, the Catholic Church is here. The Jewish congregations are here. Let's build our non-sectarian cemetery where Cyprus Lawn is today.
Terry: So you had these three cemeteries very close together in Colma, all built and operating 10 years before the burial ban in San Francisco in 1901. So they were already thriving and this is when Noble would go to people who were already buried , in San Francisco, like, Andrew Jackson Pope and , Pope was already dead and buried.
Terry: He said to the family. It's a question of time. You know that you're going to get pushed out. Come and move your mausoleum to my spot. We are zoned. The city of San Francisco can't touch us. We have it all set up. You'll be here in perpetuity. They can't say that in San Francisco.
Girlina: And it's true. It's a true statement that stands today.
Girlina So how did other major cities deal with already existing cemeteries, knowing that there was ongoing growth?
Terry: It was like what San Francisco did, but also not like what San Francisco did. Chicago had a cemetery in land that they coveted.
Terry: So what they did is they moved, disinterred, and reinterred thousands of people into an area that was away from the growing city. And the cemetery I'm talking about is Graceland. I'm not sure it was called Graceland when they removed it. But, they removed the cemetery far away from what they thought was far away from the city.
Terry: Within a short period of time, they had expanded to that cemetery that they had already removed. And they said well, we're not going to. do this again. So we'll just incorporate the cemetery into the city and build around it.
Terry: Every city had this problem where they built cemeteries thinking that they would not expand to that point, and then they expanded to that point. And had to decide what else to do.
Girlina: But why did Chicago decide to build around it?
Terry: Because they had already moved it once and they didn't want to keep moving it again.
Terry: And so they said, we're going to have cemeteries in the city and move around them. The reason San Francisco couldn't do this, and the reason other cities had more success doing this, is San Francisco is a peninsula, and it had no place to go.
Terry: It could only go south, and south is where Daly City and Colma are now. San Francisco had a choice early on to incorporate in such a way that they would take a lot of San Mateo land and that would become part of the city. They decided not to do that and to cut the city off where the line is right now.
Terry: Because the perception at the time was we will take all of this unincorporated land and then we're responsible for it. We have to keep up the land. If people move there, we're going to have to start building infrastructure and we have our hands full here in San Francisco.
Terry: So, they didn't incorporate, they incorporated just up to the San Mateo line, and then the rest of it was a separate county. And so that's when the people built Coma, so that was land that they could incorporate separately. San Francisco is seven square miles. I think Chicago is forty square miles. So there's much, much more land. And on the East Coast, again they had this problem of limited land. But there was really no place that they could move these people to that made any sense, like in New York and in Boston. Mount Auburn, which is right outside of Boston , right outside of Cambridge, that became the Great Garden Cemetery. But all the other cemeteries in New York and other places decided to build around them. In San Francisco, the private cemeteries that were removed were right now what is the Richmond District.
Terry: And it was 150 acres in the middle city, which is not very big. And it was simply a question of time before this very valuable land would be, coveted and would be used. You have to remember that San Francisco up until after World War II didn't really develop about a third of the city, the whole, area that we call the Sunset now, and the area that is, where the Presidio is and all of that area, it was undeveloped.
Terry: Where, the sunset begins now, there, was, sand dunes. Even as late as 1940, it was largely undeveloped and that's a huge swarth of land. A third or a quarter of the city.
Girlina: Why didn't they build in Daly City? Why did they decide to keep traveling farther on Mission to Colma?
Terry: I don't have an exact answer but I think the area was less amenable to building cemeteries.
Terry: They wanted to go into the more rural farmland area and that stretch of miles, it's probably a few miles from, the end of San Francisco and Colma was just more rural agricultural more land was available.
Girlina: It seems Hillside Drive is a valley so I can see how it would have been advantageous to farming. And I do wonder if maybe topography.
Terry: Topography had a lot to do with it.
Terry: It was just better land for cemeteries. The, number of miles from, the end of San Francisco through Daly City. They, went where the land was most available. And if you look at where the cemeteries were built, Holy Cross, Hills of Eternity, and Cypress Lawn are all, in a very, limited area, which is not technically Daly City.
Terry: So the topography and the land availability dictated where that was.
Terry: And I think today, there isn't much interaction with the dead. Many of the dead are cremated.
Terry: , The majority of people are cremated and the people that still buy burial plots and consider an important part of their heritage and their ancestry are Asians, Afro Americans, Latinos, and less so for Caucasians.
Terry: It's reverence for your ancestors, connection to your ancestors. Anglo Saxon culture doesn't have that connection today. It had that connection a hundred years ago, but it doesn't today.
Girlina: Curious for some of these influential families that three, four generations ago, maybe have a mausoleum. Are there still Cypress Lawn burials from more current day, ancestors?
Terry: Not many. The example that comes to mind is the Hearst mausoleum in Colma, William Randolph Hearst. It was actually his father, George Hearst, who built the mausoleum, But the Hearst family is still, burying people there. The last one that I know of is Randolph Hearst, which is about 15 years ago who was the, I believe, the father of Patty Hearst, Patricia Hearst will be buried there.
Terry: But there are other mausoleums where there has been no burials for many years, when some families, the generational links are strong, but for many other families, they're not. There are very prominent families there who have not had a burial for at least a generation. So, these very wealthy families, you think that they keep everything in line and everything is passed on and organized, and it's really not true.
Terry: There's a lot of variation and to make the assumption because the family had great wealth a hundred years ago that the entire family generationally is connected and is an assumption that is often wrong.
Girlina: I would've thought that part of building a mausoleum was so future generations could all be housed together, but I know that can sometimes be cost prohibitive to even be able to necessarily do, which assumes people stayed locally. And who knows how family politics change over time.
Terry: It definitely changes over time, It’s the 1st generation that makes the money. It's the 2nd generation that consolidates the money. And it's the 3rd generation that often spends all the money. And you go down to 3 generations and you can have a very different situation And, a good example of that would be when they moved 35, 000 graves from Laurel Hill Cemetery San Francisco and those 35, 000 graves when the final move happened, there was an opportunity for any family to take their loved one and build a separate memorial, didn't have to be a large mausoleum.
Terry: It could be something small, something modest, and only about 3, 000 or 4, 000 out of some 40, 000 decided to do that. Those that wanted to have done it before the rest didn't. That's a large number. So, 35, 000 people were buried at Cypress lawn, but they were buried in a underground, subterranean, and those 35, 000 remains were all extracted from Laurel Hill, put in various size containers. Labeled as to who the person was and placed in a large area that is about an acre at Cypress Lawn. It's called Laurel Hill Mound you can't see individually who is there.
Terry: There's a memorial to all of these people. And among the people who are there that were not claimed by their families are two mayors of San Francisco, one of them, Mayor Van Ness, Andrew Halliday, who is the inventor of the cable car, and these were wealthy men in their day. David Broderick, who was a senator
Girlina: From the duel?
Terry: From the duel. And many other people who were prominent at the time, so when relatives were called upon and were asked to take your loved one from, Laurel Hill, they were probably buried in the 1850s, 60s, 70s, maybe into the 1880s, And when they were asked to remove them, it was already around 1935 1940.
Terry: You're talking about the grandchildren of the people that were there. And many of them were not interested.
Terry: And didn't even respond to the offer. The Odd Fellows and the Masons had the same problem.
Terry: They sent out messages when they were under pressure to move. They sent out messages to each had about 25, 000 people and the response to the messages were very low, I think the highest rate for the Masons who got about 25 percent response. Not all of those people moved, but they at least responded and said, I don't want to move, but many of the responses, for, like, the Odd Fellows, the, response rate was probably 10, 15%, and they made an effort to track people down.
Terry: But, two, three generations later, these families were important intact and that the wealth was passed down and organized, but it often didn't happen that way.
Girlina: .Or, there wasn't the means to even find the people that, had they been contacted, maybe they would have wanted to, but …
Terry: A lot of the mail was returned unable to find the addressee. So, it's not what we conceive of as being what wealthy established families do, but when you talk about 25, 000 people, not all of them were wealthy and established.
Terry: I'm mentioning some big names. There are many people who are of decent means, but you're now talking about grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Girlina: That may have never met this person and have no cultural connection, may not live locally. Or maybe they also were never contacted for various reasons. So, this underground mausoleum at Cypress Lawn. Can people visit that or is that closed sealed? San Francisco history?
Terry: That was dedicated to the 35,000 people who were moved from Laurel Hill to Cypress Lawn. Originally, they didn't know quite what to do, but these 35, 000 and what remains of the 35, 000.
Terry: It's not like you have 35, 000 coffins. When you go into Laurel Hill and disinter, when you go down, you may have a coffin. The coffin may have disintegrated. And in fact, you may not even have a skeleton. You may have a femur. You're talking about 75 years later.
Terry: And today we have more efficient ways of burying people in ways that can perhaps preserve what's there more than they did 100 years ago.
Terry: But in fact, with David Broderick. They found basically nothing.
Girlina: David Broderick, he may have been famous, but he may not have been wealthy.
Terry: He wasn't wealthy, but he had many friends and benefactors. The remains had to be placed in boxes of varying size, and it was done very meticulously.
Terry: The Oddfellows and the Masons went through a similar process, and it was less than meticulous. Let's just leave it at that. What the Oddfellows in the Masons essentially have what might be called a mass grave. It's not exactly commingling, but, the separation of individual, and the recording of individuals was often less than desired.
Terry: The Catholic Church, Calvary and Holy Cross, and Laurel Hill were meticulous in the way they did it, and there's complete records. When I was working there, someone would come up and say, where is my Aunt Matilda and we'd look up Aunt Matilda and we'd find her in Laurel Hill. And she said can I go look at the gravestone.
Terry: I said there is no gravestone. It is underground, and there's a memorial to all the people that were buried there. But, there is no individual memorial. It's just a grassy knoll. And I could take someone to the coordinates and stand on the grassy knoll and say, Aunt Matilda is here. She would say, I'd love to build a memorial for Aunt Matilda, but we can't do that because you'd have to build a memorial for everyone.
Terry: So, they can be rest assured that Aunt Matilda is in fact there and that she will always be there. And we have detailed records of the removal and everything else. But, the fact that so many prominent people are there because the families did not claim them and every effort was made to find the relatives of those people. But, it was not successful.
Girlina: I wanted to ask you. You started to say that there's questions as to whether or not David Broderick was really buried there. Please, expand.
Terry: I don't know if I can. What I do know is that very little was found. When they dug up David Broderick's grave in Laurel Hill, very little was found. But very little was found in other places as well. People began speculating. I think there may have been some speculation before.
Terry: This is something you should, research. Some speculation before that his body was not really buried where people said it was buried. And, so I think when they found very little there, that fed the speculation, but what was found could vary tremendously and if they found coffins, they destroyed the coffins.
Terry: I mean, they were decrepit and decayed anyway. So what was left literally of the remains would be bones. And that was really about it, and they had an area delineated where that grave was, so whatever they found in that area is what was taken and put in these little boxes and then labeled it.
Terry: It was an imprecise way of doing it, but Cypress Lawn and Calvary did a really fine job in doing it and there would be a lot of bodies to move and they did it within a period of time and there would be processions of remains that were being driven there over in time spans six months for a year and, it was an arduous task and it required a dedication and it required money.
Terry: And the Masons and the Oddfellows simply didn't have the money to do it very well. And they did it in a haphazard way.
Girlina: Who paid for those 35, 000 people?
Terry: Laurel Hill sold its land.
Girlina: Oh, so they, out of their own pocket, the business paid for it.
Terry: The Laurel Hill, Board of Trustees signed a contract with Cypress Lawn.
Terry: They used the proceeds from the sale of the land to finance this removal to land in Colma. Originally, there was an idea to build a large mausoleum that would house all of these remains. There were a lot of designs. I would assume niches where the remains would be, and there might have been individual names on the niches, there might have been a plaque with all of the names there and then a lot of other niches.
The removal was in 1940, 1941. Then the war intervened, and everything was put on hold. And when the war was over, they didn't have the money. The resource is to build this mausoleum. So instead, the decision was taken to build this subterranean repository.
Girlina: They were moved from Laurel Hill in what year?
Terry: The removals finally took place. They were the last holdout, 1940 1941.
Girlina: I had no idea it was that recently.
Terry: Yes, that recently. And, most of the removals from Holy Cross happened in the late thirties.
Terry: The masons and the Oddfellows, it was a longer process. There were removals were started very early.
Terry: The land was bought right after the ordinance in 1901 and removal started. But then there were lawsuits, they ran out of money. The Odd Fellows had a lot of money that was given to a cemetery association for the removal and the purchase of land. That money was stolen and they were left with very little.
Terry: So it's a very complicated story with the Masons and the Odd Fellows but that removal took place over about a 15, 20 year period from 1920 into the mid late 1930s. It was a long process.
Girlina: This didn't happen over the course of three months that people's remains were being moved in a series of years.
Terry: The Masons and Oddfellows started removals in the 1920s but the Laurel Hill and Cavalry resisted the removals.
Girlina: Okay. So that fills in a few gaps for me, and that makes a lot of sense based on some of the facts I know.
Terry: It's a really complicated and convoluted history once you get into the 20th century.
Terry: And it's the reason that very few people have written about it because it's just so frustrating to try to come to grips with it and to see all of the delays and the lawsuits and the elections, the Board of Supervisors in 1912 said, Eviction, eviction now, and, they made an order for eviction.
Terry: The mayor at that time was in favor of eviction. In 1914, they put it to the vote of the people said, no. No more burials, but let's not evict the dead.
Terry: And there was a whole series of elections, three elections, on whether bodies should be removed or not. And, the first vote was no, we want to keep the bodies here. That was 1914. There was another vote in 1924. It was still to keep the bodies there.
Terry: More people were prepared to keep the cemeteries there. And then there was a final election in 1937. The Oddfellows and Masons started moving as soon as the elections were happening, and they made removals from like 1910 through into the 1930s. They were on their way out.
Terry: The Cavalry and Laurel Hill resisted and until they were finally literally evicted in 1937 by a vote. And then they had no choice. They had to leave.
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This is where Part 2 ends. While there were other San Francisco cemeteries, we mainly discussed the four cemeteries of Lone Mountain; Laurel Hill, the Odd Fellows, the Masons and Holy Cross. It took San Francisco residents three voting cycles to finally evict the dead. And, some of the remains were handled with respect, while other remains were not handled with the same care.
We discussed two parts of San Francisco’s cemetery history that survive today, Molloy’s bar in Colma and the 14 Mission Muni line.
We covered how very few of the families opted to pay to rebury their ancestors, leaving each cemetery to find a way to afford the disinterment and reinterment of the bodies, with varying degrees of dignity.
As a society, we have a way of erasing history, to more favorably match the current times, and this piece of San Francisco history falls into this category. I have the luxury of being an outsider this history, but tens of thousands of people can’t say that. One cemetery alone, the Laurel Hill Cemetery had 35,000 burials to disinter. Times that by four and we are talking about over 100,000 bodies, and over 100,000 families.
This history lands very differently, when you speak with the ancestors of one of the evicted dead. I can tell you, it stopped being just interesting history when you hear it from the perspective of someone’s personal family story.
In the next, and closing, part of this series, I have the honor of telling the family history of one of my dear listeners who has a direct connection to this topic. You’ll hear some of the unease this part of San Francisco’s ‘legacy leaves for future ancestors to sort out.
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Thank you for listening. This is Monkey Block. Retelling forgotten stories from San Francisco’s golden and sometimes buried past.