Gone but Not Forgotten: Over 400 Jonestown Victims Buried in Oakland California

Jonestown was the informal name for the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, an intentional community in northwestern Guyana formed by the Peoples Temple, an led by Jim Jones. On November 18, 1978, A total of 909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed "revolutionary suicide" by Jones To the extent the actions in Jonestown were viewed as a mass suicide, it is the largest such event in modern history and resulted in the largest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001.

Today marks the 31^st anniversary of the Jonestown tragedy…. I am always saddened and amazed to find the majority of local residents of Oakland California are not even aware that over 400 victims of the Jonestown tragedy are interned at Evergreen Cemetery of Oakland, nor do they realize on this day each year there is a memorial service to those which brings in hundreds of mourners. Friends and family of the victims as well as temple survivors come to pay their tear filled respects. Even so, each year the annual memorial service at Evergreen increases in number. While at one time there was a sort of false and unfortunate stigma attached to the Jonestown Massacre, it has become more widely accepted that all involved were simply ordinary people betrayed by a charismatic minister who lured them to an integrated church with programs for the poor.

Evergreen is home to 400-410 victims of the Guyana tragedy, both adults and children were laid to rest in a mass grave here in the 1970’s. While some names are known, the majority of interned here are still unidentified and unclaimed. The mass grave is marked by a headstone and throughout the years more memorials have been placed in homage to the tragedy. There is a Cherishing the Children Jonestown Memorial Wall dedicated to the 273 children whose lives were lost, with Forty three and one-half-foot caskets as a reminder. There is also a 36-foot-long stone wall inscribed with the names and ages of more than 900 victims of the violence in Guyana, which is still in progress.

Remains of 1,000 people recovered from one of Ireland’s largest medieval cemeteries

The skeletal remains of more than a thousand people have been recovered from what experts believe was one of Ireland’s largest medieval cemeteries.

According to a report in the Irish Examiner, the ancient bones have produced evidence of several suspected murders and one case of leprosy – an extremely rare occurrence in medieval times. Osteoarchaeologist Carmelita Troy, of Headland Archaeology in Cork, said yesterday she has studied the ancient remains of nearly 1,300 individuals – adult males and females along with children – who were buried at the site at Ardreigh, Athy, in Co Kildare. It is one of the largest skeleton assemblages in the country.

It is believed the site served as a huge regional cemetery for the south Kildare region from perhaps the 7th or 8th century, with classic Christian-style burials – bodies aligned west to east – taking place right up to the 1400s. “The skeletons from Ardreigh give us an important insight into, and help us understand our national heritage and the people from whom we are descended,” Troy said. The site yielded vast amounts of medieval material and the remains of some 1,300 people. The remains include male and female adults, some aged between 45 and 60, teenagers, children and even some fetuses – one as young as 20 weeks.

Roman-Era Cemetery Discovered in Hebron

“Hebron – Ma’an – Palestinian tourism and antiquities police uncovered Roman-era cemeteries in the town of Halhul, north of Hebron, on Thursday, according to the department’s media office. As the municipality of Halhul was using heavy machinery to expand the main road, a number of Roman-era graves and skeletons were found, and workers immediately contacted antiquities police,’ the department said in a statement. Ramadan Awad, the head of Hebron’s police department, asked residents to report any related discoveries to the antiquities police ‘in order to help preserve the civil and historic heritage of Palestine.’”

Head(stone) Scratcher of the Month

Penny Cemetery Fund announces Evergreen Cemetery clean-up

Evergreen Cemetery is a historic African-American cemetery in the East End of Richmond, Virginia dating from 1891. Notable African-American Richmonders including Maggie L. Walker, John Mitchell, Jr., A.D.Price, and Rev.J.Andrew Bowler are buried there. Much of the privately-owned cemetery is completely overgrown with kudzu or is returning to forest. The original organization responsible for the cemetery, the Evergreen Cemetery Association, made no allowances for perpetual care in its charter. In 1970, the association sold its more than 5,000 plots to Metropolitan Memorial Services, which soon went bankrupt. Although listed on the State & National registers of historic places this privately owned cemetery has been abandoned for years.

The Penny Cemetery Fund, an attempt to bring new sources of volunteers and funding to the reclamation of Evergreen Cemetery, is organizing a volunteer clean-up day on Saturday, October 31st. The goal to is to clear one acre. The Penny Cemetery Fund is a charitable foundation created, to restore Evergreen Cemetery, a historic Black cemetery, in Richmond’s east end. Contact Deanna Lewis at deanna@pennycemeteryfund.org for more information about the clean-up or the Penny Cemetery Fund. A Families and Friends group on Yahoo has been the organizing point for a handful of volunteers that have been working doggedly to clean and maintain portions of the privately-owned cemetery.

More Problems for Chanate Historical Cemetery

Paupers' graveyard a challenge to navigate
Historian says it's not surprising finding Jane Doe took 2 tries
By BLEYS W. ROSE THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

There are only two unidentified women in a paupers' graveyard in Santa Rosa, buried side by side after having died in the late 1960s, according to local cemetery historian Jeremy Nichols. Mystery has surrounded the remains of a "Jane Doe" that the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department dug up Thursday. Nichols, president of the Sonoma County Historical Society, said the county has buried about 500 bodies over the past 60 years in a forlorn swale of land between Santa Rosa's Memorial Park and the Rural Cemetery.

"It is no wonder that investigators had a difficult time finding the right Jane Doe because both records and the cemetery are not well organized," Nichols said. He has recently published a book, "Potter's Field," about the county's burial practices for indigents that notes the lowland downhill from the Rural Cemetery periodically floods, and plot markers with few names or identification symbols often shift.

Many plot markers are little more than concrete cylinders formed from coffee-can molds.

A team from the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department and a group of anthropology students from San Francisco State University unearthed the wrong Jane Doe on Wednesday. But on Thursday, they found the coffin they were seeking after shifting their digging operation to a nearby plot. Sheriff's officials have been tight-lipped about revealing what "new information" prompted them to unearth the body of an unidentified woman buried some 40 years ago. Speculation centers on whether a confession has come to light, but authorities have declined to provide details beyond saying the woman was buried sometime in the 1960s. Nichols said information gleaned from his book research verified that there are two unidentified women listed as Jane Doe buried side by side in the center of the graveyard. Although he said he has not been contacted by authorities, he hesitated to provide further burial information because he didn't want to jeopardize what may be a criminal investigation. Both women were buried in the late 1960s, within about two years of each other, he confirmed.

Nichols' book centers on identification of indigents buried at the Chanate Historic Cemetery located across the street from what's now Sutter Medical Center. But, he said, his research also led him to the almost inaccessible 3-acre parcel downhill from the Rural Cemetery purchased by Sonoma County in 1944.

About that time, indigent burials ceased at the Chanate cemetery and internments started at the newly purchased site.

"It still doesn't even have a name, and the county land doesn't belong to the Rural Cemetery or to Santa Rosa Memorial Park," Nichols said. "It is like the sister who marries out of the family church and is never spoken of again."

Nichols said the first mention in public records of the new cemetery for indigents was in Board of Supervisors minutes of 1945 when "someone complained that whoever was doing the burials wasn't keeping good records." "The find of the century was the record I found in Salt Lake City, probably written by the county coroner, that listed all the names of indigents from 1937 buried by the county, where they were buried, which funeral homes handled the body and how much the county paid," Nichols said. He said the records he discovered at the Family History Library at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were not duplicates of anything he could find in Sonoma County.

Head(stone) Scratcher of the Month

As an amature genealogist, Ive grown accustom to seeing dating mistakes on head/footstones which are not always as avoidable as one thinks; sometimes a birth date or full name is unknown for whatever reason. This one in particular at Salem Cemetery in Madison KY caught my eye- likely due to the way it was photographed.

It actually took me a minute to notice what is going on here. Thank goodness nowadays descendants on a gen quest have free lookups at their disposal as well as helpful cemetery staff- otherwise, this reversal could be quite the hindrance... I decided it was only right for me to do a quick look up on G. Parsons (being that I have an ancestry.com account), who I assume is male being that there is a mason engraving on the tombstone. Unfortunately I found no Parsons whatsoever born or died on these dates (in their proper order). I did not even find a G. Parsons in Kentucky. Too bad- I have a feeling this guy led an interesting life (and there may be others in the plot being that the bottom of the stone says "Parsons").