Under the asphalt pavement of the Los Angeles Board of Education
parking lot rests a hidden chapter of the county's history. It's the location
of the first non-Catholic cemetery in the city of Los Angeles, alternately known
as Los Angeles City Cemetery, Protestant Cemetery, Fort Moore Hill Cemetery,
Fort Hill Cemetery, and simply “the cemetery on the hill.” The site
of rumored gold and treasure buried by a wealthy Spanish family, the final stop
for victims of vigilante justice and gunfighters, and the resting place of many
of the City’s founders, the cemetery held evidence of the colorful settlers
of Los Angeles's pioneer beginnings who fell to contagion and gunshot.
Although it may have had origins as early as the burial of four soldiers who
died in December 1847, the earliest documented burial in the cemetery was of
Andrew Sublette, a Kentucky-born mountain man, who was buried on December 19,
1853, following his death while fighting a grizzly bear in the Santa Monica
mountains.
Some sources refer to the cemetery as a single entity with several
sections – some public areas, and other private plots owned
by individuals, families or groups. However, other sources describe the private
areas as separate cemeteries for Masons, Improved
Order of Red Men, French Cemetery (Societe Francaise), IOOF (Odd Fellows),
and Olive Lodge, Knights of Pythias. Plots for Los Angeles Firemen and Soldiers
are listed on a cemetery map ca. 1885.
For the first couple of decades, the city cemetery was not controlled or managed
by the city – in fact, lots were not sold and it appears that no one was
in control. People occupied lots and gravesites by squatter' rights. It was
not until 1869 that a paid sexton was hired to sell lots and maintain the grounds.
The first official report of activity, filed by sexton Frank Hosmer in 1870,
showed a total of 66 interments: White – 24 men, 14 women and 18 children.
Colored – 2 men, 3 children; and Chinese – 5 men, for a total of
66. The report stated that between 500 and 600 individuals were buried in the
cemetery at that time.
From the earliest days, reports complained about neglect and the poor condition
of the cemetery. In January 1860, the Los Angeles Star editorial noted, “…On
a barren hill-top, or in the open plain, bodies are interred, with apparently
little care whether it remain sacred to that purpose or not. No enclosure marks
the ground dedicated to holy object; no barrier keeps off the wandering animals
or beasts of prey; the sacred mounts are trodden over and defaced; the tablets
which indicate the names of those who sleep beneath are overturned; and in visiting
the city of our dead, the mind is painfully impressed with its lonely, dreary
isolation. This should not be…”
The cemetery continued to be used, and continued to be the source of complaints
and concern, over the next twenty or so years. With the establishment of Evergreen
Cemetery in 1879 and Rosedale in 1884, the city cemetery’s days began
to wane. On August 30, 1879, the city council adopted a resolution prohibiting
further burials in the cemetery except for individuals or societies already
owning a plot.
In 1884, the city sold twenty-four residential lots on land previously part
of the city cemetery complex. Several years later, Major Horace Bell, in his
study on the land boom of the 1880s, decried the sale: “…A recital
of the various forms of rascality perpetrated by the boomers would fill a volume.
But the one greatest piece of rascality of all, to my mind, was the desecration
of one of the city graveyards. It was a small pioneer graveyard covering ten
acres. Some of the most honored California pioneers and officers of the army
were interred there, but it was no longer used for burials. The city allowed
promoters to map it, cut it up and sell it off in small building lots. In building
streets through it, human remains were excavated and scattered and to-day [about
1900] wagons rattle through streets built up over buried human bodies. Houses
stand on graves. The city of Los Angeles sold…this cemetery plot, a municipal
burying ground, without pretending to remove and re-inter elsewhere the bodies
resting there.”
In 1889, the Odd Fellows opened a cemetery elsewhere. The unused portions
of the city cemetery were given over to the Board of Education to be used for
a high school. Over time, the Board of Education annexed more and more of the
land and eventually gained ownership of the cemetery. The Board negotiated with
heirs and disinterred and removed many of the graves to Rosedale Cemetery.
By the mid-1900s, work had begun in earnest to transfer ownership of the land
to the Board of Education, and the formerly 10-acre site had been reduced in
size to about 5 acres. The Los Angeles times recounted the desecration and vandalism
that had been wrought upon the cemetery. Within the next ten years, disinterment
had begun in earnest and the Times reported, in graphic and sometimes grisly
language, the discoveries made by the workers as they removed the bodies --
some to Evergreen, some to Hollywood Cemetery, many to Rosedale. These newspaper
reports, which spanned over forty years, served to document the existence of
some of the gravesites for the ages while providing insight to the rowdy early
years of Los Angeles:
- Robert S. Carlisle, who was said to have started the cemetery, was killed
in a gunfight with Francis Marion King. Carlisle was buried with diamond settings
in his teeth, which grave robbers later extracted and the Times reported in
ghoulish detail.
- Southern Pacific fireman Henry Amadon had just received a coveted promotion
to engineer when he was murdered by Foster, the lover of his unfaithful wife.
Ella Amadon and her sister, Lottie, had donned men’s clothing and spent
the evening cavorting in a gambling house with their half-brother and Ella’s
lover, unaware that husband Henry’s work schedule had been changed. When
Henry surprised them while walking down the road in the wee hours of the morning,
Mrs. Amadon’s paramour shot and murdered poor Henry.
- Thirty identical caskets, each holding the remains of an unidentified baby,
were found in a long row of grassy little mounds. The children were cosseted
in tiny coffins, each fitted with wood handles carved in the shape of a lamb’s
head, and glass plates – windows – through which the deceased could
be viewed. The windowed caskets were often used when children died of a contagious
disease so the parents could see them once more before saying their final goodbye.
- Several bullet-ridden bodies, including one unidentified huge man attired
in buckskin, miner’s hip boots, a white hat and “a remarkably thick
belt,” provided a glimpse into torture Western style. In addition to
fatal bullet wounds, bullet holes in feet and ankles indicated the victims
had been encouraged to “dance” to entertain their persecutors before
they met death.
- Damien Marchessault was Mayor of Los Angeles from May 9, 1859 to May 9,
1860 and then again from December 27, 1860 to January 7, 1861. Born in St.
Antoine Sur Richelieu, Province of Quebec, Canada, he committed suicide in
the Council Room of Los Angeles City Hall in 1868.
- Sheriff James R. Barton, and three deputies, became the first Los Angeles
County law officers to die in the line of duty when ambushed by the gunmen
from the notorious Flores/Daniel gang. [http://www.camemorial.org/htmprev/bartonj.htm]
- According to the Times, “A nother plot contains the bodies of six
deputy sheriffs, five of whom were killed in the cemetery while battling with
cattle thieves, the sixth dying two years later as the result of injuries received
in the engagement. His name as nearly as can be deciphered from the pieces
of the badly crumbled headstone is G. Getny. Old-timers say that half of the
500 or more unknown graves contain the bodies of persons dying from the excellent
marksmanship which prevailed in the early days.”
- Vigilantes contributed to the population of the city cemetery, as well.
During the term of office of Mayor John G. Nichols (1852-1852, 1856-1859),
the city saw waves of lawlessness and numerous hangings. The city cemetery,
the cemetery on the hill, saw many of these hangings. Mayor Nichols, whose
son was the first American child to be born in Los Angeles, was himself buried
in the Los Angeles City Cemetery.
The final chapter in the cemetery’s history was written in May 1947,
as the final bodies were removed from the long-abandoned burial ground. One
casket held an unidentified child. Hanbury MacDougall, about age 4, and William
J. Broderick Jr., who died at birth, were moved from metal caskets in the brick
mausoleum. And Robert Snell Carlyle [Carlisle], 1827-1865, the diamond-toothed
gunfight victim who was said to have founded the cemetery, was relocated to
Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California.
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