First Person: Tombstones from the sky

Local photographer uses drone to capture aerial view of Cypress Hill Memorial Park|

There are stories in cemeteries — incomplete stories.

There are family plots with patriarchs, matriarchs and their children and grandchildren, and missing links. Loving mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers. Men who died in wars and widows who chose, decades later, to be buried next to their husbands.

I once saw a tiny, wooden swing set that couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old on the grave of a four-year-old who had been dead for more than 20 years.

Gone but not forgotten.

On January 17, 1866, Clarinda Damsen Williams McNear — the first wife of John Augustus McNear — died in San Francisco at the age of 28. Due to heavy rains, Oak Hill Cemetery (now the site of Oak Hill Park) was saturated and unsuitable for Clara’s burial, so John Augustus McNear purchased another Petaluma property on higher ground for his wife’s grave site. Today, it is known as Cypress Hill Memorial Park.

Clara was born in Woolwich, Maine in 1837 and married at 17 in Pascagoula, Mississippi. She gave birth to five sons. Only one, George Plummer McNear, grew to adulthood. In the northwest corner of the Cypress Hill property, at the crest of the hill, the McNears are buried — Clara and John and their sons, Hattie S. Miller McNear (John’s second wife) and her two sons and numerous other descendants.

Since at least 1866, the citizens of Petaluma have been buried along this stretch of Magnolia Avenue. In 1870, the Jewish community purchased what is now the B’Nai Israel Cemetery from the McNear family, and around the same time St. Vincent’s purchased what is now Calvary Cemetery. Cypress Hill is the largest of these, at 36.8 acres, with thousands of occupants. In 1992, George Tomasini claimed there were 14,000 – 15,000 Petalumans buried there. Many of the original settlers of Petaluma have family plots, and for many years, there were “Potter’s Fields” for the citizens who could not afford a burial place.

Though there have been conflicting stories over the years, Real Estate transactions in the newspapers of the time indicated that John McNear was selling the plots individually for many years, so he was definitely the owner. A pamphlet commemorating 100 years for the cemetery in 1966 indicates the McNear family operated the cemetery until 1957. Since then, it has changed hands several times and is now operated under the umbrella of Cypress Hill Memorial Park, which includes the Pet Cemetery and the B’Nai Israel Cemetery. It is still privately owned.

The Cypress Hill Cemetery is an active cemetery with approximately 150 burials a year. Most are cremated remains, not caskets. The office is open during the week and records are available to the public. The paper records go back to the 19th century. If you are looking for someone who was buried at Cypress Hill, nine times out of ten, the record can be found and the grave site located.

Since 2004, all paper records have been backed up on a computer.

For the last 80 years, each plot purchase has required a contribution to the Endowment Fund. The interest on this fund pays for the basic maintenance of those plots in perpetuity. Prior to the creation of the endowment fund, it fell to the families and descendants to maintain the plots. These earlier burials are in “Non-Endowment Sections” that are scattered throughout the park. Off to the west and the northwest are many of the non-endowment sections — older graves in empty fields, plots neglected and crumbling, but also, beautiful trees and squirrels and an occasional deer.

There is a wildness to that part of the cemetery that seems very fitting. It has always been my favorite part of the park.

Gail Sickler has lived in Petaluma since 1986. She is a photographer and licensed drone pilot. Her website is outoffocus.photos. Cypress Hill Memorial Park is located at 430 Magnolia Avenue and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The photographs included were shot with a DJI Air 2S drone.

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