Let's do the twist..

On  December 21, 1862, May 16th and  October 9, 1865,  very large quakes rumbled through Santa Cruz. 

Damages were unreported or limited to brick buildings, bridges, or chimneys of stone,  which fortunately were not as common as wooden dwellings and structures. But what of Cemeteries? In 1989 Loma Prieta roared through Santa Cruz leaving devastation in its wake that ran deeper than the loss of its historic buildings. It shook our very souls. For an excellent recap of this history click on this link or visit the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz.

http://www.santacruzmah.org/2013/artifact-of-the-month-opening-the-lid-on-memories-brick-from-the-1989-loma-prieta-earthquake/

Evergreen Cemetery had some very interesting quake damage from our  1989 6.9 shakeup. 

Thanks to FEMA funding, many of these historic monuments were put back in place. Perhaps this is nature's way of saying that even the past is never set in stone, no matter how much we anchor, spend or preserve. It gives us pause to think about the next shakeup  and to wonder, are we ever truly prepared for change? 

To see images of pre-quake Santa Cruz please visit here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Santa-Cruz-County-History/125332627489930

Remains of the Day

 March 7, 1863 The Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel

Santa Cruz in the 1860's was very much a happening place. When you finish disinterring your relatives from your local churchyard, (moving them to either your own land, or perhaps to a plot at Evergreen), you could go and have dinner, a drink, a salt water bath, and perhaps enjoy live music.

Disinterment was rampant in the nineteenth century, whether it was due to dispute, love, or theft. (Cadavers were in demand for many reasons.) For the poor and the 'undesirables' of society, when met with their demise, usually ended up in a place called The Potter's Field. For 'proper' folk, it was something to be avoided. Yet every town cemetery had one, and some part of most public non denominational cemeteries created one. On our Evergreen Cemetery Maps, the locality of  its Potter's Field has been a challenge simply because of the incompleteness of our roster. We have time and structure fires to blame for our lack of records but it is interesting to note that our Chinese section AND the Potter's Field appear to overlap or quite possibly, the brambly steep hillside that is seen behind our Mason and G.A.R. sections are all that is left of what might have been the resting place of Santa Cruz' most unwanted. 

To test this theory, we asked for help-

Alert flags, handler color coded

The Institute of Canine Forensics came to our aid in the Spring of this year. Trained to locate human remains/burials in excess of 1000 years of age, these dogs and their handlers explored Evergreen with no knowledge of the locality of our PF. Some of the handlers had no previous knowledge of Evergreen's history. They simply explored our grounds, canine leading the way. When the canine came upon a suspect area, she or he gave an alert signal unique to their handler.

Urn side fragment
CSUMB Intern Jackie

Urn Base, Potter's Field
CSUMB Intern Jessica

The handler would then put down a small colored flag over the area in question. After their job was done, it would be our responsibility to find out if the dog was correct or not.  In the two sites we decided to excavate to confirm or deny the canine location, BOTH sites yielded stunning finds. When the canine sweep was completed, the number of unmarked burials in our Chinese section confirmed some of the unmarked burials on our roster, a little further up the hill than we thought. There were unmarked graves behind the G.A.R. plot too, just where the older maps had suggested our Potter's Field might have been.

Footer stone found two plots from origination locality at a depth of 10 inches ( hard mud.)

When the Unit returned for a second sweep one month later, they spent some time around plots that had headstones and some that contained enclosures but no headstone. Here, one canine in particular alerted us to some misplaced stones, buried for some time, by perhaps a previous renovation team. This type of 'reassignment' was common in the days when no maps were available and the interest in preservation was fleeting. Today, Evergreen is a priceless window into not only Santa Cruz' past, but the nineteenth century culture and its citizens who resided here, especially those that died untimely and suspect deaths. Ironically, I find that the folk whose grand monuments remain, their stories do not interest me as much as the unmarked grave of a young prostitute who died suspiciously at the hands of someone of society and wealth. And the graves of those that died tragically because of their dangerous livelihood? I need to find out more about their past. Who were they?  Why do we care? Why is it so important that we NOT forget them?

Piper,
 canine officer in charge

Shaken, not stirred.

Three months after we moved into a stucco house just off of a place called Arana Gulch, a ghost showed up in my backyard.   Being a mom of a toddler at the time, I wrote off this visitation as the result of stress,  ( he had no legs that I could see and the dog ran right "through" him.) Then,  a librarian, who was also a neighbor, pestered me into admitting that I had seen someone. I described my encounter. She smiled and announced with relief:  "You've seen Jack Sloan, the Ghost of Arana Gulch." With a tilt of her head she added mischievously: “You’d be his type.”

Three months later, the Loma Prieta quake hit.  It was 1989.  A bone breaking 6.9 on the Richter Scale left our house still standing. We were lucky.  Our tiny neighborhood huddled around gathered barbecues, all sharing the contents of our defrosting freezers. We were three days into a power outage that was county wide.   Over the warm glow of coals, the librarian neighbor handed me some information about a man named Andrew Jackson Sloan.   
I kept the odd notes for many years, especially the one that said he was murdered near my property and that he had fought off seven bandidos with a bull whip!  Jack Sloan, I later found out, did die on February 11th, 1865, but from three gunshot wounds, one in the groin which ended his life.

I was skeptical at first about where or why Jack died, until I began to research the history of my deed. Despite a cynical window clerk at the County Records Office, I did find my deed, made at the request of F.A. Hihn, one of the founders of Santa Cruz. My land was sold to a neighbor, two days after the murder.  One year later, in 1866, the land was in default and sold off at auction by the US Government. During the review of my own title, I did notice my husband and I had signed our papers on February 11^th, something that, at the time, twenty five years ago now, I had not given much thought to. That was my first connection with the history of A.J. Sloan. 
Alot,( as local Santa Cruz Historian Sandy Lydon is fond of saying,) of 'Hooey History' is found around Mr. Sloan but much, including his fate, is still a mystery.

Until now. 

My novel, Buried Star, explores a few serious and fanciful theories of what may have happened to Mr. Sloan. Some ideas have even been reported as actual 'history', but have no basis in fact. Andrew Jackson Sloan is, as he did then, still creating controversy.

I guess this all boils down to whether or not you believe in ghosts.

Do you?

An open book or a damned man?