Monday, September 29, 2014

Hauntingly Familiar


What is your favorite haunt on Halloween? Creepy mansions, old wharves, cemeteries?? Halloween cometh, and where I live, it's a national holiday. (I think it has to do with an excuse to eat candy, dress up and make mischief.)The blogging this week will concentrate on Spooky Tales of Evergreen Cemetery.
Evergreen Cemetery suffers the most this time of year, especially its fragile gravestones. People come because they want to see "The White Lady of Evergreen." Some come to celebrate their religious beliefs and some just want to come for the chills factor. After all, aren't cemeteries creepy?The reality is not that cemeteries themselves are creepy, but that some of the stories of how people GOT there, ARE.

For instance, what about the mysterious Marie Holmes? Her headstone has been stolen twice, and found twice. We don't know why it was taken the first time, and we suspect, due to the location of the second time it was found, the culprits may have been involved in a prank. But why, remains a mystery.
You see, there is a lot of inconsistent information about Marie. The biggest claim about her, is that she was a prostitute.  The second infamous claim is that she committed suicide in public. She DIED in public, but when you review some of the interesting stories around her, one fact can't be denied: She had a drink with a young man half an hour before she died. The community loved Marie and gave her a rock star's funeral, with a 'heavenly choir' and a full church service, not something commonplace for of woman of  her social standing.
That young man, who last spent time with Marie, killed again a few years later. Worse yet, he was sent away for thirty years, showed up, squatted, according to a local historian's remembrances, on the street that bears his step dad's last name, and yes, though he was a stepson, managed to get buried in the family plot.
That doesn't sound very interesting, except perhaps for the discovery of an old cemetery map behind a book page of a tattered 1920's Evergreen Association journal. This map revealed that three other young women died of "suicide" within a few months of Marie. Another interesting notation:  all the women, including Marie,  had babies buried with them. Hmmm.

Back on the other side of Evergreen is another mystery.
photo Courtesy of Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History
location of the Brinton headstone today
Mary Brinton made a sensational set of headlines for over a week after her body was found out in a tule reed choked lagoon near Natural Bridges. Her purse, recovered in a pool of blood staining a viewing bench on a cliff,  clearly cried out 'suicide' to the local police, except for an exceptional detective named Starbird.  Starbird was what we would call today, obsessed with finding the truth. We have legions of TV shows about such  detectives. Starbird, in the early 1900's, was the real thing. He didn't buy the coroner's or his boss' write off that this poor unknown woman's fate was suicide. Starbird investigated her identity.
First of all, Starbird took a sample of the blood found at the crime scene. He had to travel to San Francisco to a special laboratory to identify whether or not it was human. It wasn't human. The next step was to take her photo. He had a list of people who claimed they saw a woman who "looked melancholy," near the murder site, but when shown the photo of his VIC, well, they could not identify her.  Starbird looked at the labels of his VIC's clothing. He politely inquired if any women had bought a particular skirt or blouse (like his VIC's ) but no, very little was found out this way. Many had paid cash! Meanwhile, all manner of tips came in, (to use the modern lingo) but none of them could tell Starbird his VIC's name. (Many names were given, but none, as they say, panned out.) Finally, the victim wore spectacles. Somewhere there must be a record of who bought the spectacles for his victim, or even her own name.  Sure enough, the optometrist had the name of the patient who wore that particular prescription.   It was a break in the case. Starbird had the name of his VIC. Mary Brinton.
You'd think that would be the end of it, but many folk "identified" Mary, saying that she was sad, depressed, and yes, would have killed herself any time. Starbird was no fool. He tracked down three of these people, two who lived in Menlo Park, California. Without elaboration, he asked the "close associates" of Mary Brinton, if they could identify the 'unknown' woman in the photo (Mary), and none of the three could identify her. Meanwhile, Starbird had found out another curious fact:  Mary was very, very rich. She had funds in her bank account,  the equivalent in today's valuation, of 3/4 of a million dollars. She also had a child in New Zealand.  Finally, someone from Carmel came forward and identified Mary. Mary Brinton was the family nurse to a very wealthy man who lived in Redwood City. Who that man was, well, that still remains a mystery....The killer was never caught. In the end, Mary's death was still ruled a suicide, since there was no 'evidence' of foul play. What do you think?
Stay tuned!



Monday, September 1, 2014

Labor Intensive

Low water use succulents bring the green back.
Succulents installed at the Chinese Monument
by Homeless Service Center Volunteers
Labor Day. Every Monday we work to clean up, clear weeds, and assess potential problems in case the earth decides to move, or in a wet year, slide, around us. We labor to preserve a place that was a hub of entrepreneurial idealism, despite racial tensions and Civil War conflict. Santa Cruz's population grew, and then some died. The land was deforested to feed lime kilns and build dwellings, town businesses, and industry. It was cleared for farmland. And there was drought.  Evergreen was a name of hope and to instill hope, they created  Cemetery Decoration Days.  As always, they had to warn folk about the consequences of plant theft.
California enters it's third year of drought. And yet, here we are, again, like our forebears, giving hope, decorating our Cemetery,  trying our best to make sure our monuments prepare for our most important event of the year: Legacy Day. Our local paper, established in 1856, and author of the above print, recaps here,  today's events.
If you would like to volunteer at our site please contact the Museum of Art and History.

Rain is on the way: A salamander found by youth volunteers
clearing away ivy, searches for damp ground.