Spectres in Stone II

Haunted by the Past.

Headstone renovation can be both a joy and a grief, especially when you find evidence of a questionable previous repair and re-installation. In this particular case, The Ghost of Arana Gulch's headstone, an old beer bottle embedded in decayed cement to the side of its granite base, crumbled away to reveal evidence of a very '70s style installer with a sense of historic humor.

Top Men

Which '70s? 1970s, or the 1870s?

Simple! Answer: A plastic screw top cap with a very particular inscription on the side of the bottle narrowed the installation date down to 1974. Our 'beer' bottle was a whiskey bottle manufactured in between the 1960s-1970s. Our masonry expert thought the concrete might be a "quick mix" or "fence post" style concrete, hence its short 'shelf life' and evidence of epoxy slathered around the real base "slam dunked" our opinion.So why the concern? The 1970s at Evergreen was an active time of renovation complete with boxes of record keeping. Why was there no record of this particular set of stones having such a repair? Our team also noticed that the center missing piece (we never found it) may have "popped out", the result of a blunt force trauma to the back of the monument OR a very strong earthquake. A sledgehammer vandal(such a thing did happen at Evergreen in the 1960s) theory was dismissed, because the back of the damaged stone was smooth. We settled on an earthquake. The record of the past showed us evidence of several strong quakes (see previous blog post Shaken, not Stirred for more information).

A Fractured Past

Why is there a hole in the front of this marker? A.J. Sloan's stone quality was  different from his mother's headstone. An inferior style of marble, riddled with fine cracks caused the stone to fracture in this manner, leaving, as you see in the photo, a large hole in its face.

A number of opinions were discussed as we raised the monuments back up in their place, such as where were the records recounting this modern "restoration"? The whiskey bottle placed deliberately at AJ's base suggested an historical understanding, as a famous rumor claimed AJ flew into a drunken rage, was unarmed, and set upon. (All these claims had no proof, but made a great story at the time. See author's notes on this blog for more information.)
The lack of records was easy to explain. Like today, this was a volunteer effort. Someone donated their time and materials. The entire day could have been a workday for the entire cemetery. It was probably logged as such. We just needed to cull through those records again. One of our team joked that in forty years (the same amount of time from the 1970s to today) renovation volunteers will curse us as well.

Broken Up

In the end, when all was restored, the answer was quite clear how these stones broke apart. I am one inch over five feet tall. As you can see by the photo, I am standing six inches lower than the top of the headstone. This restoration took four 1/2 inch thick galvanized steel  rods, approximately 8 inches long slathered in modern epoxy to ensure its upright stability. In the 1860s, this stone was simply set in a base with barely a 12 inch long  2 inch wide, possibly 6 inch  deep "tab", none of which was adequate to hold such a heavy stone against the powerful sway of an earthquake.

The Standing Stones of Clan Sloan

One can only wonder at the love and care that went into the carving and mounting of these original stones. AJ's father was a native of Scotland. Did their surviving kin honor their Scottish past, pay a regular visits to Evergreen, until they were no more? How should the story of AJ Sloan, The Ghost of Arana Gulch be memorialized today? (To see a video of the actual setting of this particular stone and a 3D model of this monument, visit our facebook page )

Spectres in Stone

Back from the Dead
On February 11th, 1865 39-year-old Andrew Jackson Sloan was allegedly ambushed and killed by bandidos in the dark creek gully of Arana Gulch. Popular story aside, Sloan earned his ghost status in 1895 by first appearing to cross Soquel Avenue in  broad daylight, then 'melting' away in front of a very startled witness. Today, Sloan, his mother, two sisters and one brother are buried at Evergreen Cemetery. But Sloan's fate haunted many for over 120 years.

(For a recap and new research go to Author's Notes page on this blog)
The top half of his headstone is gone. The bottom half stuck out of the ground like an old retaining wall. There was another broken headstone next to his, also in the same state, belonging to someone older than him. Both rested beneath a huge cedar tree. Research into a journal, plot maps, and a previous historian's notes about the layout of Sloan's plot told us that Sloan's mother was the owner of this companion  marker.

Many locals well into this century continue to be 'haunted' by Sloan. Rumor had it that the modern veteran's headstone currently installed within his plot, was placed there to calm his ghost. (The truth is more mundane. The stone was one of many installations, part of a veteran's restoration project at the time.) During the setting of the veteran headstone marker, the crew found the top section of Sloan's original headstone. A note was made in the cemetery plot map file and it was covered back up, to be protected from wear and vandals.
In 2012 Sloan's headstone, along with his mother's was excavated.  (Here's the blog post about it.) They spent the next 2.5 years in the Museum's  Archives with a few other headstones from Evergreen for company.

Renewed Ambition
This year, Sloan and his mom return to their plots. The project seemed simple. The team had, in the last three months, repaired seven other larger headstones with more complex mounting and breakage issues.
Our team noticed that Sloan's headstone in particular was of poorer quality than his mother's. Small fractures appeared across its face. Drilling rebar holes into its bottom would be trickier than usual. A two inch wide piece was also missing from its center. The first thing to do was a complete search for this missing piece. Naturally we started around the area of his plot.

Well, I was excited to excavate this grave. To kill two birds with one stone, (uh...) we decided it might be a good idea to dig down and check on the stability of the original mounts.
We were expecting to find two individual granite bases, one for each headstone.  (Sloan died two years after his mother.) Many buried during this time at Evergreen had individual bases made from granite or marble. Multiple headstones installed in a single granite base was rare. The sheer size of such an undertaking would be costly and prohibitive. Stone shipments at this time came from Italy. Some were brought down from the Sierras. But the lack of transportation, good roads, and shipping schedules made such ventures costly.
One of the characteristics I had noticed while cleaning these exposed stumps was their remarkable detail and their exquisite workmanship, all signs of a well to do family. I also noticed something else about the stone, they seemed the same age. Since the death dates were close, this made sense.

Family Planning in 1865
Having your headstone carved while you were alive was not unusual. Families planned ahead and bought stones before the death of a loved one, or if one died before the other, they bought a stone for themselves, to be placed "when they followed". Usually they were carved at the same time. Stones were then placed above a grave, a few weeks, or even years later, depending on the family' wishes or financial situation. I had often said to my patient coworkers that I felt these two stones were set in at the same time. 

A Complex Past
I said alot of other things too, such as Sloan may have been murdered by someone other than what history 'recalls'. They were used to my cracker dog theories. (To explore these fanciful theories, buy this book about A.J. Sloan, called Ghosts in the Gulch, available on Amazon on Feb 12th.)
 We began to dig down beneath the headstone. We hit a huge base, granite, as expected. We began near his mother's stone and saw the same edging. The more mud and soil we removed, the more apparent and large this block of dark granite became. Sloan's complicated past just unearthed itself. The stones were mounted into one solid carved  5-foot granite block, and, yes, appeared to have been set at the same time. 

Haunted by Previous Renovators
As we cleaned off the mud from the single base, another shock greeted us.  These stones  broke off from their base before, and were repaired with the closest thing to a quick and dirty method early concrete blends had to offer, (complete with a beer bottle). A quick check on the plot history also revealed that Sloan's brother had purchased the plot a year after his mother had died.

Beer Bottle cemented in place 

So, did they simply have a carved stone ready to go for Sloan? Was he also ill, and they knew he was going to die soon? Or was it simply grief, and a generous (and guilty?) personage gave money to have both stones made, perhaps a few years later? Cracker dog theories aside, it had us all caught up in a mystery about motivation and the need to place such monuments, monuments that leave those of us in the present intrigued and interested in the details of what life in the 1860's meant for these folk. It also reminded us of the power of earthquakes, a quick leveler of many monuments over the years.

Tales of the City
In November of 1865 a powerful quake rocked Santa Cruz. According to news stories, several quakes terrorized residents over the years. One of them or all could have caused the damage that was revealed in front of us. In our minds a time line grew. Both stones were most likely put in either at the time of Sloan's death, two years after his mother, or perhaps a little later. How much later, we don't know.  An earthquake broke the stones from their original base. It was repaired.  A second one must have caused the headstones to break in half again. Which quake? Not  our local Loma Prieta Quake of 1989. Lucky for us the previous renovation crew back in 1987 made a note about the state of this plot. "Top Broken." and "Name Broken off." described this handsome set.

Legacy Set in Stone


Next week we will complete the work of setting these magnificent works of art in place, and continue excavating and exploring this site to get an insight into what the original plot may have looked like. Old brick appears to line the fringes of these graves, some in the delicate artistic curves to form a retaining edge. Found near the now towering non native incense cedar, I wonder, did a grandchild to the Mrs. Eliza Sloan, tenderly plant a tiny cedar sapling within a brick circle, emulating the amazing carving of a willow tree on her headstone?  Would she smile at how large her incense cedar has become? And what of Andrew Jackson Sloan? Will he still haunt Arana Gulch?

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!

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