Calvary Pioneer Memorial Park Gravestones - Post 2

Here are four gravestones from the Priests section of the Calvary Pioneer Memorial Park in San Diego (see previous post for particulars of history and burial data).

Calvary Pioneer Memorial Park in San Diego - Post 1

The story of Calvary Cemetery in the Mission Hills area of San Diego is complicated, sad and amazing. Several articles that tell the story and provide records are:

* Marna Clemons' Calvary Cemetery, San Diego web page, which has the most complete history of the cemetery and list of persons buried there. There is a Rootsweb WorldConnect database for the persons buried there with some vital record information for each person when it could be found. The site has ten plot maps of the graves here.

* The US GenWeb Tombstone Transcription Project article, listing about 800 names, by Michael Harris

* The San Diego Historical Society Finding Aid with about 700 black and white photos taken before the stones were removed from Calvary Cemetery.

Today, the Calvary Pioneer Memorial Park is an urban park with houses on city streets all around - the location is shown here (1501 Washington Place, San Diego CA 92103).

The memorial plaques and the recovered gravestones are in the southeast corner of the Park. Here is a view of the memorial plaque area with the gravestones in the background:




Note that only the gravestones were removed from the park, not the graves or their contents, in 1970. The persons are still there under the sod and trees. The gravestones in the park do not mark particular graves - they are just there as a testament to a few of the persons buried there.

There are six memorial plaques and each has about 300 names on them (I didn't count them all!). They are shown below from left to right:

In succeeding posts, I will show some of the gravestones that are standing in Calvary Pioneer Memorial Park today.

Calvary Cemetery in San Diego

Marna Clemons has created a website devoted to Calvary Cemetery located in the Mission Hills neighborhood of San Diego. The website is here.

"This web site is a comprehensive study and presentation of existing information about the historic Calvary Cemetery (now a part of Calvary Pioneer Memorial Park) at 1501 Washington Place in San Diego, California. It is devoted to honoring and preserving the memory of the people who are buried there."

On the website is information about:

* a detailed history of Calvary Cemetery,
* transcripts and images of many documents that pertain to the cemetery,
* information about the people buried in the cemetery,
* photographs of existing gravestones and ones that no longer exist,
* a variety of maps and descriptions of the cemetery location,
* cemetery plot maps,
* historical and current photographs of the cemetery,
* stories of the interesting and colorful people buried in the cemetery,
* Family Bible records of people interred at the cemetery,
* a special tribute to Calvary Cemetery's U.S. military veterans,
memories and perspectives of people who knew the old cemetery,
* a bibliography of references for further research,
a virtual tour of the park as it looks today, and
* The Recording of a Cemetery.

The information on the people buried in the cemetery is included in a Rootsweb WorldConnect database titled Calvary Cemetery, San Diego, submitted by Marna.

This is an excellent collection of information about this cemetery, and is a wonderful example of what can be done by volunteer Graveyard Rabbits and genealogy researchers. Beautiful job, Marna!