El Cajon Cemetery Listings Online

The San Diego Genealogical Society (SDGS) published a 311 page coil-bound book of El Cajon (CA) Cemetery burials in 2007. The book contains entries for over 8800 burials dating from the late 1880s through June 2007, along with a short preface describing the location and history of the cemetery. Interested parties can purchase the book for $30 on the SDGS web site.

The book is available in PDF format on the SDGS web page - see http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~casdgs/leaves/data/elcajoncemetery.pdf.


The preface of the book describes the location and a short history of the property:

"El Cajon Cemetery is located on over twelve acres of rolling hills just east of El Cajon, in
San Diego County, California, at 2080 Dehesa Road (at the junction of Dehesa Road and
Vista Grande Road – GPS: 32° 47’ 18.47”N, 116° 54’ 30.84”W). Once considered the
outskirts of town, it is now surrounded by homes and urban development. In 1990, the
cemetery faced closure due to lack of space. The El Cajon Cemetery Association
purchased an additional 5.25 adjoining acres, now referred to as the ‘new section,’ and
burials began there in April 1996. Approximately 250 burials per year take place at the
cemetery. There is an onsite office and a full-time staff."

This book is extremely well-done, and is a credit to the SDGS volunteers who worked for many hours to gather the information, organize it and publish it.

The one problem with using the book online is that the cemetery entries are published in landscape view, but my browser (Internet Explorer 7) does not permit rotation of the PDF web page. If you download the book to your computer, then open it in Adobe Reader (version 8), you can go to View > Rotate View > Clockwise and make it readable in landscape view.

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!

San Diego Cemetery listings in California Genealogy and family History Archives

A collection of San Diego County cemetery tombstone transcriptions and photographs of some of the tombstones is available on the San Diego County page of the California Genealogy and Family History Archives web page.

This is part of a larger collection of California cemetery listings here.

"The Lost and Forgotten Cemeteries of San Diego" program on 9/30

The Wednesday, 30 September program for the Chula Vista Genealogical Society will start at 12 noon in the Chula Vista Civic Center Library auditorium (365 F Street in Chula Vista). After a brief business meeting, the program speaker will be:

Dr. Seth Mallios on "The Lost and Forgotten Cemeteries of San Diego."

Here is Dr. Mallios's curriculum vitae and program description:

"San Diego County has a rich and unique cultural history that can be effectively told through the commemoration of its dead. Local cemeteries throughout the region reflect San Diego's multi-ethnic cultural dynamism and pinpoint marked shifts in power from Native American to Spanish to Mexican to U. S. American governance. They also reveal the current struggle for space in a burgeoning metropolis. Many graveyards have disappeared entirely, erasing the last vestiges of too many of the region's formative pioneers.

"Dr. Mallios will discuss his ongoing San Diego Gravestone Project and its primary goals to preserve local history and reconnect present San Diegans with the past.

"Dr. Seth Mallios is currently Professor and Chair of the Anthropology department at San Diego State University. He is also Director of the South Coastal and South East Information Center. Mallios received his Bachelor's Degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1993 and a Master's Degree and Doctorate from the University of Virginia in 1998.

"An anthropologist and an historical archaeologist, Dr. Mallios was Site Supervisor at the Jamestown Rediscovery project, specializing in the excavation of and research on the original 1607 James Fort at Jamestown Island, Virginia, the oldest permanent English settlement in the Americas. He continues to serve as editor of the journal he founded there, the peer-reviewed Journal of the Jamestown Rediscovery Center. His first book, The Deadly Politics of Giving, published by the University of Alabama Press, came out in August of 2006.

"Since his move to San Diego seven years ago, he has created the San Diego Gravestone Project, an endeavor that has included two books (Cemeteries of San Diego [2007] Arcadia Press; and Cemeteries of San Diego County [2008] Arcadia Press) and multiple scholarly articles. He developed a Geographic Information System that integrated every archaeological site in the county. Dr. Mallios began excavating at the Nate Harrison Site atop Palomar Mountain in 2004 and continues to dig there every summer. He has just finished his first three archaeological field seasons at the historic Whaley House in Old Town San Diego, having successfully located and excavated the original well."

Please attend this interesting talk about the cemeteries of San Diego. You are asked to enter the auditorium through the conference room on the east hallway of the library in order to sign in, pick up handouts and have a snack before settling into the cushy seats in the auditorium. There will be refreshments after the program in the conference room.

For more information, please contact Barbara Ibaibarriaga at (619) 477-4140 or email at baribai@cox.net.

Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nestor

One of the smallest cemeteries in South San Diego County is Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nestor, located at 7141 Iris Avenue. This private cemetery was established in 1899 by Hollis M. Peavey. The Mount Olivet Cemetery Association was incorporated by the Peavey Foundation in 1954. The gate to the cemetery is locked and many stones have been damaged or destroyed by vandals. There is more information about the cemetery, including some photographs, in the book Cemeteries of San Diego by Seth Mallios and David M. Caterino, published by Arcadia Publishing in 2007.

Tombstone inscriptions are online at http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/sandiego/cemeteries/mount-olivet.txt courtesy of Michael Harris. Michael has posted photographs at http://www.usgwarchives.net/ca/sandiego/photos/tombstones/mountolivet/.

I am unsure if the tombstone inscriptions and photographs are complete. My guess is that all of the identifiable persons in this cemetery are included.

KUSI reporter Michael Turko recently broadcast a video of the cleanup of this cemetery by volunteers. You can view the Video at http://www.kusi.com/features/turko/43324402.html (click on the "Video" link).

Mormon Battalion Memorial at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery

....
One of the more interesting memorial stones at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery is this one which shows a frontier man and a frontier woman on one side:




The plaque embedded in the ground below the memorial reads:

In memory of the Mormon Battalion whose

members made the longest military march in

U.S. history of over 2,000 miles from Iowa to San

Diego in 1846-1847 during the war with Mexico.

Albert Warren Dunham ........Lydia Ann Edmunds Hunter

... Private - Company B .........wife of Captain Jesse Hunter

-------------------------------------Company B

23 May 1828 - 11 May 1847 --23 January 1823 - 26 April 1847

Lydia Hunter and Private Albert Dunham were

buried in a cemetery in the La Playa area of

Point Loma and were moved to Fort Rosecrans National

Cemetery with other military personnel in 1887.

The other side of the monument:

The inscription reads:

Lydia Hunter died

from complications

resulting from the

birth of her only

child, a son named

Diego hunter, the

first American born

in California. Diego

was born on 20 April

1847. Lydia died 6

days later.

May we honor her

and each of those

women who served

with the Mormon

Battalion. We also

pay tribute to the

many others that

sent their sons,

husbands, and

brothers into the

service of their

country during the

war with Mexico in

1846-1847.

.......

Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery

Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery is located on Point Loma, a peninsula that separates San Diego Bay on the east from the Pacific Ocean on the west, and is part of the city of San Diego. The cemetery mailing address is: P.O. Box 6237. San Diego, CA 92166. Phone: (619) 553-2084. FAX: (619) 553-6593.

The office hours for the cemetery are: Monday thru Friday 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Closed federal holidays except Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

The Visitation Hours for the cemetery are: Monday thru Friday 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

A map of the cemetery relative to the City of San Diego can be seen here (you may have to zoom out to see the City).

There are over 96,000 interments in this cemetery, which currently covers 77.5 acres. This cemetery has space available for cremated remains. They may be able to accommodate casketed remains in the same gravesite of previously interred family members.

The office to the cemetery is on the west side of Catalina Blvd., which extends the length of Point Loma to the Cabrillo National Monument on the southern tip. From the roadway, here is the office area looking to the west.



Opposite the office area, the east side of the cemetery looks like this:



Almost all of the graves at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery are standard issue - white, with name, rank, service, birth date and death date, as shown in the photo below. There are some early gravestones that are different, and several memorials (such as the Bennington Memorial in the photo below).

In the background of the picture above (looking northeast) is the city of San Diego with the backcountry mountains far in the distance (the tallest peak is 6,500 foot Cuyamaca Mountain, which is about 40 miles away).

New interments at this cemetery are accepted for cremated remains and are buried in spaces along roads and in the columbarium walls shown below (on the east side of the cemetery):

In the background of the above picture is the downtown San Diego city skyline, with the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge on the far right.

The names of those interred at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery are in several online databases:

* FindAGrave has 59,101 interments listed.

* Interment.net has 71,608 interments listed.

* The USGenWeb Archives has a complete list (as of 15 June 2006) for the cemetery in a series of files at http://files.usgwarchives.org/ca/sandiego/cemeteries/ . The Fort Rosecrans records are in the sdnational-a1.txt through sdnational-z.txt files on the list.

Greenwood Memorial Park in San Diego

Greenwood Memorial Park and Mortuary is located at 4300 Imperial Avenue in San Diego CA 92113 (take the Imperial Avenue exit East from I-15, or the Imperial Avenue exit West from I-805), three miles east of downtown San Diego (take State 94 east to south Interstate 805). The cemetery is visible from south Interstate 805. The cemetery gates open at 7:30 a.m., the mausoleum at 8 a.m., and the mortuary and cemetery offices are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. The office phone number is (619) 264-3131. Greenwood has a web page at http://www.dignitymemorial.com/4615/LocalHome.aspx .

Greenwood was opened in 1907, and is situated on 117 lovely acres with attractive trees, seasonal flowers and well-kept landscaping. The park includes three lakes, veterans’ features, the Lifesharing Hero's memorial, a Canadian Legion monument, the large Cathedral and Bible mausoleums, and a historic section. Other than the monuments, the Serenity section, the historic section and the mausoleum, all burial sites have in-ground gravestones. There are approximately 100,000 residents in Greenwood Memorial Park - it is the largest non-military cemetery in San Diego County.

A short history of Greenwood Memorial Park is included on this page published by the San Diego Historical Society in the Journal of San Diego History.

I visited Greenwood Memorial Park two weeks ago in order to find graves of some of my distant cousins, obtain information about the park, the famous residents buried there, and to take some pictures. I wrote the names to be searched on a form, and waited several minutes (with a cookie and a bottle of water) for Kevin to come out and tell me that they did not have a record of my lost cousins. I told him that I also wanted information about famous people, and he volunteered to take me on a short tour of the "historic" section of the cemetery. After the tour, he provided a list of the famous residents which had brief biographies for each of them. I took some pictures, too.

The office on the top of the hill looks like this:




The Salli Lynn Chapel can be used for funerals and memorial services:



The most eye-catching memorial is shown through these gates. This is labeled Tribute on the maps but is the Lifesharing Hero's memorial. This view is through gates to the Serenity section of the cemetery, which has mostly Vietnamese stones.

This is a view to the north toward the Bible Mausoleum from the office area.

The web sites that have transcriptions and photographs include:

* Interment.net has 120 transcriptions.

* FindaGrave.com has a great map, some pictures of the grounds, and 1,485 transcriptions from the cemetery, including some with biographies and photographs of the deceased. There are also links to 25 "famous" persons buried at Greenwood.

* The USGenWeb California Tombstone Project has four lists of transcriptions - Transcription #1 (23) A-E (over 1300) F-J (over 1000) K-P (over 1200) Q-Z (over 1100).

* The Political Graveyard has six entries for Greenwood graves of politicians.

Cypress View Mausoleum

Cypress View Mausoleum and Chapel in San Diego is located at 3953 Imperial Ave, San Diego, CA 92113; Phone: (619) 232-6168. The business does not have a web site. A map showing the area around Cypress View is here.

Cypress View Mausoleum is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week. Cypress View was founded in 1927. This burial site has two types of burials - coffins entombed in the walls of the buildings, and inurnments in niches along the walls of the buildings.

The large sign is visible going east or west on Imperial Avenue:




On the south side of Imperial Avenue, the business office is part of the large building which includes the chapels, and most of the crypts:

Across the street, on the north side of Imperial Avenue, is another large building with tombs and niches:

The Jewish section, called Home of Peace, was established about 1950 and has approximately 750 entombments and urns as of 1998.

The online lists of interments include:

* http://www.findagrave.com/ - has 161 entries, many with tributes and pictures

* http://www.cagenweb.org/ - has 135 entries, plus some good outside pictures

* The US GenWeb Archives - has the same 135 entries

If you go to the Business Office to search for a person buried there, the helpful staff finds the listing in their card file, and provides a note of the location. If someone is available to help, they will guide you to the entombment or inurnment. The mausoleum on the north side of Imperial Avenue is locked, and the grounds are gated and fenced.

Graves of Civil War Veterans in San Diego County

One of the absolute "best" genealogy books about San Diego area people is the book The Civil War Veterans of San Diego, CA by Barbara Palmer, Ph.D., published by the author, 1999 (on the Genealogy Reference shelf at the Chula Vista, Civic Center Branch, Public Library - Dewey 973.749 PALMER).

This book describes:

* California and San Diego in the Civil War
* Cemeteries Studied for the survey
* Other Cemeteries in San Diego
* Additional Research Sources - includes libraries, historical and genealogical societies, etc.
* Specific Genealogical Records Available in San Diego - by subject (e.g. military, death, probate, etc.)
* General Findings concerning Civil War Veterans
* Civil War Veterans buried in San Diego (in studied cemeteries)
* Civil War Veterans with Burial Locations unknown (but who died in San Diego)
* State of First Enlistment of Civil War Veterans

This is an excellent reference work - not just for Civil War veterans but for all local genealogy researchers - the research sources and specific records available in San Diego are very useful in describing holdings.

Of course, the Civil War veterans, and their burial locations, are the focus of this book. The author used records from two Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) posts in the San Diego area to identify the Civil War soldiers. The information available for each veteran found in a San Diego cemetery, using codes, includes:

A. Veteran's Official Tombstone (info. from the official government tombstone)
B. Veteran's Unofficial Tombstone (info. from unofficial or family tombstone)
C. Cemetery information (cemetery name, grave location, date of death/burial, age at death, nativity, marital status, etc.)
D. Heintzelman Post #33 G.A.R. (code for info. for this specific post)
E. Datus E. Coon Post #172 G.A.R. (code for info. for this specific post)
F. Information on Veteran's Wife (if located, including birth/death info, age, nativity, marital status, info in quotes are in cemetery records).

For example, here is one entry:

"Adams, Frederick F.B. F.F. Adams, Co
B 43rd Ohio Vol Inf 1861-1864
B. F.F. Adams, October 5, 1842 - October 28, 1928
C. MH/Div. 4 DOD/B 10/28/1929-2/23/1930 A. 86/__/23 O. died Seattle WA (grave stone says date of death is 1928)
D. Frederick F. Adams N: Ohio A:39 O: Merchant CW: Co B 43 Ohio Inf (Sgt) E/D: 10/61 - 9/64 LOS: 34 mos GAR: 3/31/81 SP: 4/30/1890 RE: 12/10/1890 TR: 12/13/1910 S: H
F. Mary Virginia, his wife March 2, 1854 - October 30, 1887 "He giveth His beloved sleep" DOD/B 10/30-11/1/1887 A: 34 N: California M: Married J/S: "Adams, Mary d. 30 Oct (1887), 35 yrs, bur. Mt Hope Cem" "

The cemetery abbreviations are:

* CAL = Calvary Cemetery (also known as Mission Hills Cemetery and Pioneer Cemetery)
* CV = Cypress View Mausoleum (opened in 1927)
* FR = Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery (opened after 1883)
* GW = Greenwood Cemetery (opened in 1907)
* HC = Holy Cross Cemetery (opened in 1919)
* MH = Mount Hope Cemetery.

For the Civil War veterans whose burial place is unknown or is outside the city of San Diego, the information offered was gleaned from GAR records of the two San Diego posts.

A typical entry is:

"Abrahams, W.F., N. Steubenville, Ohio CW: Co F 84 Ohio Vol Inf (Pvt) Term: 90 days E/D 5/62-9/62 Camp Delaware, Ohio GAR: 5/28/1904 Died 3/31/1915 age 63. Buried: Los Angeles S: DC."

There are 182 pages of veteran listings in this book. The book has source notes and photo credits, and an index of the Civil War Veterans and their wives.

I found this book on the library shelf several years ago and have used it often. About a year ago, I had to answer a query received from a correspondent about a Civil War veteran ancestor and I wanted to find out if he was in the book and if so to gather his information from the book. Unfortunately, he was not in the book even though I found that he is buried in Glen Abbey Memorial Park in Bonita, but without a Civil War designation. This probably means that he was not a GAR Post member and therefore was not a "target" of Barbara Palmer's study.

A book of this type, whose records are not online in any form, but may be available in a cemetery list published by a society, is priceless for a local historian. A bonus for San Diego area researchers is the survey of local repositories and available source records.

Mount Hope Cemetery - San Diego CA

Mount Hope Cemetery is located at 3751 Market Street in San Diego, California (92102). The Business Office phone number is (619) 527-3400. The cemetery is managed by the City of San Diego. The Grounds are open 365 days a year from 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. The Business Office is open Monday though Friday from 8:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. The City of San Diego web site for the cemetery is here.

The original Mount Hope Cemetery was opened in 1869 east of the "New Town" of San Diego. It was combined with other burial areas originally designated for the International Order of Foresters, Masonic Lodge, Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), Fraternal Order of Eagles, and the County of San Diego Indigent Burial Program. In February 1973 a Veteran’s Section in the newer area of the cemetery was dedicated in honor of all San Diego Veterans.

The cemetery has 110 acres (with 80 acres in use at present) with over 76,000 persons at rest there.

The entrance is on the south side of Market Street, about midway between Interstate 15 and Interstate 805 (both have offramps for Market Street). The entrance looks like this (looking south)





The Business Office is about 1/10 mile inside the gate on the left, and has parking for about 8 cars. The view from the road is (looking east):



The cemetery grounds are rolling low hills, with roads defining the different cemetery sections. The San Diego Trolley tracks run through the cemetery, separating the Masonic Section, the G.A.R. Section and the I.O.O.F. Section south of the tracks from the larger Evergreen Cemetery section north of the tracks. The grounds have, in general, a mix of above-ground and in-ground markers, with a few larger monuments.

There is a dedicated area for the Grand Army of the Republic that contains many graves of Civil War veterans. There is a GAR memorial with an American flag pole, as shown below:

On the west side of the memorial is a plaque, as shown below:

There are a number of web sites that have lists with persons interred at Mount Hope Cemetery (and its' predecessors), including:

* http://www.findagrave.com/ has over 3,100 listings here. There are also short biographies of 13 famous people here.

* http://www.interment.net/ has over 500 listings here.

* The California GenWeb Cemetery Archives has an index with over 14,000 listings here.

* The USGenWeb Archives for San Diego cemeteries has listings in alphabetical order here. I think these are the same listings as the California GenWeb archives.

The San Diego Genealogical Society offers a book of Mount Hope Cemetery, Burial Records, Book 1, 1868 - 1909, 319 pages, comb binding on their web site for $30. This was compiled from the listings in their original records publication, San Diego Leaves and Saplings, from member transcriptions many years ago.

If you go to the Business Office to search for a person buried there, the helpful staff finds the listing on their computer, and then prints a map of the cemetery showing the approximate location of the grave, and then provides a map of the immediate area with the selected person and 15 of the closest neighbors. It's a wonderful system once you figure it out!

La Vista Memorial Park

La Vista Memorial Park is located at 3191 Orange Street in National City, California, 91950 (the city immediately south of San Diego on the bayfront) and has been serving San Diego area families since 1868. La Vista Memorial Park of San Diego. They are the only family owned and operated memorial park in San Diego County. The park is located just east of Interstate 805 and north of State Route 54 (coming north or south, take the Sweetwater Road exit, and go east. The second street to the left is Orange, and La vista is up a winding road.

The La Vista Memorial Park web site is at http://www.lavistamemorialpark.com/. There are location maps and photographs of the park and the setting on the site. The phone number is 619-475-7770. I visited the park yesterday, and took some photographs. Here is the entry gate at Orange Street and 32nd Street:



The cemetery office is located in a relatively small building. At the front desk, you can ask for the location of a grave, and the attendant will look in a card file, find the record, make a copy of it, and then look in a map book to determine where the grave is located. If the attendant is not busy, s/he will take you out to the grave site. Here is the cemetery office building.

The cemetery has a "maintained" section (where the grave sites are in a mowed grassy area and an "unmaintained" section where the graves are not maintained by the cemetery staff, but family members often create shrines for their loved ones. Many of the early graves (before 1920) are in the unmaintained section. This is a view looking to the west from near the cemetery office of the unmaintained section.

Part of the maintained section is shown below looking north from near the cemetery office:

The persons in this cemetery are either buried or cremated and in the ground, in a number of mausoleums or in a niche wall for cremated remains. Grave markers include ground-level markers, small or large monuments, or shrines. Many recent graves are interspersed in the older sections, often with a modern stone right next to an older granite stone. There is a lot of "empty" space in the older sections - I think that there are probably many unmarked graves, which may or may not be noted in the cemetery records.

Just east of the office, there is a Grand Army of the Republic memorial and there are gravestones of probable Civil War veterans nearby. There are also gravestones for more recent military veterans nearby. The GAR memorial is shown below:

The San Diego Genealogical Society published a series of articles providing names and gravestone data for persons buried in La Vista cemetery in their Leaves and Saplings periodical (Volume 5, number 3 and Volume 15, number 2). These volumes are available at many San Diego area public libraries and at the San Diego Family History Center in Mission Valley.

The Chula Vista Genealogical Society is in the process of putting all cemetery records, obtained from the La Vista cemetery records provided by the staff, into a spreadsheet and will eventually publish a CD-ROM of these records, and will place a printed copy of the records in several local libraries.

The http://www.findagrave.com/ web site has listings for 555 persons in La Vista Memorial Park here. There are also photographs of the cemetery and of some of the gravestones at the park.

The http://www.interment.net/ web site has listings for 208 persons buried in La Vista Memorial Park here, but has no photographs or memorials.

There are listings from La Vista Memorial Park gravestones in the US GenWeb Archives at http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/sandiego/cemeteries/lavista.txt.

I have several ancestors and relatives buried in this cemetery, and I will post pictures of their gravestones on http://www.geneamusings.com/ in the near future.

Glen Abbey Memorial Park and Mortuary

....
Glen Abbey Memorial Park and Mortuary is one of the largest cemeteries in South San Diego County. It is located at 3838 Bonita Road in Bonita, CA 91902 (phone (619) 498-4600 and (877) 442-2551) an unincorporated area just east of downtown Chula Vista. The Glen Abbey Memorial Park and Mortuary web site is http://www.glenabbeysandiego.net/index.html.

The entrance to the cemetery appears like this from Bonita Road (looking south):




The beautiful Little Chapel of the Roses, a non-sectarian chapel and an exact replica of the Lord Tennyson Chapel in Somersby, England, which is a true landmark, often hosts memorial services, funerals, weddings and quinceaneros.

The map below shows the physical location of the Memorial Park. It is about one mile east of Interstate 805 on the south side of Bonita Road.

The section map of the memorial park is shown below (Bonita Road is at the left of the map - the numbers are Block numbers):

Glen Abbey Mortuary and Memorial Park is a quiet, lovely and spacious site of about 120 acres. Because Glen Abbey is a memorial park, all markers are flush to the ground, and there are no tombstones or elaborate memorials. There are several columbariums, a veterans’ section, a babies section, and a nature garden where there are some inurnments and many scatterings.

Glen Abbey first opened in 1924 to accept remains of persons buried in a certain area of Evergreen Cemetery in La Mesa, east of San Diego, which was being sold for real estate development. Later, more were brought in to be re-interred from a cemetery in the Otay area of South San Diego, where a street was being widened. There are now over 35,000 persons buried or inurned there.

A comprehensive survey of the "guests" buried or inurned at Glen Abbey was made by the Chula Vista Genealogical Society was published on CD-ROM in 2006. For availability of this CD-ROM, please see here. The survey list includes last name, first name, plot location (lot-section-block), date of birth, date of death, remarks, and veteran status. CVGS will do limited lookups in the cemetery list, and take photographs of cemetery plots - see here. The Chula Vista Public Library has a two-volume paper copy of the cemetery listings on the Family Research shelves in the Civic Center Branch Library.

The Find a Grave web site has links to listings of 553 "guests" at Glen Abbey Memorial Park.

The USGenWeb Archives Cemetery Project has lists of transcribed cemetery gravestones here and here.

Welcome to the South San Diego County Graveyard Rabbit blog.

Welcome to the newest San Diego County genealogy blog - it is called the South San Diego County Genealogy Rabbit (SSDC Genealogy Rabbit). The purpose of this blog is to:

Promote the historical importance of South San Diego County cemeteries, grave markers, and the family history to be learned from a study of burial customs, burying grounds, and tombstones.

I pledge to promote the study of South San Diego County cemeteries, promote the preservation of these cemeteries, and promote the transcription of genealogical/historical information written in these cemeteries.

This blog is part of a genealogy blog network called the Association of Graveyard Rabbits - formed by Terry Thornton. Please read Terry's web site for more information about the Association and the list of participating blogs.


I tried to add this logo as a Gadget in the sidebar, but have been unable to do it for osme reason, despite excelent direction by Terry. Has anybody had success adding it to their sidebar on Blogger?