Full military honors at Fort Rosecrans

Today's (24 May 2009) San Diego Union-Tribune has a wonderful front-page article titled "Full military honors" by staff writer Steve Liewer. The sub-heading is "A week of burials at Fort Rosecrans yields uniquely American stories." Some of the key paragraphs:

"Across the 77½ scenic acres of Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in Point Loma, the loss is made tangible in the names newly etched on white-marble stones. "

"The crowded cemetery has been closed to most casket burials for the past four decades. But Fort Rosecrans remains a busy place, its life extended by the construction of thousands of spaces for urns. Altogether, more than 96,000 veterans and their family members have been laid to rest there. "

Life stories of several of the recently interred veterans are shared in the article.

There is a video memorial for the 25 veterans laid to rest at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery during the week of April 12-18, 2009. You can see it here. If you click on each name, you can read a short biographical sketch of each person on the video.

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.

.......

San Pasqual Battle (1846) Memorial at Fort Rosecrans

....
One of the monuments to soldiers killed in battle at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery on Point Loma in San Diego is for those who lost their lives in the Battle of San Pasqual in 1846.

The San Diego chapter of the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West installed the San Pasqual monument in 1922 to honor those soldiers who lost their lives in the 1846 Battle of San Pasqual during the Mexican War. The monument is comprised of a stone boulder with a bronze plaque mounted on it.

The California State Military Museum has reprinted a portion of the book SNAFU: Great American Military Disasters by Geoffrey Ragan here. It provides a long description of the battle and the outcome.

The book The Silver Dons by Richard F. Pourade tells how the remains of the dead soldiers came to be buried at Fort Rosecrans:

"But the dead of San Pasqual lay in forgotten graves in Old Town [San Diego]. The names on the small wooden crosses had weathered away and were no longer remembered."

Who were these 18 dead soldiers? I cannot read the names on the memorial plaque on the stone from my picture. The list of the Americans who died at the Battle of San Pasqual is here - this is a great web page with many pictures of present-day San Pasqual and a re-enactment of the battle.

I found a great picture of the plaque at Fort Rosecrans on www.interment.net here. The names on the plaque are:

Ist United States Dragoons

Company C

* Sergeant John Cox

* Corporal William C. West

* Private George Ashmead

* Private Joseph T. Campbell

* Private William Dalton

* Private John Dunlap

* Private Joseph B. Kennedy

* Private William C. Leckey

* Private Samuel T. Repose

Company K

* 1st Sergeant Otis L. Moore

* Sergeant William Whitress

* Corporal George Ramsdale

* Farrier David W. Johnson

* Private William H. Fiel

* Private William C. Gholston

* Private Robert B. Gregory

California Volunteer

* Henry Baker

Topographical Engineer Detachment

* Francois Menard

The Bennington Monument at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery

There is a 60-foot tall granite obelisk monument in the northern end of Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery on the east side of the road. It was dedicated on January 7, 1908 to the sailors who lost their lives on the USS Bennington in 1905. The Fort Rosecrans web site says:

"... notable monument in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery commemorates the deaths of 62 sailors in a boiler explosion aboard the USS Bennington. The Bennington, which had just returned from maneuvers in the Pacific, was anchored in San Diego Harbor. On July 21, 1905, the crew was ordered to depart in search for the USS Wyoming, which had lost a propeller at sea. At approximately 10:30 a.m., an explosion in the boiler room ripped through the ship, killing and wounding the majority of the crew. Two days later the remains of soldiers and sailors were brought to the post cemetery and interred in an area known as Bennington Plot."

Here is a picture of the monument from the southeast:





The plaque on the north side of the monument:

A view looking at the monument from the southwest towards San Diego Bay and the city.

The white gravestones nearest the monument are for the sailors who lost their lives in the explosion.

The web site of the San Diego Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) shows more photos of the history of the monument, and the ceremonies in 2008 that honored the dead buried there.

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.