19 February 2010

Dear Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery,

Our beloved cemetery has had a very eventful, and successful week. We had the first workday of 2010 on Friday the 19th, and followed that up with a meeting last night in the Sonoma County Board of Supervisor's office at which our 2010 Spring Hill work plan was accepted by the PRAC. And if that weren't enough, Paul Schoch is making great progress on our "official" Spring Hill Map; we now have a Sonoma State history student interning with us this quarter; and the Sonoma County Historical Society has decided, pending details to be worked out, that they would be willing to contract with the county to handle burials. I feel we are off to a very productive start to 2010!

Prepared by the weather forecast for rain on Friday, 11 of us gathered at the cemetery and were pleasantly surprised to find it overcast but dry for our entire work session. Although there were enough downed tree limbs to fill the small dump truck, Spring Hill weathered the winter storms with much less damage than in previous years. I am pleased to say our past efforts at cleaning up the cemetery are paying visible dividends. Not only was the winter debris much more manageable this year, but also we found little evidence of the type of partying that had plagued the cemetery in past years, with very few liquor bottles strewn around this time.

In the process of clearing away storm debris and straightening stones, we found yet more fragments of stones. As Rick and Larry were working on straightening John Finley's monument, they uncovered quite a stash of marble fragments in the ground around the base. The third attached picture shows the finds as lined up on Keziah Finley's base. There is a very fragmented Finley stone (William Finley) close to the new discovery, but interestingly enough, none of the "new" pieces belong to that stone. We will have to take inventory of all our fragments at the next workday and try to find just where they fit. Another mystery is why there would be so many marble pieces buried at the base of John Finley (he died and his monument presumably was erected in 1910).

Patsy and Bob made the most exciting discovery of the day. In raking the north end of Robertson area, they came across a fairly large piece of inscribed marble hidden under debris at the base of a tree. The fragment is shown in the last attached picture, and Patsy is also holding it in the group picture. The discovery is a middle piece to Franklin Seymour McReynolds' stone, a stone whose base and footstone lay half way across the cemetery from where the piece was found. Franklin Seymour McReynolds' footstone was uncovered at our October 2009 workday, and that recap gives a brief write up of the family grouping. Although we have detailed much of the interior of the cemetery, these recent finds show that there may still be much to discover around the perimeter of the cemetery.

We were joined in our Friday labors by Jennifer Jaffee, a student working on a master's degree in history at Sonoma State University. Much to my delight, she has asked to intern with us this term. I brought Jennifer a binder with Spring Hill interconnections and burial lists. In addition to joining our workdays through May, she is planning to research SH obits in the newspaper archives at the Sonoma County Annex in Santa Rosa. Welcome, Jennifer!!

Our main focus for the year is to finish straightening our monuments, and to reset stones into the bases leveled last year. We plan to finish straightening those few monuments that still need it at the next workday. Brad Deval has kindly offered to research resetting stones into their bases and to liaise with Gary Galeazzi in plotting out for us just how best to accomplish the resetting task.

I have heard back from Paul Schoch, who is very kindly helping us create an official Spring Hill Map. He plans to have the preliminary map before the March 12th workday, at which time we will field edit the map and hopefully resolve any data conflicts. Corrections will be noted and input into the CAD program, and a final map produced.

Many Western Sonoma County Historical Society members, Sonoma County Historical Society members, and Robertson descendants joined me in the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors' office yesterday evening for the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee (PRAC) review of the 2010 SH workplan. The PRAC is composed of 5 members, one appointed by each of the five Sonoma County Supervisors. This was the first time I had met any of them, and they all seemed dedicated, wholehearted supporters of Sonoma County Regional Parks. PRAC meetings are held monthly. Mary Burns and Regional Parks produce an agenda and recommendations. These are brought before the members of the PRAC for their approval. Judy Erickson of Regional Parks presented an enjoyable Power Point presentation of SH to acquaint PRAC members with our cemetery. It was fun to see Spring Hill through another's eyes. I spoke briefly to say that the Friends were a diverse group of those interested in supporting the cemetery, drawing together historical society members, descendants, neighbors, and people from the wider community. I also mentioned that the most recent burial took place in 1996, and that SH is a living cemetery of Sonoma County pioneers and their descendants. The cemetery has never been closed, and there are descendants currently expecting to join their spouses and ancestors one day in Spring Hill. Jeremy Nichols, president of the Sonoma County Historical Society, spoke after me, adding pending resolution of a few details, the SCHS is prepared to contract with the county to handle the burial aspect of SH. The PRAC members asked a few questions of both Jeremy and I, and then voted to accept our 2010 work plan, with a slight modification to the burial policy wording to say we would continue to work with Regional Parks to establish a burial plan in 2010 (rather than finalize a burial plan).

Leaving the cemetery on Friday, I again thought of how fortunate I am to be joined by all of you in efforts to restore and reclaim Spring Hill. My thanks to all of you for your efforts. I look forward to seeing many of you on March 12th for the next Spring Hill work day.