Our destination was this cemetery in Napa, California.
We were in search of the grave of this man:
As we have been studying the Doctrine and Covenants this year, I have found it fascinating to learn in more detail about the Saints' interaction with the people in Missouri and how they were so different in almost every way. Of course this name came up often and I decided to learn a little bit more about him. I was surprised to learn that he was buried in Napa which is about 1 1/2 hours from here and looked into the story. He actually had a very interesting life. I've posted a link to the Wikipedia article about him at the end. I thought it would be a fun outing to go in search of his grave! Fortunately Grandpa was willing to be my chauffeur.
Missouri from 1836 to 1840. He is now most widely remembered for his interactions with Joseph Smith and Porter Rockwell, and Missouri Executive Order 44, known by Mormons as the "Extermination Order," issued in response to the ongoing conflict between church members and other settlers in Missouri." "After coming by wagon train to California in 1846 (before the Gold Rush) he served as alcalde (municipal magistrate) of Sonoma and was a delegate to the California state constitutional convention in 1850. His second wife, Panthea, was the granddaughter of Daniel Boone."
We had only this map to go from which I printed off the internet, but as you can see it does not have the street names inside the cemetery:
We searched and searched, but no luck.
We finally drove back to the office but a funeral was going on and it was closed. A lady was able to give Grandpa a map with the street names but we still couldn't find it. Then I looked up on Find A Grave and saw a picture of what it looked like.
Grandpa found it!
Grandpa promised not to spit on his grave or do anything unkind.
There were some other interesting people buried nearby so we decided to follow the map some more and try to find them. They included:
James Clyman 1792-1881
"Born in Virginia, James Clyman was a mountain man and scout. We know of his exploits because he kept a diary. He was acquainted with Lilburn Boggs in Missouri and they met again at Ft. Laramie when the Boggs party was coming west in 1846. We don't know that he specifically warned Boggs about the danger of the Hastings Cutoff, but he did tell James Reed, of that same immigrant train, not to take the Hastings Route, saying that the train was barely passable by foot, and wouldn't be suitable for wagons. Reed and his group didn't heed the advice and they rode into history as the Donner Party. Clyman lived to an old age in the family home that still stands on Redwood Road in Napa."
We had trouble finding his grave as well because on Find A Grave his marker looked like this:
So we were looking for something with that higher top. We had almost given up and got in the car to leave when I spotted it, and it now looks like this. The top is gone.
We also found the marker of John Patchett 1797 -1876 who may have been the first commercial winemaker in the Napa Valley an area that is now world famous for wine.
And this was an interesting one:
This is the marker for Mary Ellen Pleasant 1814-1904
"Born a slave, she was involved in the activities of the Underground Railroad. In 1852 she came to Gold Rush-era San Francisco and successfully ran boarding houses and laundries. In 1858 she returned to the East and it is believed that she helped finance John Brown who led an attack at the Arsenal at Harper's Ferry in 1859. She returned to San Francisco and she sued twice the SF street car company for the right of blacks to ride on public transportation. She won the case and came to be called the "Mother of Civil Rights in California." In 1965 a group put a marker on her grave and the metal sculpture in the back was done by R.Alan Williams, a prize winning black artist."
Who knew traipsing around a cemetery could be educational and so much fun?!
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