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Haunted Place: Rose Hills Cemetery
DESCRIPTION:
A Historic Welsh Protestant cemetery
for coal mining towns, now included in Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve
LOCATION:
Rose Hills Cemetery can be found
in the 5,000 acre Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve, near the Mount
Diablo silica sand mine; Hazel-Atlas Mine, located between two old mining
town sites, Nortonville and Somersville. Starting at the south end of
Somersville Rd., which runs through what was once the mining town of Somerville,
one takes about a 3/4-mile hike up a dirt road which takes the hiker(s)
through flowery fields, turning up into a hilly area past friendly cows
and which finally ends at the old Rose Hills Cemetery, which has a glorious
view of what was the city of Somerville and the surrounding hills.
HISTORY:
From around 1850 until the turn of
the century, this area was known as the Mount Diablo Coalfield, where
a low grade of coal was dug out of the mines located in the areas where
people who were buried the cemetery lived and worked; Nortonville-Somersville
area and the Brentwood area. These coal mines played out around the turn
of the century. Around 1920, the towns of Somerville, Nortonville and
Brentwood got an economic boost when mining for silica sand used for glass
making and metal casting began in earnest in the Hazel-Atlas Mine and
continued until the 1940's, when the mines were closed for good because
it became cheaper to import the sand from foreign countries. When the
mine owners sold the land as range land for livestock, the people who
lived in Somerville took down their redwood houses, board by board, and
moved with their belongings and houses to other areas, where they reassembled
their houses and their lives.
This Protestant cemetery, located on this prime
piece of real estate with a glorious view, became the final resting
place of mostly Welsh people who died from around 1865, up until a
little after the mines closed, in 1954. The graves found here mark
the deaths of the human beings who died from mining accidents, black
lung, dumb kid mishaps, accidents of life, small pox, typhus, scarlet
fever, diphtheria outbreaks and from childbirth, which was the cause
of death of a lot of women. This cemetery received its name after
the mines closed. The man who bought the land from the mining company
gave the section of land with the cemetery on it to his daughter,
Emma Rose, who named the cemetery, Rose Cemetery.
Unfortunately, the thickheaded living were
unkind, disrespectful and destructive to this Rose Cemetery throughout
the '50's-70's, taking headstones and running over graves with trucks,
leaving the cemetery in terrible condition when it became part of
the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve in the mid 1970's. By then,
nearly half the headstones were missing, while nearly all the headstones
remaining were knocked off their bases and broken.
How do professionals restore a
cemetery? Unfortunately, the early cemetery records kept by the mining
company were destroyed during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. However,
the dedicated Black Diamond staff, led by the Supervising Naturalist
Traci Parent, through a slow but steady process, have undertaken to
restore broken headstones, find out who was buried there through the
cemetery lists put together from 1922-1954, interview former resident
and descendant accounts, and make good use of historical newspaper articles
and historic photos.
In August 2001, the staff got
a big break when the Community Presbyterian Church in Pittsburg, whose
past founding members had come from the Nortonville church, found
burial records detailing the deaths of some of those folks buried
in Rose Hills Cemetery, dating back to 1882. This was a great help!
Another exciting development is that during
the summer of 2005, the staff hopes to complete a survey using the
ground-penetrating radar to find unmarked burial sites, hoping to
gain another important piece of the puzzle to help find and mark all
the graves, with either the original stones or new markers.
The staff has an orphan headstone program;
(no questions asked), where old headstones can be turned in by police
agencies, private land owners and also any headstones turned into
the Contra Costa County Historical Society as well. So far, 12 headstones
have been found and replaced on the graves they were made for, bringing
them home.
Anyone who finds a missing headstone, can contact:
Traci Parent/ Supervising Naturalist / Black Diamond Mines Regional
Preserve/ 5175 Somersville Road, Antioch, CA 94509///// E-Mail: bdvisit@ebparks.org
A recent find was the marble headstone found
in a homeowner's backyard in Walnut Creek when a trench was being
dug for a new sewer line. It belonged to a grave in Rose Hills Cemetery
marking the death of 5 year old Walter E. Clare, who died from a horse
kicking him in the head. When they find the exact location of his
grave, Walter E. Clare's headstone will be be put back in place.
HISTORY OF MANIFESTATIONS:
Rose Hills Cemetery not only has some ghosts
who have some personal issues/regrets, but also has had quite of few
upset entities who have bones to pick with the living for disturbing
/ destroying graves of the departed. To quiet the unhappy spirits,
119 exorcisms were performed, but many spirits still remain restless.
MANIFESTATIONS:
An Entity or Two with Personal Issues/Regrets.....
1) Sarah Norton, who was the
widow of Noah Norton, the founder of Nortonville, was the popular,
skilled, dedicated midwife who delivered quite a few babies in the
coal mining communities, in all kinds of weather and at any hour of
the day or night. She was described as being a gutsy, independent
soul with a prickly personality, rumored to being an unbeliever because
she wasn't known to be "a very religious person." On October 5th,
1879, while traveling to deliver a baby, she was thrown from her buggy
and killed when her horses bolted and ran. When two different huge,
violent storms interrupted two attempts to have a funeral for her,
the people simply put her into her grave without a "Christian burial."
Uh Oh! This wasn't good!
a) The entity of Sarah Norton
has haunted the Rose Hills Cemetery and the surrounding hills for
many years, perhaps upset because she wasn't given a Christian burial,
and/or perhaps feels she died before she had finished her work on
earth. Her apparition has been seen and described as "a glowing lady"
OR "a gliding woman," and has been given the name of "white witch."
2) A ghostly apparition of a horse-drawn
hearse has been seen and heard traveling up the road to this cemetery.
Restless Souls disturbed by the
Past Cemetery Destruction....
3) A glowing, white entity likes
to glide right above the grave headstones, occasionally getting some
chuckles in terrifying the living foolish enough to be there after dark.
One couple who had planned to have a romantic make-out session, hastily
changed their plans when this entity appeared in front of them, floating
above a nearby headstone.
4) Floating, glowing crosses and 13 apparitions
of children dressed in black have been seen in the graveyard and
surrounding areas.
5) Menacing, angry presences have been felt
by the living.
6) Auditory manifestations include the sound
of bells, ghostly cries and laughter, and the sound of wind without
the wind being present
Still Haunted?
Yes indeed!
The hauntings are still present despite
the exorcism attempts. The dedicated work of the Black Diamond Staff will
eventually replace all the missing headstones and will mark all the graves,
which will help the restless souls in this graveyard perhaps find some
peace.
All photos taken by Tom Carr
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