By Sue Ziemski
The Napa Valley Genealogical Society Library offers numerous resources for research. Cemeteries have often been great resources for conducting genealogical research. With this in mind, in 1989, a group of NVGS members began a project to survey and record the inscriptions of every cemetery in Napa County, both public and private; from “Indian Burial Grounds” to small family cemeteries. These records are available at the NVGS library. Many of these lists include more information than just tombstone inscriptions and most of these surveys are indexed. Notable examples are described below.
Monticello Cemetery (now Spanish Flat Cemetery): In the 1950s, the graves of the original cemetery were disinterred and transferred to the new Spanish Flat Cemetery prior to the building of the dam and the flooding of the valley. In the process many errors were made, especially with the earlier graves, and much information was lost. Prior to this process, the Army Corps of Engineers had made a survey of the cemetery. NVGS obtained these records and integrated the information with the physical survey at the new cemetery, thereby creating a complete record of a cemetery that disappeared under the waters of Lake Berryessa.
The Mont La Salle Cemetery (aka Brothers Cemetery) is on the upper part of Redwood Road. The records of these burials from The Brothers of the Christian Schools of San Francisco include the given name of the person as well as their “brotherhood” name and other information about birthplace.
The survey of the Pioneer Cemetery in Calistoga includes the records from the office ledger as well as additional information from Juanita D. Larimore that is from the Graves Family History. The Graves Family from Illinois were part of the Donner Party. There were 6 children from that family that survived the disaster and three of them are buried in Pioneer Cemetery. Pioneer Cemetery also contains 23 veterans of the Civil War.
Entrance to Pioneer Cemetery
Off Highway 29, south of the city of Napa, is the Memorial Gardens Cemetery. Many of the graves in this cemetery are military burials that include the service information of the person. In addition, there are about 4,000 cremations from deaths at Napa State Hospital that were transferred to this location in 1968. This list of patient cremations is included in the office ledger information.
Some of the smaller cemeteries also provide additional information. The Biter Family Cemetery has only 3 burials with little information. Additional research was done by J. D. Larimore and added to the record.
The record of another small cemetery, Los Posadas Pioneer Cemetery (aka Morris Family Cemetery), includes an application for heritage designation for this older cemetery. The application has a history of the Morris Family and photographs of the tombstones.
Check out our digitized collection of cemetery indexes (login req'd).
