Last summer, this paper published a two-part series regarding the history of the New Helvetia Cemetery, which was formerly located at the northeast corner of Alhambra Boulevard and J Street (these articles can be read at www.valcomnews.com). And since that time, news about the cemetery continues to find its way into this publication.

REPAIRED. The Asch family tombstone is shown in its restored condition. Two of the names on the stone are Barbara and John Asch. The couple emigrated with their then-four children from Baden, Germany in the late 1840s and was residing in Sacramento by the mid-1850s. John and Barbara eventually had 10 children. / Photo courtesy, Susie O’Brien

In February, for instance, an article appeared in this paper regarding three missing New Helvetia Cemetery markers that were recently discovered in the backyard of an East Sacramento home.

During the 1950s, the old cemetery property was sold and these flat markers were removed from the site in preparation for the construction of Sutter Junior High School – now Sutter Middle School – which had previously operated at 1816 K St.

The whereabouts of many of these markers became unknown during this transition.

In an even earlier moment in the cemetery’s history, the historic tombstones of the cemetery were removed and replaced with the aforementioned flat markers as the cemetery site became known as Helvetia Park.

Until somewhat recently, only one of the original headstones from the cemetery – that of Switzerland native Ersiglio Bonetti (1865-1885) – was known to exist.

That status changed with the February 2010 discovery of an original New Helvetia Cemetery tombstone with the names of four members of the Asch or Ash family.

The journey of the discovery of this tombstone began with Susie (Hofmeister) O’Brien, who is a resident of Oceanside, N.Y.

O’Brien, who was born in Fresno and moved with her family to New York when she was one year of age, said that she had taken an interest in her family’s history through her father’s sister, Ruth (Hofmeister) Maysonaze, who O’Brien described as a “huge genealogy buff.”

“She got me started on this,” O’Brien said. “In (the spring of) 2009, my sisters [Barbara (Hofmeister) Caporaso and Cathy (Hofmeister) Mulqueen] and I came to California for a wedding and in that time, I said, ‘As long as we are there, we have to do a little genealogy trip of Northern California, because both sides of the family are from Northern California.’”

As part of this genealogy trip, O’Brien, who was unaware that the New Helvetia Cemetery no longer existed, attempted to locate the old cemetery in hopes of finding the gravesite of her third great-great-grandparents, John and Barbara Asch.

Because she was unable to locate the cemetery, O’Brien contacted the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery to inquire about the New Helvetia Cemetery.

ORIGINAL CONDITION AND LOCATION. The Asch family tombstone is shown in this historic photograph taken at the New Helvetia Cemetery. / Photo courtesy, Center for Sacramento History / Florence Henderson Photo Collection

During her telephone conversation with Lois Dove of the Old City Cemetery Committee, O’Brien was informed by Dove that the cemetery had been closed down and that the remains of her ancestors were moved to the city cemetery in the 1950s.

O’Brien was later sent a brochure about the New Helvetia Cemetery, a copy of an historical photograph of her ancestors’ tombstone and a map of the city cemetery that showed where her ancestors were buried.

Furthermore, the brochure featured the same photograph of the Asch family tombstone on its cover.

The stone includes the names of Baden, Germany immigrants John Asch (1816-1895) and Barbara Asch (1816-1901) and two of their children, the Pennsylvania-born Franz Louis, who died in 1877 at the age of 22, and the Sacramento-born Augusta, who passed away in 1860, when she was two years old.

Although the stone recognizes the spelling of the family’s surname as “Asch,” O’Brien said that all of the other references to this name that she has seen have been spelled, “Ash.”

After uploading a digital copy of the “Asch” tombstone photograph on her family’s ancestry page on the Web site www.ancestry.com, O’Brien received an e-mail message from an Auburn (Placer County) resident, named Louise Pipher, who inquired about her relationship to the Asch family.

O’Brien explained that Pipher eventually told her that she believed that her ancestors’ tombstone was located in Auburn.

“(Pipher) had lived in Auburn for 20 years and she and her husband were going out for dinner on Valentine’s night in 2010,” O’Brien said. “They were driving past this little rock garden circular driveway, right across the street from their house. She tells her husband to back up. She had never noticed in this rock garden this tombstone. She took a picture and sent it to me and it was the middle base (of the tombstone) with the names of the Asch family.”

When asked what her reaction was to finding out about the discovery, O’Brien said, “Wow! They’re talking to me. They wanted to be found.”

O’Brien said that the house on the property with the tombstone was a rental and after attempting for some time to contact the home’s owner, Barbara Clark, in 2011, she sent a letter to the Auburn Police Department and Auburn City Hall stating that she was a benefactor of the headstone.

As a result, Clark, as O’Brien explained, called her and agreed for her to have the stone removed from the property.

O’Brien said that she learned that the stone had been brought to the Auburn property from Sacramento in 1956 by Clark’s stepfather, the late Victor Nation, who was a mason by trade and had a love for antiques. O’Brien added that Clark had no idea how her stepfather acquired the tombstone.

ASCH FAMILY DESCENDENTS. Left to right, Barbara (Hofmeister) Caporaso, Cathy (Hofmeister) Mulqueen and Susie (Hofmeister) O'Brien are descendants of Barbara and John Asch. / Photo courtesy, Susie O’Brien

In preparation for the Asch tombstone’s return to Sacramento, Ray Young, manager of the Fair Oaks Cemetery, and Ron Clark, manager of the Sylvan Cemetery in Citrus Heights, dug up the stone free of charge in June 2011.

The stone was then delivered to Ruhkala Monument Co. at 1001 Broadway, where it was restored.

Assisting with the payment of the restoration were O’Brien and a few of her cousins in California, the Old City Cemetery Committee, the Sacramento County Cemetery Advisory Commission and the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Emigrant Trail Chapter (of Auburn), in which Pipher is a member.

O’Brien, who contributed the majority of the funds to have the stone restored, said, “To me, (having the Asch tombstone restored and rededicated) is the least that I could do to pay respect to this couple and their journey to California. And if you look at the stone, you see how important these monuments were. I would like to think they would be proud of me and my persistence to make this happen.”

And in showing his own enthusiasm for the discovery of the Ash tombstone, Dr. Bob LaPerriere, co-chair of the Sacramento County Cemetery Advisory Commission, said, “It was very rewarding, after two decades of being involved with the history of New Helvetia Cemetery, to locate the Asch monument and have relatives from the East Coast involved in its restoration and dedication. This certainly demonstrates what the significance of these memorials can be to the families.”

The rededication of the Asch tombstone will be a significant part of an even larger event at the cemetery.

The June 2 event will begin at noon at the front of the cemetery at 1000 Broadway, where two memorials, which were recently placed at the site through the efforts of the Old City Cemetery Committee, will be dedicated.

These memorials pay tribute to the Reeves and Jurgens families.

CAREFULLY RELOCATED. The Asch family tombstone was removed from a residential property in Auburn in June 2011. / Photo courtesy, Susie O’Brien

Among these family members was John Wesley Reeves (1845-1926), a former coroner and proprietor and superintendent of the New Helvetia Cemetery.

Following the dedication of these family memorials, those in attendance will then proceed to the second of three New Helvetia areas at the city cemetery for the rededications of the Asch and Bonetti monuments, as well as a rededication of the Jane Hall marker.

As presented in the April 5 edition of the East Sacramento News, Hall’s marker was one of three flat gravestones recently discovered in an East Sacramento backyard.

This event will conclude with a short ceremony to remember the other 100-plus people whose remains were relocated to the old city cemetery from the New Helvetia Cemetery.

FOUND IN THE FOOTHILLS. The Asch family tombstone, shown in this February 2010 photograph, was located in a residential yard in Auburn for 55 years. / Photo courtesy, Susie O’Brien

A granite memorial recognizing these people is intended to be placed at the site in the near future.

lance@valcomnews.com

Editor’s Note: This is part two of a two-part series regarding the history of East Sacramento’s former New Helvetia Cemetery.

It has been nearly 162 years since Captain John A. Sutter set aside 10 acres for his establishment’s first formal burial ground, the now nonexistent New Helvetia Cemetery.

The cemetery, which was eventually doubled in size, served the community for many years before evolving into a public park, which was known as Helvetia Park.

The old cemetery grounds, with the exception of a tombstone-like marker presenting information about the former cemetery, are no longer distinguishable. The land is presently the site of Sutter Middle School at 3150 I St.

In the process of creating Helvetia Park, the old cemetery, which actually adjoined East Park (today’s McKinley Park), had its headstones removed and replaced with flat gravesite identifying markers.

Unfortunately, various decisions and actions connected to the processes of creating the park and removing the cemetery in its entirety resulted in many missing tombstones and markers and even unidentified graves.

Other gravesites were presumably left unidentified in earlier times due to such possible causes as the deterioration of wooden markers and flooding that carried away wooden markers. Because of recurrent flooding in the area, there were no burials at the cemetery from 1850 to 1857.

A classic example related to the old cemetery’s missing markers was presented in the Aug. 11, 1989 edition of The Sacramento Bee, as a story was related in which a lecture about Sacramento cemeteries at California Middle School was interrupted by a boy who raised his hand and said, “We have some of those stones in our yard.”

In a meeting with the East Sacramento News last week, Dr. Bob LaPerriere, co-chair of the Sacramento County Cemetery Advisory Commission, discussed the topic of missing tombstones and other markers from the New Helvetia Cemetery.

“When they removed the bodies in the 1950s, we’re not sure exactly what happened, but some people recall that these concrete markers were kind of stacked up along the street,” LaPerriere said. “A couple years ago, we located – just between two homes behind Sutter Middle School – over 70 of these flat, concrete markers. They were used for stepping stones and kind of to widen the driveway.”

LaPerriere said that a unique event occurred following the discovery of these markers, as the stones were transported from Sutter Middle School to East Lawn Memorial Park at Folsom Boulevard and 43rd Street via a horse-drawn wagon.

The decision to deliver these markers to East Lawn Memorial Park was a simple one, considering that the city had purchased property at the cemetery for a mass, unmarked burial site, where 4,691 unidentified human remains from the New Helvetia Cemetery were reinterred.

Unfortunately, this large number of “unknowns,” as these unidentified remains are often referred to, account for the majority of the remains from the New Helvetia Cemetery.

The Sacramento Historic City Cemetery at 1000 Broadway is the site of the remains of about 400 additional people who were once buried at the New Helvetia Cemetery.

However, these remains are individually identified and are located in three separate areas at the Broadway cemetery, west of Riverside Boulevard.

Other individually identified remains from the New Helvetia Cemetery were reinterred at the following Sacramento city and county cemeteries: East Lawn, Masonic Lawn Cemetery at 2700 Riverside Blvd., Odd Fellows Lawn Cemetery at 2720 Riverside Blvd., St. Joseph’s Cemetery at 2615 21st^t St., St. Mary’s Cemetery at 6700 21st St., Sacramento Memorial Lawn at 6100 Stockton Blvd., Elk Grove Cemetery at 8540 Elk Grove Blvd. in Elk Grove and the Sylvan Cemetery at 7401 Auburn Blvd. in Citrus Heights.

Despite this long list of other cemeteries, LaPerriere notes that a relatively low number of remains from the New Helvetia Cemetery were relocated to these cemeteries.

LaPerriere provided the following numbers regarding the relocations of these remains: 410 sent to Broadway cemetery, 84 to East Lawn, 32 to Odd Fellows, six to Sacramento Memorial Lawn, three to St. Joseph’s, three to Elk Grove, two to St. Mary’s and one to Masonic.

In regard to the many flat markers from the New Helvetia Cemetery site that are still missing today, LaPerriere mentioned that he would not be surprised if some of these markers are presently located on residential properties within the nearby vicinity of this former East Sacramento cemetery.

Although the aforementioned mass burial at East Lawn Memorial Park is recognized as consisting of “unknowns” or unidentified remains, this does not mean that there are no records of any of the names of the deceased people from the New Helvetia Cemetery who were reburied there.

To the contrary, records exist for many people who were buried at the New Helvetia Cemetery and it is by deduction from the names of those who were reinterred in other local cemeteries that a list of assumed names was created for the mass burial site at East Lawn Memorial Park.

LaPerriere said that East Lawn Memorial Park, although it was not obligated to do so, greatly contributed to the cemetery’s mass burial site.

“The city never put up a marker or anything (at the mass burial site), absolutely nothing,” LaPerriere said. “It took John Bettencourt (the late cemetery historian and preservationist who was vital in the formation of the Old City Cemetery Committee) and I working with East Lawn, quite a few years ago, to get the area memorialized. East Lawn, of course, had no responsibility to do it. The city bought the area, buried the people and the city should have taken care of things. But East Lawn, being very community minded, worked with us and they put four (right angle) corner walls in around the area to demarcate the area and they put a nice monument in the center memorializing those who were moved from New Helvetia (Cemetery).”

In addition to this burial site’s corner markers, most of the perimeter of the site is outlined with the flat, concrete markers that had been retrieved from the residential yards near Sutter Middle School.

As of about two years ago, the whereabouts of only one verified original tombstone from the New Helvetia Cemetery was known.

But fortunately, it was discovered that another original New Helvetia Cemetery tombstone – that of members of the Asch family – was located in Auburn.

About a month ago, the stone was relocated to Sacramento and it will soon be placed in the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery’s already existing Asch plot.

LaPerriere said that anyone with information regarding missing headstones or markers from the New Helvetia Cemetery is encouraged to call the Sacramento County Cemetery Advisory Commission at (916) 874-9103 or write to the e-mail address: cemeterycommission@saccounty.net.

Anyone with information regarding missing headstones or markers from the New Helvetia Cemetery is encouraged to call the Sacramento County Cemetery Advisory Commission at (916) 874-9103 or write to the e-mail address: cemeterycommission@sac

county.net