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The history of the public cemetery in Bloomfield is somewhat unclear, as Susan Appleton wrote in "Bloomfield Cemetery Records, 1864-1967" (Santa Rosa Annex 929.379418 Bloomfield): |
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| ...this cemetery is one of the very few in California that has no administration running it nor records kept on it to my knowledge. | ||
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Listed in Cemeteries of Sonoma County, California: A history and guide, by Jeremy Dwight Nichols (Hertage Books , Inc.: Bowie, Maryland, 2002), on page 11: |
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| The Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.) reported that burials in Bloomfield were first done in the schoolyard. When the cemetery was created in 1864, the early burials were removed from the schoolyard to the new place. The first new burial in the Bloomfield Cemetery was Mrs. Stephen L. Fowler, daughter of L. D. Cockrill... | ||
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In an obituary for Dr. Bruce T. Cockrill, it was claimed that the "old cemetery" was deeded by Larkin Cockrill, so that the lots were free of charge to the Cockrill family. It is not clear what holdings of Bloomfield property Larkin may have had because of the prevalence of "squatting" by many of the early inhabitants of the area, however it appears that the Hoag brothers, Jared and Cushing, had owned most of the property which became the Bloomfield Cemetery. From Susan Appleton's deed search on the Bloomfield Cemetery: |
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| ...the cemetery was deeded in two portions, the back half in 1864 in a Trust for a Public Cemetery and in 1869 the front half by Charles E. Lamb, administrator of the Estate of Horace Lamb. | ||||
| March 8, 1864 Sonoma County Deeds Book 15 Page 390. Charles R. Arthur, John Judson and J. W. Palmer set up a Trust for a Public Burial Ground from land obtained from J. C. and L. Cushing Hoag. Commencing at the North West corner of an acre lot lying on the North side of Pleasant Street and on the hill west of Bloomfield and deeded to Horace Lamb by J. C. and L. Cushing Hoag [Deeds Book 15, Page 470, 25 Feb 1861]. From the N. W. corner of said lot thence West 182 ft thence north 404 ft to place of beginning containing 43528 sq. ft. more or less. | ||||
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An index of burials as well as a transcribed list of gravestone inscriptions for the Bloomfield cemetery can be found as part of the Sonoma California page of The Tombstone Transcription Project. Mr. Thomas Lang has graciously shared a preliminary map of the graveyard that he has has started and allowed me to put it here as a PDF.
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The Bloomfield Cemetery has been ungoing a gargantuan and painstaking restoration over the past few years by Ed Hansen and Dale Miller: two friends who were raised in Bloomfield and watched their elders perform similiar functions in the 1960's. After one of the old cedar trees fell near Dr. Cockrill's family gravesite in 2002, they volunteered to remove it as well as to continue to perserve the beauty and serenity of old pioneer cemetery by bringing it back from its state of disrepair. They have since removed other broken trees, old stumps, brush, planted new vegetation, put up a new flag pole and plotmap sign, as well as reerected, mounted, and repaired over a hunded stones. Some of the stone faces and the inscriptions upon these markers have not seen the light of day for many years (see for example, the marker for T. G. Cockrill). Much more work continues as well as remains to be done. Please send donations to: Bloomfield Cemetery Association |
This page created on 11/20/01 00:06. Updated 07/17/11 16:50.
