21 February 2025

Dear Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery,

Our first 2025 workday was spectacular. The weather was perfect - sunny, dry, and cool. 10 volunteers gathered for the clean up, and we were joined by 3 of Sonoma County Regional Park's hard working youth core. Our main focus was in maintaining paths and clearing debris, but, with lovely moist ground, we also probed for markers.

We found the cemetery in good shape. Although atmospheric rivers had pummeled the cemetery with rains/winds, we found no downed trees, and only the usual debris littering the cemetery floor. Spring was in evidence with the glorious blooming of our Luther Burbank developed narcissus, and the lilies beginning to sprout.

Daffodills

Clearing paths

Group

Excitement came with the clink of stone against Jeremy's probe, and the discovery of a hidden marker (From DAR records/newspapers and funeral home records, we are still missing about 30 headstones that should be in Spring Hill). The buried stone turned out to be Mary A Titus's footstone. Mary lived quite a life. She was, from her Obit, "born in Ontario, Canada, March 14, 1824, and was the 4th child of a family of six boys and three girls. Her father, Robert Crawford, moved with his family to Oakland county, Michigan, becoming one of the pioneers of that state when this daughter was one year old."

At some point, Mary married John Wesley Burgess in Michigan and beginning in 1842 (when she was 18) had three daughters one of which was Eunice. John died in 1852, leaving Mary a widow at 28. She gave birth in 1856 to Watson A Burgess (4 years after her husband's death), and, according to Titus researchers, the father had been "an Englishman passing through."

As the story continues, in November of 1857 she was "forced" to marry James Titus. Her illegitimate son, Watson's, last name was then changed to Titus. Mary was James Titus' 3rd wife, and James had several children by the two previous marriages, one of them a son, Nathan J Titus. On March 24th 1866 Mary's daughter, Eunice, married James' son Nathan. James Titus died in 1869, and Mary then lived with Eunice and Nathan. They moved from Michigan first to Dakota, and from there found their way to Sonoma County in 1897. Our pipe smoking Mary (see photo below), died April 18th, 1908 at 84 years of age.

We have several Titus descendants in our "Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery" - please correct me if I am off in my retelling! The family intermarried quite a bit, and is a bit hard to follow....

Thank you to all the volunteers joining in yesterday, and many thanks to Regional Parks who provided not only just the usual tool trailer and dump truck, snacks, and drinks, but also workers.

I am hoping to call our next workday for May 2nd. I have not yet had verification from Regional Parks. Please pencil the date into your calendars, and come join us, if you can

Best Regards,

Sue

Digging up the footer stone

Jeremy with the footer

Header and footer stones

Headstone

Mary Titus, 3rd wife of James Titus