Immaculate Conception Cemetery's Mystery of the Two Missing Graves - Sutter Creek

The backside of the Parish Hall property, Sutter Creek

Recently, one of my fellow researcher/taphophile friends that we will refer to as "Phyllis Jean," had reached out to me about a mystery she wanted answers to. Since she has helped me in some of my investigations, I agreed to help her with this one and she so kindly gave me permission to write about it on my blog.

So, the story starts out at the Immaculate Conception Churchyard and its adjacent Parish Hall at 190 Fogarty Drive, Sutter Creek, CA.  At one point around 2018, the site where the Parish Hall stands was listed for sale, and this is where the problems began. When the cemetery or churchyard started on the property next door, there was no definitive borderline where to stop burying the dead. So, there were some burials in the vicinity of where the Parish Hall stands. 

The cemetery itself dates back to 1858, but the church wasn't built until around 1860-1861. The land had been donated by the Mahoney family, and 15 members of said family happen to be buried within the grounds as well. 

The website Movoto lists the Parish Hall building, on the side of the cemetery, as being built in 1980, although I am not sure if that is entirely accurate, as my parents remembered something being on that site back when they lived on Spanish Street in the early 1970's.  

Well, fast forward to 2018, the property needed to be separate from the actual church property in order to sell it as separate land, so they had to "move" any of the graves that spilled over onto that property.

My friend "Phyllis Jean" claimed she remembered something about the newspaper mentioning the possible moving of the graves, but when she went back to search for it, she couldn't find it in any of the archived newspapers, as neither could I. 

This left me perplexed. 

We both separately "Googled" the property for a street view of the site and we both stumbled upon the sight of two headstones laying up against a retaining wall in plain sight. I also double checked other photos of the cemetery area, and found several photos of the headstones when they were upright and in their rightful place. This meant that they had recently been removed in the last 3 years or so. 

So who do these two headstones belong to?

Well, since the headstones were facing the retaining wall and not clearly visible, it took having to physically visit the cemetery and lay on the ground in a very awkward position just to snap a few shots.

One person's headstone was easier to capture than the other. In fact, I could only get a tiny fragment of the other person's name and had to run to Find-a-grave in the hopes they had been entered in their database before. Thankfully they were. So I was able to find both individuals by name.

#1. William Garrett    

William Garrett was born in Ireland around 1837. The voting registries of the time circa 1867 state that William was "naturalized" a citizen on September 4, 1866, and registered to vote as of April 12, 1867. He was also listed as living in Township #5, which the History of Amador County by Jesse D. Mason mentions that township as being around  Drytown, Amador City and Forest Home (Plymouth area). He passed away on October 20, 1877 and was buried at the Immaculate Conception Churchyard.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/208987324/william-garrett

#2.  Dennis Shine

Dennis Shine was born in Limerick, Ireland around 1816. Unfortunately, I could not find any voting registries for Dennis, nor could I locate any census records for either Shine or Garrett. He passed away on October 10, 1877 and was buried at the Immaculate Conception Churchyard.

Also, because the Amador Dispatch and Ledger newspapers have no records for the year 1877, which happens to be the same year both of the deceased passed away, there is no way to obtain an obituary for these two gentlemen. 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/140018257/dennis-shine

Interestingly, according to the US Gen Web Archives, the cemeteries burial records do not include either Garrett or Shine. I downloaded the complete list of burials and confirmed that neither men were listed as being buried in 1877, as they only had 4 burials that year. Somehow, someone failed to make a note of these two burials in their original records. Needless to say, this bothered me, and my friend "Phyllis Jean." 

Along with those facts, and the fact we now knew that the headstones had be removed from their place of burial, this worried us that their remains were going to be left there unmarked and forgotten so the property could be sold. This would not be the first time this has happened, as it is well known that when the cemeteries in San Francisco were moved, and bodies exhumed and reinterred to Colma, many monuments were tossed into the sea, and many bodies were left in the ground. 

Also, the Stockton State Hospital "moved" some of their dead on paper only, and opted to sell the land and build on top of said burial grounds leaving the dead still presently buried under the foundations of many buildings along California street in Stockton. 

So, with this worry in mind, I personally reached out to the Immaculate Conception Church for answers. I first spoke with a young lady who wasn't sure how to answer my questions, and she took my number down and said Marge would call me back. 

When I finally spoke to Marge, she assured me that the remains of both Garrett and Shine had been removed in a two step process, by using ground penetrating radar, and then removing the remains and burying them in an area that had not been used for any previous burials. This was very reassuring as I just wanted to make sure these two people's graves would not be forgotten or erased from history.

The next day, I received an email from another friend and fellow genealogist from Find-a-grave, Steve Jones, the person who originally entered Mr. Garrett's information into Find-a-grave, who also confirmed the story with me, as he knows Marge, too. He spoke to her and she gave him the same information, that the graves had been moved a while back, and that they had an archeologist come out and someone with the ground penetrating radar machine to search the grounds for the remains. There were witnesses who watched the exhumation and moving of the two deceased individuals remains to a spot in the churchyard where "nothing else existed." 

One good thing that came out of this inquiry though was the fact that it brought to Marge's attention that the person they hired to reset the headstones next to the new burial spots, had not done so, and it has been quite some time. Thankfully, maybe now that this has been brought to the forefront again, this project will get finished once and for all, and Mr. Garrett and Mr. Shine can be reunited with their headstones, once again.  

Update May 2022:  A few weeks ago, I received a voicemail from Marge that the headstones were finally properly reunited with their interred eternal residents, Dennis and William.  Case closed.

(Copyright 2022- J'aime Rubio,  www.jaimerubiowriter.com)