Obed Fosdick Alley
Obed Fosdick Alley was born on June 4, 1824 in Massachusetts. He married Phebe Ray Bunker (1928) on July 18, 1950 in Nantucket, MA where he was a mariner in water transportation. Obed came to California from Nantucket in 1850. After working in the gold fields and spending some months in Martinez he sent for […]
Beverly R. Holliday
Beverly Richford Holliday was born on December 22, 1823 in Warren County, Kentucky. Holliday came to California to look for gold. Not finding enough to live on, he became a logger working in the nearby Redwood Groves of Oakland and Moraga. By January of 1850, he was ready to return to teaching. According to the […]
Hardy McClellan
Hardy McClellan was born 1815 into slavery in Virginia. In the 1870 US Census, Hardy (age 50) is listed in the David McClellan household as a farm laborer (received pay) and has a personal estate of $1,000. He is listed as a farmer in Walnut Creek when he voted for the first time in 1871, […]
Josiah and Eliza Smith Sturgis
Josiah Sturgis was born on April 23, 1817 in Nantucket, Massachusetts. His wife, Eliza was born on April 26, 1819 in Virginia. Josiah married Eliza Smith in Nantucket, Massachusetts on September 22, 1839. In the 1850 U.S. Census, we find Josiah is a stone cutter of Miscellaneous Nonmetallic Mineral and Stone Products in Massachusetts. He […]
George W. Bailey
Updated information was found from the January 1873 articles in the San Francisco Examiner and the Contra Costa Gazette. On Monday, January 20, 1873, George W. Bailey, his wife Nellie, and one of his two small children took a boat from Sacramento to San Francisco. He then disappeared. George Whitfield Bailey was born in Missouri […]
Haußmann/Tavan
The original content of this post was taken from the previous website and updated for republishing in 2021. Haußmann/Tavan were local philanthropists. Money from their estates was put in a trust to provide funds to help maintain the cemetery. Every four years interest is accumulated and used to pay for improvements to the grounds. Karl […]
Hiram Mills
On May 2, 1874 a jury was picked for the trial of Mary Gersbach, a 29 year-old woman from New York who was accused of murdering her husband, Martin, with William Nash at her residence on San Pablo Creek in August 1873. The trial was being held at the Fifteenth District Court in Martinez, and […]
Capt. Daniel Hooker
As of this writing, Capt. Daniel Hooker’s headstone is the oldest existing marker in the Alhambra cemetery (1856) after the area became an official cemetery in 1854. However, there is some evidence of burials on this site as early as 1851. Captain Daniel Hooker was born in 1791 in Vermont. We know that his wife’s […]
James Rankin
James Rankin was a Scottish immigrant who came to the United States in 1865. He was born on April 25, 1848 in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, Scotland. According to the 1861 Scotland Census, James was 12 years old and working as a coalminer. On January 21, 1866, James boarded the City of New York at the docks […]
Caroline Holpin, a.k.a. Papinta the Flame Dancer
Caroline Holpin known as “Papinta the Flame Dancer” was born Alice Caroline Hipple on March 16, 1868 in Ramsey, Anoka County, Minnesota. Her husband, William, who was originally from Wisconsin, bought 150 acres in Ygnacio Valley in 1897. The Ygnacio Valley farm, known as “El Royo” was purchased with Papinta’s dance money so William could […]