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Most local residents have driven past Menlo Park’s Holy Cross Cemetery on Santa Cruz Avenue hundreds of times without realizing that inside its gates lies much of the history of the Midpeninsula.
The names on the gravestones echo those on streets and businesses in Menlo Park, Atherton, Woodside and Portola Valley — Greer, Miramontes, Beltramo, Skrabo, Jelich, and Elena Selby Atherton (with two streets and a town sharing her names) among them.
On Sept. 20 the Menlo Park Historical Association sponsored a cemetery tour led by historian Michael Svanevik. The event, originally meant to be for 25 people, ended up with 37 participants and another 10 on a waiting list for a future tour.
San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe and his wife, Sue, were there because his parents’ graves are at Holy Cross, as are those of other Wagstaffe relatives. Mr. Wagstaffe joked that one day he hopes a historic tour will point out his grave as that of one of the county’s longest-serving district attorneys.
Diane Morey, who has more than 20 Morey relatives in the cemetery, was on the tour; as was Jim Murray, who has at least 17 Murray relatives there. Visitors from Nevada and Maryland also joined the tour.
The cemetery’s oldest gravestone dates to 1860. Much of that faded stone is illegible, but “Patk. Langan died 18th of Jany. 1860 age 52 years” can be made out.
The cemetery was a nonsectarian town graveyard until the Catholic Church purchased it in 1872. When it was consecrated in 1883, Mr. Svanevik said, the Protestant residents of the cemetery were moved to its perimeters.
The cemetery has 6,200 burials and room for burials for at least another 100 years, according to cemetery superintendent Kathy Wade, who assisted with the tour.
Mr. Svanevik said many of the plantings in the cemetery came from Michael Lynch, 1847-1918, who is also buried there. Mr. Lynch was from Ireland, and also landscaped the Flood estate, the Timothy Hopkins estate and worked on Stanford University’s landscaping.
“This is a rural, tranquil cemetery,” Mr. Svanevik said. That rural feeling led many of the area’s more prominent residents to choose to be buried at Holy Cross Colma, instead. “If you wanted to be classy, you got buried up there,” he said.
Among the working class families in the Menlo Park cemetery are the Moreys, whom Morey Drive in Menlo Park is named after. Moreys helped to build Stanford University, Sacred Heart and St. Patrick’s Seminary.
Another family plot is that of John Beltramo, 1859-1948, who came to the U.S. in 1880, Mr. Svanevik said. Mr. Beltramo had wineries on Ringwood and on Glenwood, where he also had a boarding house.
“He’d put any Italian to work,” Mr. Svanevik said. “There were certain rules. There would be no foul language. And if any one of you guys so much as looks at one of my daughters, you’re out.”
Mr. Svanevik said local legend has it that because Stanford University didn’t allow alcohol to be sold within 1.5 miles of the campus, John Beltramo paced out the 1.5 miles on El Camino and bought the property, where Beltramo’s is still located.
Walter Jelich, 1871-1949, and Mary Jelich, 1880-1972, were among the early residents of Portola Valley, coming from Yugoslavia in 1896. According to a history of Portola Valley by Nancy Lund and Pamela Gullard, “he brought 25-30 of his fellow countrymen to the area and helped them find employment on his own ranch, other ranches and the Stanford campus.”
Elena Selby Atherton, 1845-1906, is one of the few descendants of Faxon Dean Atherton, whom the town is named for, to be buried in the local cemetery; most of the others are at Holy Cross Colma, Mr. Svanevik said.
Elena was the widow of Frederick William Macondray III, 1840-1884, the owner of a San Francisco shipping business who is also buried there. After his death Elena married Percy W. Selby. She was listed as one of the directors of Macondray and Co. after her first husband’s death.
Another early businesswoman who is buried at Holy Cross is Juana Briones, 1802-1889, an early entrepreneur and property owner in San Francisco and Palo Alto. Her gravestone, however, is a modern one, because for many years no one could find her grave. In 2007, Menlo Park resident Deke Sonnichsen tracked down the gravesite, which had been listed as Juana Briones De Miranda in cemetery records; he then had a marker made.
One section of the cemetery is filled with children’s graves. “The old theology was that children wanted to be together,” Mr. Svanevik said. The area includes twin white crosses for two young brothers, born on the same date and who died on the same day in a fire.
One of the cemetery’s most interesting markers is that telling of the moving in 1953 of remains from St. Dennis Cemetery, which operated from 1853 to 1890. “The records show that there were 174 bodies there,” Mr. Svanevik said. “But only remains of 24 people were found, which I don’t consider unusual at all because informally people were taking their family members out of the cemetery for years.”
The marker also mentions that the body of Dennis Martin “was not located.” But Mr. Svanevik said that Mr. Martin did not die until 1890, after St. Dennis Cemetery had closed. “He was never in that cemetery,” Mr. Svanevik says.
One of the graves that passersby may have noticed is one bearing 49er colors after each win by the team. It is that of 49er fan Ralph Calcaterra of Atherton, who owned a land development and property management business; he died in 2011. His daughter decorates the grave, according to Ms. Wade, the cemetery’s superintendent.
Mr. Svanevik said that John Kiefer, 1904-1990, was “one of the heroes of Menlo Park.” In the 1950s and 60s “this cemetery was a mess,” Mr. Svanevik says. Mr. Kiefer and Monsignor Edwin Kennedy, 1908-2002, “began the reconstruction of the cemetery,” and today, he said, “you won’t find many towns with a cemetery as well kept as this one.”
It is fitting, then, that the graves of Mr. Kiefer and Monsignor Kennedy are both to be found in Holy Cross Cemetery.
● Related story: A tale of parricide, a shoot-out, and a sheriff now at rest in Holy Cross.
“The cemetery was a nonsectarian town graveyard until the Catholic Church purchased it in 1872. When it was consecrated in 1883, Mr. Svanevik said, the Protestant residents of the cemetery were moved to its perimeters.” Ah, nothing like Catholic arrogance! Of course, the modern attempt at ecumenism has far in the future. Perhaps the bones should be glad they were allowed to be within the aura of the superstitiously sanctified ground of the Roman Catholic Church. Maybe some day we’ll be shed of this nonsense.