Descendants of San Benito settlers honor loved ones buried in
Willow Creek Cemetery
Memorial Day in Bear Valley, an area of southwest rural San
Benito County, isn’t celebrated with a fanfare of street parades
and marching bands.
Instead, a large extended family with loved ones buried in the
little-known private cemetery of Willow Creek honor their ancestors
by decorating their graves with flowers, little American flags and
colorful pinwheels. It’s been a Memorial Day tradition since 1935,
now organized by Sara May DeRosa, a local descendant of the
Melendy-Elliott clan, who with her family maintains the
cemetery.
Descendants of San Benito settlers honor loved ones buried in Willow Creek Cemetery
Memorial Day in Bear Valley, an area of southwest rural San Benito County, isn’t celebrated with a fanfare of street parades and marching bands.
Instead, a large extended family with loved ones buried in the little-known private cemetery of Willow Creek honor their ancestors by decorating their graves with flowers, little American flags and colorful pinwheels. It’s been a Memorial Day tradition since 1935, now organized by Sara May DeRosa, a local descendant of the Melendy-Elliott clan, who with her family maintains the cemetery.
“Every year I just have to come back,” said Debbie Norman, an author of California Central Coast history and archaeology who came from Corrales, NM, to participate in the ritual. Her father, grandfather and great-grandfather – all of the Melendy family – are buried in the cemetery.
“I will be, too,” she added.
The event, which includes a picnic, grave decorating and a service, is attended by descendants from near and far.
On Saturday afternoon, the kinfolk gathered once again at the graveyard – a serene and hidden spot that can’t be seen from Airline Highway. The final resting ground of some 30 souls – some who lived through the Spanish American War, others who experienced the Great Depression – Willow Springs Cemetery is a magical place, one that engenders respect and wonder from those fortunate enough to be allowed to visit it. The five-acre picturesque hill is shaded by a ring of pine, manzanita and oak trees, and gives one the feeling of having stepped into a time warp to yesteryear. Some of the graves have tombstones, others have simple clover-shaped metal markers made from horseshoes, painted white.
“It’s so real,” said Greg Schmidt, whose great-great-grandmother, matriarch Elizabeth Bacon is buried at the cemetery. “It’s so great to come here and leave all the hectic stuff of Silicon Valley behind.”
The place exudes history. Elizabeth and Myron Bacon, according to the research of Norman, were the first permanent settlers of what later became the Pinnacles National Monument. In 1866, they came to Bear Valley from San Leandro in a horse-drawn wagon with their seven children and a dairy herd, at a time when giant wild condors (without satellite receivers attached to their wings) soared the local skies and grizzly bears still roamed the hills. The Bacons spawned a legacy of 400 descendants, both living and dead, and include the families of the Schmidts, the Barretts, the DeRosas, the Melendys, the Polettis and Chaves’.
Some descendants, like 36-year old Jeanette Chaves, have been attending the annual grave beautification all their lives. Others, like Gloria Zuniga, are relative newcomers. This is Zuniga’s second year attending the event, but promises it won’t be her last.
As the afternoon wore on, the graveyard grew more colorful, adorned with fresh flowers – native willy blue curl, mariposa tulips and carnations – as well as shiny red and blue spinning pinwheels and little American flags. A cellist played classical music under a tree, next to the Melendy and Bacon family plots, adding an almost dreamlike soundtrack to the ceremony. Chairs and tables had been set up, along with a sign-in guestbook and old photographs of the Melendy clan were displayed.
The decorations and flowers brighten the grave of Torbert L. Ingram, whose marker claims he was in Company 1 of the 6th Tennessee Infantry of the Spanish-American War.
But historian Norman paints a more poignant, if not bittersweet, picture of his life.
“He was actually from Pennsylvania,” she said. “His family migrated out here. But he never made it to the front. He got typhoid fever and it affected his heart. He spent 20 years trying to get his pension from the U.S. government. They refused, and he finally died. The Ingrams were a big family, but all the descendants have gone.”
Then there is the tombstone of the enigmatic Orange C. Modie, who lived from 1859 to 1897. Historical records on Modie are scant, and until recently local historians didn’t even now if Modie was a woman or a man. But Norman researched the mystery and discovered that Orange C. Modie was indeed a young man who had a twin brother named Austin. His family buried him in the local graveyard and eventually moved on, as many struggling pioneers did when their hopes didn’t pan out.
“His mom was a Snyder,” said Norman. “And she was related to Andrew Snyder who owned the Paicines General Store – then known as Tres Pinos – when the store was robbed and the clerk murdered by the bandit Tiburcio Vasquez on August 26, 1872.”
Earlier in the day, the participants had met in the county Historical Park to reintroduce themselves to each other and enjoy brown bag lunches. Later at the Willow Creek Cemetery, after all the graves had been spruced up, they settled in for a memorial service offered by the Rev. Ardyss Golden of the First Methodist Church in Hollister.
Golden has been giving the service for 10 years, taking over for Vic Edmundson who did it for years before that. But even after a decade, it is not easy to keep track of who is a descendant of whom.
In her service entitled “Remembering Our Spiritual Ancestors,” Golden offered various categories of the souls who were laid to rest in the cemetery: light-filled people, the risk takers, the brave ones, the nurturers, the vulnerable and the great lovers of life. Descendants uttered the names of their departed as she eulogized those in each category.
“But you could say all these people were risk takers, because you’d have to be one to be a pioneer,” Golden said.
Many of the departed were schoolteachers, such as Emmett and Ruth Barry and Anna Melendy, who taught at the Bear Valley schoolhouse.
The upkeep and beautification of this hidden cemetery is a family tradition started in the 1930s by DeRosa’s late mother and aunt, Lila Elliott Melendy and Charlotte Berberick (also known as “the Melendy girls”), owners of the Melendy Ranch. In the 1980s, Berberick wrote a history of little-known community cemeteries of San Benito.
According to Berberick’s accounts, the Willow Creek Cemetery started with the unmarked grave of an Indian boy. The first legible marker represented the grave of a 2-year-old named Clinton Smith, who died in 1877.
The service ended with everyone singing a rousing rendition of “The Old Rugged Cross,” also a tradition steeped in history. On a mountain peak named Reilly Hill, across from the cemetery, a 24-foot cross was planted around the turn of the last century, and it was accomplished the old-fashioned way – hauled up by horse team and cart. The late John Reilly, who rented the ranch to the Melendys at that time, had a vision one night from his home in Hollister. He looked out his window and thought he saw a cross in the sky. He took that to mean God wanted him to put a cross on the high hill on his ranch.
So the late George Melendy, along with friends and neighbors, managed to get the cross installed. Though the cross is huge, from the cemetery it looks far away – like two sticks – which only adds to the awe one feels when contemplating the accomplishments of those who lived in less easy days.
Today the land and the cemetery are the property of Gilroy resident Steve Charron, and the DeRosa family has year-round access to the cemetery. The graveyard is off the road from the main highway, behind a locked gate.
