Temecula Public Cemetery, Temecula, Riverside County CA Submitted by Red and Bonnie Mulvanny 4 Mar 2008 The History of the Temecula Public Cemetery The Temecula Public Cemetery is located at 41911 C St. off of Santiago Road in Temecula. The cemetery encompasses 8.9 acres with 1.5 acres remaining for use. There are approximately 2800 graves there. Exact numbers are not known because many of the early records were lost in the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Many of the state's records were stored there at the time. Juan Luis Vignes owned both Pauba and Temecula Ranchos and sold both to a group of San Francisco businessmen in 1853 for $25,000. These holdings were later sold to Francisco Sanjurjo. Domingo Pujol purchased this land from Sanjurjo about 1873. After his death, his widow, Mercedes Pujol came here from Spain to settle his estate. She sold much of her property, but with philanthropic foresight, she deeded the land for a cemetery, and also gave land for a school, a town site and a rail station. She donated the land for the present cemetery about 1894. She also sold land to the Pauba Land and Water Company that was later acquired by the San Francisco Savings Union Bank and sold to the Vail Family in 1905. In about 1893 the same time Riverside County was formed, the Temecula Public Cemetery District was also formed. Official burial records began to be kept at that time. The district supervised the maintenance of the cemetery and set up regulations about who could be buried there. The main regulation is that the individual own land in the Temecula area. The land was a pioneer cemetery, maintained by families of the interred, until 1928, when Public Cemetery Districts were formed in California to provide lower cost burial facilities to residents. Alex Escallier and James Freeman were two of the three men who were responsible for the new cemetery district. Frank Salas was hired as a groundskeeper. Frank, who was 73 at the time, dug all of the 6-foot graves with a hand shovel. The graves sold then for $200.00 and Frank charged $75.00 for opening and closing the graves. Annie Santa Maria served as a trustee for fifty years, the longest term of anyone’s service. In 1968, while Annie was president of the cemetery board, the board put a moratorium on the purchase of more than two graves per family, because cemetery space was limited. A section of land east of the original section was purchased in 1987, opening Section 2. The first burial in Section 2 was in 1993. There are 896 graves in Section One, and 296 graves in Section Two. Section 3, adjacent to St. Catherine of Alexandria Catholic Church opened in 2000 and has 181 burials to date. Section 4th section, the first section with dual depth graves. Section 5, near the cemetery, is set with 1,219 addition dual depth graves. A hexagonal columbarium of mahogany colored granite with a capacity for 192 cremated remains was erected in 2001 overlooking the original section of the cemetery. Interesting Markers The oldest grave is Lovica Welty’s. She was the daughter of Richard and Mary Welty, who owned the Welty Hotel and the Welty General Mercantile Store. The marker for Lovica’s short life of sixteen years shows the dates 1873-1889. A marker that attracts attention simply reads, “LADY AND BABY”. No one seems to know who they were or the story behind the epithet. In a cemetery this old, it is not uncommon to have several unmarked graves. Some are unmarked because of the expense of a marker, others because the deceased didn’t have family to provide one, and others may have had wooden crosses that deteriorated over time. There are several unmarked graves in the old section, or original section. Although the cemetery always had an overseer, record keeping was not done as carefully as we do today. Therefore several of the graves that are unmarked or marked “UNK”, for “unknown”. The graves in the older section are not in a single orderly row as our more recent ones are, nor do the markers all face the same direction. People Buried in Temecula Cemetery Many of Temecula’s pioneers are buried in this cemetery. John Magee, 1826-1901, founder of Temecula’s first store and George Burnham, 1866-1935, whose family owned and operated a store on Main Street for 60 years, are buried there. Mahlon Vail, who managed the nearly 90-thousand-acre Vail Ranch is buried near Eli Barnett who promoted the building of the First National Bank of Temecula in 1914. The Ludys, Cobbs and Culvers ranched on the same land, prior to the Vails. Alex and Pete Escallier, shareholders in Eli Barnett’s bank venture, are buried in the cemetery. The Escallier family has the most graves – a total of 21 - including one marked “SIX GUN”, a nickname that stood the test of time. Other families represented in the cemetery include GONZALEZ, LUDY, FRIEDEMANN, SWANGUEN, MACHADO, KOLB, NICOLAS, SERVEL, FREEMAN, HICKS, RORIPAUGH, MC SWEENEY, FERNALD and TOBIN. About Markers Most of the large upright markers in the cemetery were mined from the granite in the Temecula hills. While Alex Escallier was one of the cemetery board members, they adopted a resolution to stop placement of upright markers, thus limiting the need of additional groundskeepers. (Upright markers are obstacles to lawn mowing.) Information obtained from a variety of sources including: - Article Written by Rebecca and Darell Farnbach, Temecula Public Cemetery District Website: http://www.temeculapubliccemeterydistrict.org/index.html - “Setting the Stage for the Vails” by Rebecca Marshall Farnbach, http://www.vailranch.org/history/before_vails.htm - Rancho News, 20 May 1983, “Cemetery Part of Area's History“; - The Press-Enterprise, 6 Jul 2000, “Even Cemeteries Feel Growth” by Sandy Stokes; - The Californian, 21 Sep 2003, “Residents Protest Possible Graveyard” by Teri Figueroa. - The Californian, 24 Feb 2008, "Temecula Cemetery Goes High-Tech" by John Hunneman.