Sacramento Cemetery Success

 

In Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose, I wrote about my struggle to correct the records of a Sacramento cemetery. My third great-granduncle, Michael Gilbride, was buried there in September 1886, but the cemetery had him listed as Michael Gallagher in their records. 

I received welcome news last week that after five months and two rounds of sharing documentation, the management committee agreed to amend their records to show my ancestor. 

This was certainly welcome news, and a true learning experience.

Here are some of the lessons that I took away from the process:

• Understand your audience. I now suspect I was working through this process with folks who were unfamiliar with genealogical research. I assumed that if they worked for a cemetery, they would sometimes be working with parties interested in past burials and have some genealogical knowledge. However, this group was noted as a "management committee" in an email, so likely worked in an administrative capacity and not on the ground in the cemetery. The questions and comments I received were not ones I would have expected from individuals with a genealogy background.
• Write for that audience. My original request and proof probably did not promote easy comprehension. I first supplied the committee with a bulleted and cited list of facts/timeline covering both Michael Gilbride and the man named Michael Gallagher who happened to live in Sacramento at the same time. I included copies of all the documents I referenced to build the case. Gilbride originally was an Irish immigrant from Pennsylvania, so I first established that he was the same man who moved from Pennsylvania to California, then demonstrated that he and Michael Gallagher were not the same person. I later found that the committee did not consider this part of the argument. They only cared about Gilbride's and Gallagher's deaths and burials. What I gave them was likely too much information and not strictly focused on the burial.
  
• Address presentism. In their original response, the committee had concerns about identity theft, worried that one man or the other stole the other's identity and that accounted for the differing names in the city's death register and their sexton's records. Though I could not have anticipated this presentism bias, I did address it in my second report.
  

As the committee said that they would reconsider the request if I could show further evidence that Michael Gallagher had died later, I continued to work on the case. 

I found another terrific piece of evidence almost immediately: a funeral home record that showed the same information as the Sacramento death register for Michael Gilbride. I thought this should seal the deal but continued to work on Michael Gallagher. While I did not follow him through to his death, I was able to track him for twelve more years, three marriages, and two relocations within California. It helped that over time he was recorded with his middle initial and later with his middle name. Further helping the cause was his unique Louisiana birthplace, recorded in various records. He did not die in Sacramento in 1886.

Michael Gilbride's entry in the Clark, Booth & Yardley Funeral Home register shows his burial at "St. Joe," short for St. Joseph Cemetery.¹

On the advice of a genealogist from the Sacramento Family History Center, I focused less on bullet points and more on narrative analysis paragraphs in writing my second report. I submitted the new information, then waited. 

Another setback: The committee then wanted proof that Michael's funeral home record came from the historic Sacramento funeral home that I said it did. I had found the Clark, Booth & Yardley Funeral Home records digitized on FamilySearch. Again, my assumption was that the committee would know what FamilySearch was and what they did. I submitted a more complete description of how and why such a book would have been microfilmed in the first place, FamilySearch's role in genealogical records preservation, and it's role in digitizing millions of genealogically significant records over decades. I included the FamilySearch catalog entry for the funeral home book which stated where the originals were. 

Another two weeks went by before I emailed again to ask if there was any progress. Finally, an answer: 

"We have carefully reviewed all of the new documents you provided in addition to the previous documents and our management group has discussed the situation again. Although we cannot say with 100% certainty, we do believe, based on the documentation, that it is reasonable to assume that Michael Gilbride is the decedent buried..."

What a long and winding journey! It was a challenging exercise to provide the correct evidence to resolve the conflict. I certainly can't fault the committee for not wanting to change information for Michael Gallagher without substantial evidence to do so. It is their job to maintain the integrity of their historical records. But I'm certainly glad that they acknowledged the evidence which favored Michael Gilbride as the man interred at this cemetery, so that he can be properly memorialized.

Until next time...

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© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2024. All rights reserved.

 

IMAGE: Find a Grave (https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/8329/saint-joseph-cemetery : accessed 1 October 2024), St. Joseph Cemetery photo by "Little Orange in the Big Apple." The photographer gives permission for use of her photos on her profile page (https://www.findagrave.com/user/profile/46817308).

NOTES 

¹ Clark, Booth & Yardley Funeral Home, Sacramento, Funeral Ledger, 1885-1903, p. 152, Michael Gilbride, d. 23 September 1886; imaged in "Clark, Booth & Yardley funeral records, 1850-1907, Sacramento, California," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/47414?availability=Family%20History%20Library : accessed 16 August 2024); citing microfilm of records in the possession of Morey Holmes, Sacramento, California, and the Sacramento Family History Center.