Benicia cemetery listed
It may be of interest to
Vallejo citizens working on the Mare Island cemetery listing to know that on Feb. 2, the Benicia City Cemetery was listed on both the National Register of Historical Places and on the California Register of Historical Resources (Please see the attached announcement from the State Office of Historic Preservation). This listing not only protects this pioneer cemetery into the future, but may allow Benicia City to apply for historic preservation grants.
Our committee thanks the Vallejo Times-Herald for the coverage your paper gave us in 2017 as we began the research project regarding pioneers buried in the Benicia City Cemetery, one of California’s earliest cemeteries, which was established before Statehood in 1847. The cemetery is located on the hill above old town Benicia, overlooking downtown and the Carquinez Strait. Its founder was Dr. Robert Semple, a leader in California’s Bear Flag Revolt and founder of the City of Benicia. Our committee completed our research work in 2020; then hired the firm of Michael Baker International, Inc to prepare the National Register listing forms; and submitted them to the California State Office of Historic Preservation (OHP). On November 10, 2020, California’s OHP unanimously endorsed the Benicia City Cemetery’s National Register Nomination package and sent it to the Keeper of the National Register in Washington D.C.
The pioneers buried in the Benicia City Cemetery include a diverse group: Mexican Nationals, including Solano County’s first settler Juan Felipe Pena and his relatives; foreign nationals, who helped build the commerce of early Benicia, including sea Captains Edward Von Pfister and John Walsh; the 1843 founder of Fort Buenaventura near Ogden, Utah, and founders of Goodyear’s Bar in Sierra County, Miles Goodyear and Andrew Goodyear; Native Americans including “Joe the Indian”, as well as the grandchildren of Ute Chief Peteet-neet, William Goodyear and Mary Goodyear, the children of Ute princess Pomona and Miles Goodyear; the families of Benicia’s Cavalry Arsenal soldiers, including the family of General George Bowie, Esq., for whom Fort Bowie in Arizona was named; Pilgrim descendants from New England, including Union Civil War soldier John Henry Johnson; settlers from the old south, including Confederate Civil War soldier Major Joseph P. Vaughn; former slaves, including Mary Lane and her son Dorsey Ross; notable early California politicians, including Senators Lansing B. Misner and Colonel Paul K. Hubbs; early American settler Elizabeth Rhoads, who traveled across America in 1846 in a wagon train that included the Donner Party; and Transcontinental Railroad Civil Engineer and founder of Colby’s Landing, Gilbert Colby. The stories of 69 of these pioneers can be found in the “National Register of Historic Places Registration Form and Supporting Documentation for the Benicia City Cemetery”. Copies are located at the Benicia Historical Museum, at the Vacaville Genealogical Society in downtown Vacaville, and at the Vallejo Maritime Museum and Genealogical Society in downtown Vallejo. We would like to thank these institutions for their assistance to our research.
Our Committee included me, Robin Wood, Chairman and retired Community College Instructor; Michael J. Hayes, local Historian and author “Solano County Cemeteries, Volume
III, Revised Edition, Benicia City Cemetery Burials, 2007”; Karen Burns researcher and retired teacher; Gary Wood, researcher and semi-retired electronics company founder; Robert Wood, researcher and retired Registered Professional Mechanical Engineer, the latter two are great-grandsons of Major Myron Wood, who published the “History of Solano County” in 1887, and their ancestors are buried in the Benicia City Cemetery. We would like to also thank Victor Randall of the
City of Benicia for his assistance to our committee.
— Robin Wood/ Chairman Benicia Cemetery Historic
Listing Committee