Nine

ISOLATED BURIAL SPOTS

There are often places where graves are not necessarily in cemeteries. In bygone eras, it was often acceptable to bury loved ones on one’s own property if desired. Sometimes people who died on migrating wagon trains were buried on the spot and left. There are many reasons for isolated burial spots.

This chapter focuses on a small number in Yavapai County, some well known, others not. There are probably many more for which no visible trace has survived.

In later years, laws have been enacted that severely restrict the ability of families to bury people anywhere outside of a cemetery; so in essence, these lonely graves seem to represent, for better or worse depending on your point of view, a time of greater freedom in America. In some cases, family members or devoted taphophiles still care for these isolated burial spots today, and some are better cared for than larger cemeteries.

Mountain man and Army scout Pauline Weaver, for whom many Arizona geographical landmarks are named, was initially buried in a San Francisco military cemetery upon his death in 1867. But in 1929, Arizona historians, including Sharlot M. Hall, led efforts to have him exhumed and reburied next to the old governor’s mansion in Prescott, which had become a museum started by Hall, who is pictured here next to Weaver’s new tombstone and monument. (Courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum.)

Pictured is Pauline Weaver’s grave, as seen today on the grounds of Sharlot Hall Museum, which has grown considerably since Hall’s death.

Along Lynx Creek, not far from Prescott, lies the isolated grave of Angeline Hoagland, who died in 1889 at the age of two near her parents’ house. These two photographs show the gravesite in the 1960s. Angeline’s mother and sister are buried in Citizens Cemetery. “Here lies our baby Angeline / For which we weep and do repine / She was all our joy and all our pride / Until the day our baby died / We hope in Heaven again to meet / And then our joy will be complete / But until our maker calls us there / We trust her to His righteous care.” (Both photographs, courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum.)

Angeline’s gravesite is pictured here as it looks today, still extant and well cared for by family members. It is now encroached by development.

On a hill overlooking Clarkdale is a very small graveyard belonging to the Yavapai-Apache Indian tribe. The crosses could indicate that these were tribe members who converted to Christianity. There are no named headstones.

Seen here is yet another view of the Yavapai-Apache tribal cemetery in Clarkdale. Photographs of Native American burial grounds are rare. Note the Clarkdale Cement Plant in the background.