Meet A Rabbit #34

I have been enjoying meeting all of our Graveyard Rabbits! I hope you have too!

Graveyard Rabbit #34 is Greta Kohl who blogs at two rabbit sites. Her graveyard sites are ~

The Graveyard Rabbit of Northern Virginia and The Graveyard Rabbit of Afield.

Enjoy reading about Greta's introduction here!

Meet A Rabbit #33

The "Meet A Rabbit" series has really been hopping along and I need to catch up!

Rabbit #33 is Dave Weller, and his blog is called, Standing Stones. Find out who first got Dave interested in family history and what his family name used to be! His article is posted here. Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday ~ Ronda

Memorial site. February 2, 2009. Roselawn Cemetery, Livermore. Digital Photo held by Cheryl [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE] California, 2009

Meet A Rabbit # 32

I see Graveyard Rabbit Colleen McHugh has also been introduced! Colleen's blog is Graveyard Rabbit of R.I.P.P.E.R.S. Find out what she chose to focus her blog on. You can read about Colleen here! Enjoy!

Meet A Rabbit #31

It is past time (I am a little behind) to invite you to read about our Graveyard Rabbit, number 31, Cheryle Hoover Davis. Cheryle is ambitious as she has not one, not two, but three Graveyard Rabbit Blogs! They are~

The Graveyard Rabbit of Northern Arizona
The Graveyard Rabbit of the Runnells, Iowa Area
The Graveyard Rabbit of the Hoover Clan

You can read about Cheryle here! Enjoy!

Memorial Day Ceremony

On May 25 from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm there will be a Memorial Day Ceremony at Pioneer Cemetery in Pleasanton, Ca. The address is 5780 Sunol Boulevard. There will be music given by the Pleasanton Community Concert Band, free. If you are interested and would like more information you can call 925-846-5897 or visit the website at www.pleasantonband.org. Sounds like a great time!

Meet Rabbit #30

My oh my... time has come to meet our next Graveyard Rabbit! This person tells a bit of her cemetery experience leading up to becoming a GYR. You can read about her here. This introduction gives me a little blush, as it is actually, ME! Do you see me blushing? What are the odds of my introduction being posted on my wedding anniversary? I have no idea what the odds would be, especially since no one knew it was my anniversary, but there it is! Do you think a print out of the article would suffice for an anniversary gift? ;) Hope you enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday ~ Mother

"Mother" Grave Marker. May 9, 2009. St. Michael's Cemetery, Livermore, California. Digital Image. Held by Cheryl [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE] California. 2009

Meet A Rabbit #29 - Janet Isles

The Graveyard Rabbit of Grey County, Ontario is next in line for you to meet. The author of this blog is Janet Isles. Janet is our 29th rabbit to be introduced. Find out more about Janet here! Enjoy!

Meet A Rabbit #28 - Craig Manson

More good news! Another Graveyard Rabbit has been profiled! Please meet Graveyard Rabbit Craig Manson. His blog is The Peripatetic Graveyard Rabbit. Find out what Peripatetic means and why Craig choose this name for his graveyard blog. You can read about it all here. Enjoy!

Tombstone Tuesday - Claude and Francis Fanzago

Claude and Francis headstone. May 12, 2009. Livermore, Ca. Digital image. Privately held by Cheryl [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE] California. 2009


A few days ago, when my initial plans fell through, I decided to play around on Ancestry.com. I chose a few names from my tree that I hadn't done much, if any, research on. I searched to see if I could find where some of these people may be buried. Accidentally, I found the grave of Claude (Claudio) and his wife Francis. I didn't have a clue who these people were, but I instantly did some work to find out. You see, Fanzago is a very familiar name to me. My daughter's ggrandmother, Marie, was born Marie Fanzago.

I found out Claudio was Marie's brother, so he is my daughter's great grand uncle! I haven't researched this line at all yet, so when I found Claude it was a fantastic surprise! I have no idea how many Fanzago's there are, or have been in California, but it is an unusual name, so I hoped there would be a connection, and there was! The thing that surprised me the most though was the fact that he was buried in the town I live in.

Claudio and his sister Marie were both born somewhere in Italy. Marie was about three years older than Claudio. Their father, Carlo, and their mother, Leona also gave birth to Giuseppina. She was about five years younger than Claudio. I need to do more research to find out if there were any more siblings, and to find out where in Italy they stem from.

I am thrilled to have found this grave site and additional information for this line! And just think, it was all accidental!

Meet A Rabbit #27

The GYR's are trying to get caught up with all of the Graveyard Rabbit introductions. As you have probably noticed, I have been posting these updates as close as possible from when they are updated. We now have the newest GYR update and that is Chuck Courtwright, the Graveyard Rabbit of Christian County, Illinois. Please take a moment to read about Chuck here! Enjoy!

Meet A Rabbit #26

We have another Graveyard Rabbit for you to meet! From the blog "In the Dark of The Moon Graveyard Rabbit," please meet Bella Naufragio from the New England area. You can read about her here! Enjoy!

Graveyard Rabbits Carnival May 2009

The second carnival of the Graveyard Rabbits has been posted! The topic of this carnival's edition is cemetery preservation. There are five authors who have written six articles for this carnival. Please come along with me and see what this carnival brings! You can enter here! Let's go enjoy...

Meet A Rabbit #25

As you can see, we have several Graveyard Rabbits hopping around to give you information from many areas of our world. We now have the article posted on our 25th Graveyard Rabbit. Please meet Stephanie Lincecum whose GYR blog is Southern Graves. You can read about her here! Enjoy!

The Story of Oak Knoll Cemetery - Part 2

Oak Knoll Cemetery was officially recognized as a cemetery when a plat map was filed in 1878 with the County of Alameda. The oak trees that were all around the hill, are what gave the cemetery it's name. These oak trees have long since disappeared. Most of the trees in this area now are eucalyptus.

During the summer of 1889 the Echo newspaper reported "Last Sunday afternoon as a lot of Chinese were burning joss-sticks (a type of incense) and performing their customary annual ceremony over the graves of their countrymen buried at Oak Knoll Cemetery, they carelessly set fire to the grass, and the entire cemetery was burned over, destroying all of the enclosures and doing a large amount of other damage."

About the turn of the century three new cemeteries were opened in Livermore. With this, there were fewer burials at Oak Knoll. Some family plots at this original Livermore cemetery were totally abandoned. Some families even went so far as to move their relatives' remains to one of the new burial sites.

One specific story of moving family remains lies with the Block family. It has been told that Walter Block had his father, Andrew, help him move the remains of a deceased uncle to one of the new cemeteries. "In the process the casket broke open. Walter Block never fully forgave his father for the incident."

In 1906, apparently the San Francisco earthquake caused damage to this cemetery. (Livermore to San Francisco is about 45 miles, with the roads we have today) Many of the headstones were knocked down. Then part of the hill was washed away in 1907 by floods. The Hearld newspaper reported in one of it's future articles - "It is suspected that a number of bodies went down with the heavy slide of a few weeks ago. A party of young people who visited the cemetery last week reported that a coffin was uncovered on the edge of the slide and that the bones of it's occupant were exposed."

As I explained in Part 1 of this story, the last sexton of the cemetery left inadequate records of the burials at this cemetery. When the sexton, Robert Adams, died in the early 1900's there were actually no records found in his papers of the grave plots. With the damage from fire, flooding and the earthquake, along with missing records from the sexton, it is quite understandable now why we may never know who every person was that was buried there.

(My appreciation and thanks to the Livermore Heritage Guild and the Livermore-Amador Genealogy Society for making this information available.)

Meet a Rabbit #24

Another "Meet a Rabbit" has been posted! This time meet Lisa Burks from "Adventures in Gravehunting." What an interesting story she tells! You can read the post here. Enjoy!

Meet A Rabbit #23

This time we have "The Graveyard Rabbit Travels Wright" hosted by Diane Wright. Follow the bunny trail here and read about how Diane was primed to love cemeteries! Enjoy!