Former Chinese Cemetery may get a plaque

The death of Yee King Wen on Feb. 12, 1920 ,was notable enough to warrant a small obituary in the Carson City Daily Appeal under the headline "Faithful Chinaman Dies."

Wen, 65, had worked in the home of Frank Murphy, a Virginia & Truckee Railroad official, and had died of pneumonia. Burial records show that Wen was buried at the "China plot."

"Old Time Chinaman Dies in This City" was the obituary headline for Gee Yee Fong "Charley" Young on Aug. 3, 1929. The obituary noted Young was a Chinese pioneer, coming to the United States from China as a small boy working for the railroad. Funeral services were held "in the local Chinese burial ground."

Although Carson City cemetery officials said there is no record of burials on the small plot of land across Roop Street from Lone Mountain Cemetery, construction workers digging a utility trench Oct. 6 uncovered six skeletons on the parcel commonly called the Chinese Cemetery.

Multiple clues at the site, including the north/south orientation of some of the remains, were strong signs that the remains were those of Chinese.

State Archivist Guy Rocha found evidence of Chinese and Japanese residents being buried in the Chinese Cemetery as late as 1937. Carson City's Chinatown had dwindled to just 20 people by 1940, Rocha said, mostly "old men living in old houses and shacks."

"As Chinatown got smaller, no one was doing the follow-up," Rocha said. "There weren't many families. The young people, not that there were many, didn't stay. That left the men who didn't want to go back, who didn't want to start over. It was a community in decay."

It wasn't just a cemetery for the Chinese in the community. Chejo Yoshido, a 17-year-old Japanese girl, died after a failed operation May 14, 1920. She too, was buried in the Chinese Cemetery.

"We can track burials from the 1860s to the 1930s. How many do you think are buried there?" Rocha added. "These are people who historically lived here, past residents associated with what was the largest Chinatown in the state. Everyone was guessing if there were bodies out there. Well, we just remembered."

State Museum Archeologist Alanah Woody helped remove most of the six bodies Monday. Woody said one of the bodies had a small pot at its feet and a coin in its mouth, another Chinese tradition, she said.

The remains are being sent to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where a graduate student will study them as part of her graduate thesis.

Supervisor Kay Bennett said Wednesday when she read about the cemetery Oct. 7, she had "this funny twinge in my tummy like, 'Oh, we should be doing something here.'"

"We just can't turn our heads and not recognize this spot for what it is," Bennett said. "It does contain the remains of people who were part and parcel of the fabric of our city at one time. It occurred to me that it would be appropriate to honor and show some degree of respect to those people who are presumably buried there.

"If indeed it is true that site was used as a burial site for the Chinese, indigent and others in the community, it is appropriate that we give some recognition to them. There is a very strong sentiment, and agreement from Mr. Foley, to give some form of recognition."

Bennett said she asked Mayor Ray Masayko to contact property owner, Jim Foley, about the possibility of erecting some sort of plaque on the site. Foley said he had intended to put some sort of memorial at the site and is willing to work with the city on some sort of memorial.

"My intent was just to landscape the area and actually improve it," Foley said. "There has been nothing there for years."

Foley said he intentionally had the site designed to avoid building atop any burials. He said according to the 1878 parcel map he has, the cemetery boundary was about 214 feet from Moody Street. An 1883 Ormsby County assessor's map, however, shows the cemetery running to Moody Street.

"Only about 15 percent of the parcel was cemetery. I kept the buildings as far away from (the boundary) as I could," Foley said. "If the museum people hadn't wanted the bones, I would have just reburied them."

Rocha said regardless the boundary of the cemetery, it was unlikely people kept records of where people had been buried. Rocha said it wasn't until around 1911, thanks to the pioneering efforts of local physician Dr. Simeon Lee, that the state had any sort of consistency with vital statistic record- keeping. Lee was concerned with tracking death records partially to monitor the spread of contagious disease.

"This idea that people kept records, isn't it a pretty idea to think so?" Rocha said. "There was a time you could bury people wherever you wanted to. For a while it was a free-for-all, especially with a minority culture like the Chinese. People just took the dead out there and buried them. What was the penalty for not keeping records? Most record-keeping as we know it is a product of the last century."

"What do we do when this happens?" Rocha said. "When people have questions about things like this come to us. We know where the records are. We are hired to be the institutional memory.

"Time passes and no one seems to remember what happened. This happens all over, in many communities. If people want to know, your state archives are here. Carson City has the luxury of having the experts right here."