I was recently able to visit the second oldest cemetery in Los Angeles, in Wilmington, California which is in the South Bay area not far from the Port of Los Angeles (which is the Ports of San Pedro and Long Beach).
WILMINGTON CEMETERY
People had begun decorating for the Day of the Dead celebration there with marigolds and other flowers and vibrant decorations. There are some fairly recent burials and a good number of them are of Hispanic people, likely Roman Catholic. Many of these gravestones have images - be they photos or some new etching technology - of the person or the couple - who are buried. It is my idea that some families are adding their loved ones to graves that have been in the family a while.
But more on the burials in a bit.
This is a flat gravestone cemetery and from the signage I had no idea how large it really is until I got into it. It's a square of land with some old trees not far from the railroad tracks with some of the containers that came on ships to the harbor visible.
It was established in 1857 by Phineas Banning. That means that it was in existence before Phineas Banning built his large house across the way in 1864. There are some very old burials there.
HISTORICAL MARKER DATABASE - WILMINGTON
Excerpt: It is the oldest active graveyard in Los Angeles. Pioneer families buried here include Banning, Carson, and Sepulveda. There are 37 Civil War veterans, and soldiers from the Spanish-American War and from the Normandy D-Day invasion.
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This is the cemetery used by some of the Bannings who lived in the Banning House. Which is a ten minute walk away in a beautiful well-kept park.
The Banning family had a number of children who died as babies buried there. And a wife who died relatively young. A William Banning has a grave stone that states that he was born in Wilmington Delaware in 1841 and died in Wilmington California in 1891. Yes, Wilmington in California was named after the town in Delaware and the Bannings started out as Yankees, which might have everything to do with Phineas siding with the Union for the Civil War.BANNING HOUSE - THE BANNING MUSEUM
Excerpt: Phineas Banning—entrepreneur, the founder of the city of Wilmington, and “the Father of the Port of Los Angeles”—built the 23-room residence in 1864. Subsequent generations lived in it until 1925; in 1927 the residence, stagecoach barn, and the surrounding 20 acres of parkland were acquired by the City of Los Angeles.
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It also not far from the Civil War Barracks which Phineas Banning donated to the Union Army during the Civil War. DRUM BARRACKS ORG
The Drum Barracks has an archive but my experience with that was that they would prefer you do your research elsewhere since much or all of the archive is duplicated elsewhere. Information I sent a few years ago was also not acknowledged.
According to one of the employees of the Wilmington Cemetery, the land there used to be water wells for the merchants during Banning's time.
I spent about an hour walking around the memorials. It is said that there are over 9000 burials there. Certainly it did not seem so, and there were areas where there were no gravestones at all.
To my reader-genealogy researchers, please remember this is the case with many cemeteries and one should not entirely rely on grave-stone databases. If you suspect or know that an ancestor was buried in a cemetery contact that cemetery for information. It helps if you have the death certificate that states the burial took place there, or a funeral home record.
I did not take photos of any of the graves, which I think of as disrespectful.
One of the most interesting was a small slab that announced the death of a one month old Japanese or Japanese-American baby.
There is a street in Wilmington called Opp. Opp burials included someone born in 1848 who died in 1906. I imagine they may have had some land - a farm.
There is at least one died in Korea marker, some that indicate World War II took their man, and a couple that indicated that the person had served in a state militia or reserve. Last Memorial Day (2025) a local boy scout troop provided a memorial with the names of local men who had served their country.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were no longer wars on this earth? (As I told a good friend of mine the other day who said "that won't happen," then I would like to be reincarnated on a better planet.)
The babies and children who died long ago made me think of vaccinations and what a difference they have made. Anyone who has seen the archival documents that reveal the babies and children who died of childhood diseases, the adults who died of TB, and the townsfolk who died of various 'plague' must know that.
Besides Mexican or Hispanic burials there were also some surnames that were Germanic or Italian or English. I don't often visit cemeteries, but I'm intrigued by the art and design of some stones and try to imagine what ornate ones must have cost when they were made. There were a good number of Masonic symbols on graves in this cemetery.
I like to find not just the oldest burials but burials of those who got a long life out of this one. Here's a little name dropping. LIPKING 1822-1909, COATES died 1914 at 71 years old, OPP 1848-1906.
I have come to hate Halloween for all the gore and horror and fright and violence it now celebrates. We actually do not need to be exposed to more violence or participate in that. I'm into the acknowledgement of those who came before us though. This is why, though I have no Hispanic or Mexican heritage, I'm more likely to contribute to a celebration such as Day of the Dead.
Christine
