Long Beach Municipal Cemetery is maintained by the City's Department
of Parks, Recreation and Marine. When I was there reading this cemetery
on Jun 11-12, 2002, I have to say I found the cemetery in excellent
condition.
This cemetery is situated just east of Sunnyside Cemetery, which is
a privately owned cemetery, abutting the west side of the Municipal
Cemetery. The Municipal Cemetery is the oldest and first
cemetery in the city of Long Beach.
Long Beach Municipal is sometimes incorrectly referred to as Signal
Hill Cemetery, because of the locality, but as far as I can find out,
officially it has never been called that. One will find it listed in
obits and on death certificates, but no record of the cemetery being
named that have been found. It is the name of the area however, the
cemetery used by those living on or near Signal Hill.
I am told that each year since 1995, the Historical Society of Long
Beach sponsors a walking tour of the Municipal Cemetery around Halloween
time, to help cemetery appreciation and historical preservation.
I have acquired a previous recording of this cemetery, which does not
have a date of transcription. Judging from the dates, it was sometime
between 1965 and 1967. This work was published in 1974 by Questing Heirs
Genealogical Society, of Long Beach CA.
Most of these added records appear to be from the Sexton files, with
the dates being either the death or burial date. I have placed
an asterisk (*) at the end of each of these entries, which means there
is no marker and no photo. Information in parentheses came from a family
member.
In 1936 many of the early records for this cemetery were lost by fire.
Some have been and still are being replaced by researching obits and
death records. This is as complete a record as I was able to create
thus far. Please contact me if you find an error I should correct.
Using a digital camera I walked and read this cemetery, with some hand
copying, on Jun 11, 2002. This work contains all existing and legible
headstones and markers, with additions from the above mentioned work.
I estimate at least 30+ were not able to be read, and there must be
dozens of burial places which have no markers.
- Maggie Rail
Records Index:
