My unexpected, sad connection to the Eldridge Cemetery

From Kenwood Press Article, July 1st, 2016
By Chuck Gillet

Reading Teresa Murphy’s
thoughtful piece in the
April 1, 2021 issue of the
Kenwood Press about the
Sonoma Developmental Center’s El-
dridge Cemetery brought to mind
my own special connection to that
peaceful place. I didn’t discover it
until I had been in Glen Ellen for
22 years, after arriving in 1977 and
starting to build my habitable work
of art across the street from what is
now the Glen Ellen Star Restaurant.
It was in 1999 that I learned that
my Aunt Betsy was buried there in
1935, about 50 feet from the angel
and bench placed in the cemetery
by the Murphy family. Ms. Mur-
phy’s article inspired me to share a
sad tale from my family’s history.
Betsy was the dear younger sis-
ter of my mother, Arla. They lived
together as part of a family of six on
Sacramento Street in San Francisco
in the 1920s — the two sisters plus
an older and younger brother and
their parents.
Betsy had a condition which
in those days was called “monge-
loidism,” now referred to as Down’s
syndrome. My mother remembered
her as very sweet and gentle, but
with a greatly compromised I.Q. of 39.  
My mother loved her dearly and
cared for her with great affection.
Then, one day when my mother
was about seven and Betsy was about
three, Betsy just disappeared. No
explanation whatsoever was given
to the shocked and bewildered big
sister. Her parents avoided the sub-
ject even when my mother asked
directly about what happened to her
little sister. The years went by and
the unresolved mystery continued
to haunt her.
In 1999, after my research had
solved a family mystery concerning
my maternal grandmother’s strange
and elusive past, Mom asked me to
look into Betsy’s fate. That was the
first time I had heard of Betsy. As a
family history buff, I jumped at the
challenge. Figuring Betsy’s condi-
tion and age made her a likely candi-
date for placement at an institution
for the “infirm,” I sent out requests
for documents with the few details
I had to several such facilities in and
around San Francisco.
After several months, a package
showed up in my Glen Ellen post
office box from the Sonoma Devel-
opmental Center. It was a slim but
informative file on Betsy. It turns
out that, while I suspect Betsy could
have been admitted based on her
Down’s syndrome condition alone,
there were entries providing an ad-
ditional justification. The file stated
that, according to Betsy’s mother,
Betsy was a threat to her younger,
two-year-old brother, Ralph.
While hugely grateful and re-
lieved to get the file, my mother was
skeptical about the threat allega-
tion. Given her sense of the family
dynamic, she strongly suspected
that her abusive and callous father
coerced her mother to put that in
the submission documents.
I sent a copy of the file to my
Uncle Ralph (Phil, the older brother,
had already passed away), and Ralph
was shocked. He never knew he had
another sister!
Soon after this discovery, I made
a trip to visit my newly discovered
aunt’s grave. It was an easy hike from
my home in Glen Ellen. My dear
friend, nurse Betty White Hertzog,
who was working at the d evelop-
mental center at the time, arranged
with Wendy Walsh to take us to visit
Betsy’s gravesite. Wendy knew ex-
actly how to find it.
The conclusion to Betsy’s sad
story is that there was no longer a
gravestone to mark her life. It had
been removed and replaced with a
single row marker.
A closing note: It turned out
from my research on Betsy and my
mom’s mother, Arvilla, that Betsy
was the granddaughter of Theo-
dore Newton Barnsdall, said to be
the second richest man in the U.S.
around 1900 from a fortune made
in oil and minerals. But then, that’s
another story…