MENLO MEMORIES: The story behind Holy Cross Cemetery MENLO MEMORIES: The story behind Holy Cross Cemetery (July 05, 2000)

By Dick Barbour

One of Menlo Park's diminishing ties to its past offers an interesting contrast between the tranquility of former years and the pace of today. It is the Holy Cross Cemetery.

Located just inside of where Santa Cruz Avenue bends after leaving the Alameda Y and heads down into town, this historic cemetery is but a few feet from steady streams of automotive and truck traffic which hesitate at a stop sign opposite Orange Avenue, before hustling on downtown.

The research and lively memories of Monsignor Edwin J. Kennedy and Dr. Joe B. Weedon provide us with the substance of this "Menlo Memory."

Holy Cross was established in 1866; it is San Mateo County's second oldest cemetery. People from all over the county are buried there.

The oldest cemetery was founded by entrepreneur Dennis Martin. He established a lumber mill, a church, an orchard and the long-gone small community of Searsville.

The Martin cemetery was opened in 1853 near Sand Hill Road and was used until 1890. While its location was well known to old timers it took the state highway engineers, planning the Interstate Highway 280/Sand Hill Road interchange, to bring the Dennis Martin cemetery back into local prominence. It was in the way of the project and would have to move.

Under the watchful direction of a group from the Church of Nativity, plus Stanford students and faculty members, the graves were carefully exhumed and removed to Holy Cross where they were reinterred in 1963. Thus, the present Holy Cross now includes the graves of both cemeteries.

Martin died in 1890, the year his cemetery went into disuse. He was buried in Holy Cross after services at Nativity.

Today's headstones bear the names of families and individuals who have been prominent in community affairs, as well as business leaders, blacksmiths, wine merchants, jurists, coachmen, dairymen, and all of the other callings that have contributed to the life and growth of Menlo Park. Many names can be associated with today's streets, parks and other landmarks.

This Menlo Memories column was written by Dick Barbour and published in the Menlo-Atherton Recorder Jan. 27, 1981.