Remembering the Dead: A Visit to San Jose’s Hacienda Cemetery
With Halloween and Día de los Muertos upon us, we dispatched a local writer to document her favorite cemetery in the Bay — which features a one-arm burial site.
Life
Remembering the Dead: A Visit to San Jose’s Hacienda Cemetery
With Halloween and Día de los Muertos upon us, we dispatched a local writer to document her favorite cemetery in the Bay — which features a one-arm burial site.
In 2019, on Halloween, I showed up on Kitty Monahan’s doorstep unannounced, in full costume, to ask her about Richard "Bert" Bertram Barrett's left arm.
Earlier that afternoon, I had dressed as “zombie-apocalypse-survivor Rosie the Riveter” in preparation for a themed party my friend was throwing. But something else pulled at my attention. So with a couple of hours to spare before the event, I impulsively made my way to Hacienda Cemetery, an old resting ground tucked behind a creek that runs through the unincorporated neighborhood of New Almaden near South San Jose. The visit would be my third within that month.
The cemetery is bisected by Bertram Road, and some of the dead lie beneath the narrow stretch of asphalt. The namesake of Bertram Road has one of the most famous epitaphs in greater San Jose history, belonging to a person who is likely one of the only who lies in two separate graves — miles apart. The inscription on the simple stone marker at Hacienda reads, “Richard Bertram ‘Bert’ Barrett. His arm lies here. 1898. May it rest in peace.”