Odd Fellows Cemetery
(aka I.O.O.F. Cemetery)
(I.O.O.F. = Independent Order of Odd Fellows)
Dates of Existence: 1854 to 1931.
Location: approximately 27 acres between Geary and Turk streets, Parker Avenue and Arguello Boulevard.
Number interred: 28,000 (40,000?).
Moved to: Greenlawn Memorial Park (Colma).
Records: San Francisco Cemetery Records.
Notes: A five (5) acre tract was retained for a mausoleum and memorial park. The current San Francisco Columbarium is located on a one (1) acre site.
“WILL DEED TO THE CITY. Plan for Perpetuating the Odd Fellow's Cemetery. George T. Baker, president of the board of directors of the Odd Fellow's Cemetery Association, is agitating a proposition to deed the cemetery to the State or city authorities, to be maintained forever as a public park. It is part of the plan to give $100,000 with the deed of gift, the interest on this sum to be used in keeping the cemetery in good condition.
“The plat of land now used as a burying ground was purchased by the association in 1865, and was paid by an issue of bonds taken up by the different lodges of Odd Fellows throughout the city. These bonds have been redeemed long since, and the property consequently belongs to the association. As each individual plat-owner has an absolute right to the property he purchased, the association has not the power to divert the land from its present purpose, and it therefore must remain as the city may see fit to condemn it. It is for the purpose of preventing this latter alternative and to secure for the plat-owners a perpetuation of their rights that the association is making the present move. It is estimated that two years will be required to dispose of the burial plats yet unsold, and nothing definite will be done until this has been accomplished.
“As the association exists under the rural cemetery act, a special act of the Legislature will probably be necessary to insure the perpetuation of the burying ground as proposed.”
Source: San Francisco Morning Call, 6 October 1893.
“A Neglected Graveyard. Seven-year-old Willie Elsie of 2722 Golden Gate avenue was playing Klondike yesterday with some little fellows of his own age at the junction of Golden Gate avenue and Stanyan street, and in digging for gold unearthed some human bones and fragments of a coffin. Pieces of the shroud and a pair of boots were also found. The gruesome relics were taken to the Morgue, but neither inquest nor autopsy will be held. The site on which the bones were found was a cemetery many years ago and when the bodies were exhumed some were forgotten.”
Source: San Francisco Morning Call, 15 August 1899.
“Permits to Move Cemeteries Won
“Permits to remove the bodies from the Masonic and I.O.O.F. cemeteries were granted to two cemetery associations yesterday by the Board of Health, ending a controversy that has been waged for years. Work of clearing the Odd Fellows' burial ground will begin next month, while the Masonic Cemetery Association will begin removing bodies from their ground November 1, the board was informed.
“Steam shovels will be used to remove the first two feet of earth. under the permits. There are 15,000 bodies in the Masonic and 28,000 in the Odd Fellows grounds.
“The board granted Dr. Edmund Butler, chief of the Emergency Hospital Service, a three-week leave of absence to attend the convention of the American College of Surgeons at New York.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, 25 September 1931, page 14.
“Two Legal Actions Filed to Halt Cemetery Removal.
“SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 24.–Two suits to halt the removal of bodies from Masonic cemetery at Turk and Masonic avenues and from the adjoining Odd Fellows Cemetery were filed today in superior court.
“One suit asks that the Masonic Cemetery associated be restrained from removing 14,000 bodies from its cemetery, as it has announced will be done–beginning November 1 [1931].
”…The other action …is a suit in opposition to the consummation of the sale of the Odd Fellows cemetery to the Green Lawn cemetery in San Mateo County.
”…The Odd Fellows Cemetery association already has begun the removal of 28,000 bodies from its cemetery here, working under an agreement with the Green Lawn cemetery which provides that the latter shall remove all the bodies and provide burial plots at the Greenlawn cemetery in exchange for title to the Odd Fellows cemetery property here. The Laib suit alleges that the property here is worth $1,200,000, and that the service and plots being given in exchange for this property by the Green Lawn cemetery are worth only $367,000.”
Source: Oakland Tribune, 25 October 1931, page 4.
“The march of progress moves over our old cemeteries. A deed recorded the other day transferred the remaining half of the old Masonic Cemetery to a local bank in trust for owners of the property, for subdivision by the real estate firm of Coldwell, Cornwall and Banker.
“Announcement will shortly be made of development of the area. comprising about fifteen acres, and it will be named University Terraces, in harmony with the University of San Francisco. whose campus occupies the other half of the old cemetery site.
“The same firm has been developing the old Odd Fellows Cemetery. There now remain but two of the pioneer burial grounds, Laurel Hill and Calvary, both doomed, too, in the end to a probable similar fate.”
Source: San Francisco Examiner, 13 August 1936, page 13.
“PART OF OLD S.F. CEMETERY FOUND.
“Plumbers Unearth Caskets, Bones In Development at Old Site.
“Plumbers laying a sewer to a new house in a big development in the old Odd Fellows Cemetery yesterday found some metal caskets in the way of their diggings.
“They opened the casket and found human bones! And so today, the health department will send a staff of inspectors to the new subdivision, armed with batteries of sounding rods and other equipment borrowed from local cemeteries which use them to 'locate' lost caskets underground.
“FEAR OTHERS LEFT.
“From undercover information supplied to the health department, they fear that they will discover that much of the big new development is built over the remains of old San Franciscans, who were once supposedly buried for good and ever in the old Odd Fellows Cemetery.
“Ten years ago, the exhumation of all human remains from that cemetery was ordered, to clear the way for real estate development there.
“But from yesterday's find, plus the results of other official investigation, it is believed that only a percentage of the caskets and bodies were removed from the old burying ground — and that today, an inestimable number of human remains still lie there, under the new houses, streets and gardens being developed there.
“TIP REVEALS FIND.
“First word to the health authorities came via an anonymous telephone tip, telling of the plumbers' find.
“Official investigation was at once ordered by Dr. J.C. Geiger, health director, and revealed, it was understood, that plumbers working on a single house connection to the main sewer in the tract had come upon several iron caskets, as they dug the trench to lay their sewer pipe.
“The caskets were in the workmen's way and were dug out. Curious about the contents, several of the men are said to have opened one of the caskets, found dessicated human bones.
“Unabashed by their gruesome find, the men went right ahead with their job, without making any formal report of the occurrence, investigators found.
“The sewers were connected up, the caskets put back into the excavations, and the whole business—sewer, bones, caskets and all covered up again.
“Investigation also showed that when the Odd Fellows Cemetery removal was ordered, the job was done without authoritative supervision or inspection, because at the time no parallel ordinance had been passed making such inspection mandatory.
“Subsequent cemetery removal orders have been accompanied by authorization for complete supervision and inspection by Doctor Geiger's department.
Source: San Francisco Examiner, 9 April 1941, page 3.
Back to top
