El Dorado House Cemetery

El Dorado Hills, CA
A common request for the Institute for Canine Forensics (ICF) teams is to help locate historical cemetery boundaries or lost graves.

Historical Background
The El Dorado House and Ranch was established in June of 1850. Documents show that the following December one of the owners of the roadhouse, George Richardson died. It is believed that the cemetery was established at that time was used from 1850 until 1905.

In 1975 the El Dorado County Pioneer Cemeteries Commission was notified of the existence of a cemetery that was identified from documentary evidence. A search for the cemetery was unsuccessful at that time. In 1998 the cemetery was identified by two local residents (brothers) who grew up in Shingle Springs. They knew about the family plot of Ellen Bentley - Joel Parmeter because their mother had visited it when they were young.

California Saving Graves has documented this cemetery as well as many other historical cemeteries in California.
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ca/state/index.htm

The Search
In May 2006, the owner of a one-acre parcel being developed for an industrial park requested our services. The property owner was selling the property and the sale was pending a permit to build. The county would not give the buyer a building permit because historical records showed the possible location of a pioneer cemetery on the property. It was the property owner’s responsibility to prove that the cemetery was not located on his property. ICF was contacted and asked to search this property.

Three of our teams (James Davidson & Maya, Adela Morris & Rhea and Bev Peabody & Legend) responded on May 13 to search this small area. We were asked to search a small 15ft by 20ft area that was enclosed by a rock wall. Each of the dogs alerted on several graves located inside this rock wall.

Validation
Research done after the search revealed information on the property and cemetery. Sue Silver’s web page, California Saving Graves, had documented information about this cemetery. We found a history of the property, and pictures from 2000 when long time residents did a clean up of the Bentley - Parmeter plot marking the graves as they remembered them.

This validated the dogs' work. Our work is not usually ground-truthed as there normally is no intention of removing burials. The involved parties only want to know the location. The absolute confirmation came few months later when the property owner, along with an archaeologist, used a backhoe to dig in the area and confirmed that there were graves inside the rock wall.

The following September the owner again contacted ICF and invited us back to search the whole area for graves. He was developing a plan to utilize the property and preserve the pioneer cemetery but needed to make sure there were no other unmarked graves. ICF teams searched the property on October 29. Search conditions were far from optimal. This area in the foothills of the Sierras is very hot during the summer with little-to-no rainfall. Even with air temperature in the low 80’s, it was difficult for the dogs to work. The dogs alerted in an area down slope from the now established cemetery. On November 25, 2006 we returned to the property to work with local archaeologists who would test for graves. The archaeologists had two areas that were of concern; one location was the same one where dogs had alerted on the September search. The archaeologist, with the aid of a backhoe, dug for evidence of disturbed soil or a grave in both locations. Using this method, both locations appeared to be negative for graves.

Even though this area of the Sierra foothills is rapidly being developed, this small piece of history will be preserved through the work of dogs specifically trained to find historical human remains.