Italian Cemetery of Colma

The immigrants found out that this new society presented the same problems here as were in the "Old Country.” Death needed to be taken care of and the new state of California and San Francisco was slow in addressing the problem. The informal burial grounds used in North Beach (where North Beach Playground is now) where many Italians lived was closed before March 1850. A new 13-acre site (where City Hall is today) was used until 1860 when citizens demanded it be moved further west. A new city cemetery was opened by 33rd Avenue and Ocean Beach (Golden Gate Cemetery). On Jan. 1, 1898, however, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed Ordinance No. 3,096. It forbid any further burials and demanded that all those buried be removed to another site. But where? The Benevolent Association, after a long search, obtained undeveloped property along the #40 Line and Southern Pacific railroad tracks in Colma (Later acquisition of land for construction of mausoleums to the north of F Street by the association brought the total of cemetery land to 35 acres). This was to become the first Italian burial ground in the United States. In 1886, 25 acres of potato farm land had been purchased by the Catholic Church and the new Italian Cemetery on F Street was only a short distance north of the Holy Cross Cemetery. Although many Italians are Catholic, the cemetery was not consecrated nor blessed by the San Francisco Archdiocese but burial occurred in spite of Roman Catholic doctrine . The Holy Cross cemetery land was not consecrated at this time either. It was not until the 1950s that the Italian Cemetery was blessed.

In 1919, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors demanded that the bodies be removed from Lincoln Park and, at this time, more than 8,000 remains were moved to Colma. Many of these bodies were remains of the poor and indigents without families. Their remains were many times not respected and dumped in mass graves in Colma. At the Colma Museum on Hillside Boulevard, there is a stone monument of a man who is buried in a mass grave in Woodlawn Cemetery. When BART was constructing its tracks along the old Southern Pacific right-of-way parallel to El Camino Real, this monument was found. Apparently, it had either fallen off of the train that was delivering remains of the San Francisco cemetery or it was dumped so it didn’t need to be transported to the mass grave where monuments were not allowed.

The triangular property along F Street was developed with a number of streets: San Antonio, San Francisco, San Felice and San Pietro avenues laid out to use the maximum amount of space. The entrance on F Street led to the first one-story brick office that is still on the site although new offices have been built on F Street. The association and a flower shop have entrances on F Street also. At the entrance, an old bell still hangs that alerted the workers to change into proper clothes as a funeral procession was due in 30 minutes.

Needless to say, the placement of a cemetery in Colma attracted businesses that could supply statuary, monuments, tombstones and vaults. The Botti brothers, Gaetano and Leopoldo, worked at their trade for many years in Colma. Gaetano Botti arrived in the 1890s and had two main buildings on Mission Street — one across from Home of Peace Cemetery and the other across from Holy Cross Cemetery. His brother Leopoldo opened a competitive shop named L. Botti and Sons that was west of F Street. In 1921, Valerio Fontana started his monument business across from the cemetery. He also established a office on Mission Street. These two families are responsible for making the majority of vaults and tombs in the cemetery.

Rediscovering the Peninsula by Darold Fredricks appears in the Monday edition of the Daily Journal.