Bodie Fraternal Burial Association
Bodie Fraternal Burial Association- Fenced Grave- Bodie Miners’ Union Cemetery!
~~Today, the only reason we know the names of individual Bodie citizens ,and their “Date of Death” is because “upon death” the Miners “membership dues were current.” The distressed family received the “Beneficiary money” to pay for the 1)expensive granite headstone, 2)the “undertaking” which included the casket, viewing the body, 3) a Church Funeral Service, 4) a proper Gravesite Ceremony, and 5) an ornate fence to surround the grave plot.
~~~Specifically, the Bodie Miners’ Union legacy is the graves with stone monuments in the Bodie Cemetery. Over “the testimony of time ,” these headstone have stood silent in the graveyard. The Union Miners’ Memberships Dues and “Death Benefit Clause” mase it possible, and paid for these stone Headstone.
~~~To handle all the burial details of the Bodie Miners’ Union, the Bodie Fraternal Burial Association was also organized. The digging of the graves- dynamite blasting the frozen ground was a unique technique “only in Bodie. ”The Union had explosion experts, they used this skill in blasting rock. Frozen ground did not keep, the miners from properly interring a fellow worker, or workers family member.
Each individual grave, whether man, women or infant child, and their different Headstone, tell its own unique Bodie story. A story of living in Bodie, laboring in the Mines, and dying in Bodie. The graves, grave-plots give a “window of a time-capsule.” Originally, the fence surrounding the individual grave, purpose was to deter grazing cattle from trampling the grave. Besides keeping cattle out, the smaller fences helped deter smaller animals from digging and getting to the Caskets and the contents below ground. The single plot fences also marked the grave location, otherwise forgotten to time by the overgrowth of sage-brush.
The “ornate metal fences,” which came from Mail-Order Catalogs have in some cases lasted and the headstone are missing. Either way, 150 years later, the layout of the “family layout” Cemetery Plots are marked. The “original intention” of Bodie Miners’ Union having a final resting place for it “wage-earning membership” is locatable, respected and the graves maintained.