TIMELINE of the Women Buried in the Bodie Cemetery

The BODIE CEMETERY, located at 8,750 elevation in Bodie, California is part of the BODIE STATE HISTORICAL PARK.

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“Buried Inside the Fence”

The “cemetery fence” not only defined the physical boundaries of the BODIE CEMETERY, it also indicated the “social class” of the person (or family) buried within the fenced of the 3.7 acre burial and cemetery boundaries.

“Within the proper cemetery” was reserved for the respectable citizens. Married women were considered “respectable” and were buried in “deeded,” marked grave plots “inside the fenced cemetery.”

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“Buried Outside the Fence”

In unmarked graves, “Outside the Fence” is where the Indigents, Gunmen, Illegitimate Children, Convicts, Prostitutes and the Chinese immigrants were buried.

Rosa May, was buried “outside the fence.”

She had worked as a Prostitute before arriving in Bodie in the early 1890 and was an “unmarried woman.”

The WOMEN BURIED IN BODIE

In death, the Women, who are buried in Bodie are identified by their marriages.

The “WIFE OF” or MOTHER social status was so important it was engraved on their headstone. (Their own- or birth-name could not have gotten them buried in the cemetery.) Their husbands membership in his “Fraternal Brotherhood” is WHY the deceased women’s family could purchase a ”family grave plot” and bury his deceased spouse in his “deeded plot” in the “proper BODIE CEMETERY”

The men used their “Bodie Miners’ Union or Masonic Lodge- DEATH BENEFIT CLAUSE,” insurance money to pay for their spouses burial in the “religious cemetery.”

The three sections of the BODIE CEMETERY are the IOOF or WARDS Cemetery, the Masonic Cemetery and the Bodie Miners’ Union Cemetery.

This “Fraternal Association” also meant that her husbands membership status was current, (meaning his monthly Membership Dues were paid.)

Otherwise, her burial would NOT have been with such a costly affair which included “Undertaking of the Body and Casket,” a formal viewing of the deceased body, a Minister and Church Funeral, a Grave-site service, a carved-inscription Headstone and an ornate Fence surrounding the her grave plot.