If you wish to join our team of volunteers to give back the names of the 1,220+ people known to have been buried in Santa Clara County Hospital Cemetery from the late 1800s up until 1920, please send me a message here on Find a Grave. (Message Mckell Keeney, creator of this memorial to my great-grandfather, James Monroe Gibbs). Genealogists have started to list them all on Find a Grave and other places online, such as FamilySearch.org, so they are never again forgotten. We have a list compiled from Coroner's Records, Death Certificates, Almshouse Register, Burial Permits, newspaper articles and other records of who was buried in this cemetery.

James Monroe Gibbs was born 12 June 1871 (some accounts say 12 July 1871) in Missouri to Phelman Alexander Gibbs (Alex or P.A. Gibbs on various records) and Mary Evaline Mayfield. James is listed on the 1880 US census with his parents and siblings in Marshall, Saline County, Missouri as a 9 year old. That census was taken on June 15, 1880, so it lends support that he was born on 12 June 1871, as listed on his death certificate from Santa Clara County, California.

James moved to Colorado sometime in the late 1880s or early 1890s, as he was photographed by Manitou Springs, Colorado by a well-known local photographer called Mrs. Anna Galbreaith. The photo is undated, but most of her cabinet cards were printed in the 1880s.

James married Frankie Maria Gibbs on 21 June 1899 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was 21-years-old and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was 28-years-old and was not a member of that faith. His faith is unknown. They had a stillborn baby boy in 1899, possibly in Denver (location is unsure). On the 1900 US census taken in Denver, Colorado on 11 June, 1900, James is listed as 28-years-old. If his birthday is 12 June, he was one day away from turning 29. That record doesn't help us either way in confirming his month of birth. The address where they lived was 1944 Champa Street, Unit 106, and they were renters. That address is in today's downtown Denver and there is now a big government office building on the spot. I was there in 2022 and took some photos at the address.

James's occupation is listed as a Bicycle Rep. (Repairer), which is transcribed incorrectly on Ancestry.com as Bicycle Rag. Frankie is listed as 22-years-old. She would have been about 7 months pregnant with my grandmother at the time of the census. James's father's and mother's location of birth are marked Unknown on the census, possibly because the informant for the census taker could have been Frankie and she did not know. Her father's location of birth (Illinois) and her mother's location of birth (Utah) are correct on the 1900 census. Both James and Frankie are marked "Yes" for "Can Read," "Can Write," "Can Speak English."

James and Frankie had their only living child, my grandma, Bernice Gertrude Gibbs, in Denver, Colorado on 5 August 1900. In 1901, James and Frankie divorced. James moved away, we think before the divorce. Frankie moved back to Utah with her baby. She remarried later on, but did not have any other children.

James's death certificate says he was a resident of San Jose, California for 16 years before he died in 1917 from Pulmonary Tuberculosis. He is listed on a 1908 San Jose Voter Roll (Precinct 18) as a 38 year old Machinist who was a Democrat. His address was given as "Russ House," which was a historic hotel in San Jose that was mostly destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. Photos of it battered from the earthquake are online. Apparently, enough of it was intact for people to live there before it was rebuilt in 1908 and 1909 and relocated a block or so away.

He is listed on the California Death Index as James Gibbs, age 46 at time of death, date of death 29 December 1917 in San Jose, California (code 43 for San Jose). I obtained his death certificate from the county which lists his residence prior to his hospitalization as 194 W Santa Clara Street, San Jose, California. It lists his place of death as County Hospital where he was treated for pulmonary tuberculosis for almost 5 months. It lists the length of his illness as three years. The disease was contracted in San Jose. He was buried in the Santa Clara County Cemetery on 2 January 1918, four days after he died.

The name of the informant for James's death certificate I received is redacted, but I found a friend who had an un-redacted copy and the "informant" was "hospital records." Many of the details such as his place of birth and parents' names are probably from the information he gave them when he was admitted or while he was staying there.

James's occupation is listed as Machinist, which matches the occupation he listed on the 1908 voter roll. He is listed as single, instead of divorced. It lists his birthplace as Missouri. His father is listed as Alex Gibbs, born in Scotland. That birth location is not what is in our other records. Phelman Alexander Gibbs was born in Kentucky and his father and paternal grandparents were born in America. Beyond that, we don't know. This is a good clue that perhaps the next generation back was from Scotland. Phelman Alexander Gibb's maternal grandmother, Catherine McKeown, was born in 1797 in Glassary, Argyll, Scotland, so "Alex" Gibbs was Scottish on at least his mom's side, if not his dad's side, too.

James's death certificate lists his mother as Mary Mayfield, born in Tennessee. Mary E Gibbs who died in Colorado Springs in 1909 and is buried there is the correct age to be his mother. Colorado Springs, Colorado, is where James lived and was photographed in the late 1880s or early 1890s. I have ordered Mary's death certificate from Colorado to see if it yields more information. James had three (possibly four) siblings who lived to adulthood, but only his sister, Minnie Mae Gibbs Huff, had biological children. Minnie had three children. Her daughter, Fredonia, James's 1st cousin, had one child, Larry Huff Brown, who did not have any biological children. Larry was the end of Minnie's biological line.

Although James had only one child, his daughter Bernice had six children who lived to adulthood. Those six children had 24 children between them. As of 1 February 2024 James has over 140 great-great-grandchildren and 3X-great-grandchildren, quite the posterity for a man who seemingly lived a pretty solitary life, staying out of the newspaper and probably dying a pauper, racked by a disease that took everything from him.

Sadly, the pauper's cemetery where James Monroe Gibbs was buried at the Santa Clara County Hospital was unmarked and paved over in 1966 for a hospital employee's parking lot. In 2012, part of the parking lot was dug up and the cemetery was "rediscovered." From 2012-2014, 1,004 remains in redwood coffins were excavated and evaluated by an archeological team, but there were at least 1,220 people buried in "County Hospital Cemetery" from the late 1800s through about 1920 according to death certificates on file at the County Recorder's office. The ones who were not removed in 2012-2014 are either still buried under medical center roads, parking lots or buildings or were possibly removed at other times during other building projects, with the current location of those remains unknown.

The fate of my grand-grandparent James's remains is unknown. His remains could be in a cardboard box at the University of California, Chico, anthropology department, along with 1,003 of his former "neighbors" in the County Hospital pauper's cemetery. There does not appear to be funding to extract DNA from the excavated remains to identify the bodies, give them back their names and return them to their descendants or closest relatives who would lovingly bury them in a proper cemetery where they could lie in rest. We can do better in honoring and respecting our dead. We must do better!

If you wish to join our team of volunteers to give back the names of the 1,220+ people known to have been buried in Santa Clara County Hospital Cemetery from the late 1800s up until 1920, please send me a message here on Find a Grave. (Message Mckell Keeney, creator of this memorial to my great-grandfather, James Monroe Gibbs). Genealogists have started to list them all on Find a Grave and other places online, such as FamilySearch.org, so they are never again forgotten. We have a list compiled from Coroner's Records, Death Certificates, Almshouse Register, Burial Permits, newspaper articles and other records of who was buried in this cemetery.