Regarding Sarah Jones Burial Site Location

Today is Thursday, January 17, 2013. I went to East Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery on Folsom Blvd, Sacramento, California to check on a Find A Grave inclusion that states that Sarah Mildred Jones is buried at that site. She is not. Sarah Jones was cremated at East Lawn Memorial Park. She is not buried there. East Lawn’s brochure states that they assisted in sending Miss Jones cremains back to her state of origin. That may have been the intent at that time in 1925 but Sarah Jones is in fact buried Sacramento’s Masonic Lawn Cemetery on Riverside Blvd. in Section E, Lot 211, Grave 11. I do not have a picture of this site because this is in fact an unmarked grave.

Also, the Find a Grave site lists Sarah Jones year of birth as 1845. According to the 1850 Census for Palmyra, MO, Sarah Jones is listed twice, by two different census takers, once as Sarah Mildred Jones and again as Sarah Mildred Patterson with her age given as , age 9. That would mean she was born in 1841. Sarah’s younger sister Missouri Jones is listed on this census as age 5. Sarah Jones was the biological child of Lavinia Jones and Francis Patterson. Missouri census records indicate that Lavinia Jones was a slave living in another household.  While Francis Patterson is listed as Head of Household, there is no wife listed. In his household is John Jones 20 years old, Sarah Jones age 9 and Missouri Jones age 5. I will look at this census again to see what relationship is offered for John, Sarah and Missouri, but they were not listed as slaves. Two other people living in the household are listed as servants. When we were in Palmyra I did not find a slave census which I will continue to look for, but I believe that Francis Patterson had a number of slaves because he built a School House for African American students on his property  in 1846.

I sent a message to Find A grave to hopefully correct their record regarding Sarah Mildred Jones.

I don’t know if the staff at East Lawn and/or Masonic Lawn cemeteries will read this post but I really appreciate their courtesy and cooperation in helping me correct this matter.

Sacramento Educator Sarah Mildred Jones 1841 – 1925

Sarah Mildred Jones ca 1869

      There are later pictures of Sarah Jones that some may be more familiar with, but this is Miss Jones Alumni picture from Oberlin College in 1869. The picture is copy written by Oberlin College and can only be used by permission by Oberlin. Sarah Jones was born in Plamyra, Missouri in June of 1841.  I will write more about her daily but for now: Sarah Mildred Jones came to Sacramento, California in 1873. It is difficult to tell from pictures but Miss Jones was California’s first person of color to become a principal of a fully integrated school, at least on the west coast, in 1895, the same year that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Plessey vs Ferguson came down supporting “Separate but Equal”  education in the United States.  Actually, California had desegregated its schools by school statute in 1880. As magnanimous as it sounds, Sacramento’s idea of desegregation then was to physically move the “Colored School” closer to another existing public school for white students.  California did not try to re-segregate their schools in 1895 but Miss Jones’ appointment as Principal to Freemont Elementary School at 24th and N street in Sacramento, was not without controversy. Still Sacramento was far ahead of most cities in the United States in this vein.