Our program for Cemetery Walk this year included vignettes on Leland
Chase, aerial photographer and Sebastopol studio photographer, Laura Call
Carr, whose history you can read in a booklet we have for sale at the West
County Museum. Laura grew up at Fort Ross where her parents owned the ranch
that encompassed the Fort in the late 1800s.
    There was a reminiscence by the parents of John Sebring, the first
burial at the then Odd Fellows and Masonic cemeteries, in 1859. Jean Fisher
told the historical story of Senorita Conchita Arguello. Then there was the
Civil War veteran, Durant Litchfield telling about his life and war
experiences.
    Durant’s wife, Elizabeth Litchfield was one of the women who gathered
for a meeting of the Women’s Relief Corps. An auxiliary group of the Grand
Army of the Republic, the WRC was formed in the 1880s to help Civil War
veterans and their families. The other WRC members we highlighted included
Adelheid Janssen, Sebastopol hotel owner and Rebecca Murphy, Sebastopol
librarian. Mrs. Janssen came from Germany to San Francisco. She met her
husband to be on shipboard. They married in San Francisco. They moved to
Sebastopol in 1881 and bought an existing hotel renaming it Janssen’s.

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"Durant Litchfield"