May Woolsey’s gravesite at the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery
We recently posted about our newly expanded exhibit at the Sacramento History Museum about May Woolsey and her trunk full of artifacts on display. We thought we’d show you the gravesite of young May who was buried in 1879 in the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery.
This is one of the most visited gravesites in the cemetery. In this video, Tina discusses May Woolsey and her very decorated headstone.
May Woolsey was born November 13, 1866 and died on September 21, 1879 of viral encephalitis, likely stemming from a mosquito bite, when she was 12 years old.
May’s grieving parents gathered up her childhood belongings, placed them in a trunk, and sealed it in a wall under the staircase of their home at 916 E Street, creating a time capsule of a child’s life in Sacramento in the 1870s.
The trunk was found 100 years later when a new owner of the house was doing renovations. The trunk’s contents, over 600 items, offer a rare glimpse of life in Sacramento during the 1870s.
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