Bringing back the dead through stories

What if you could journey back in time to hear stories of those laying silent beneath the ground at the Sunnyside and Municipal cemeteries?
The Historical Society of Long Beach (HSLB) gives you just such a chance on Oct. 27 with its annual historical cemetery tour, now in its 23rd year.
The tour, scheduled from 9am to 2:40pm at the cemeteries on Willow Street between California and Orange avenues, will bring to life eight stories of graveyard residents, with actors playing the roles of the dead.
Among those featured this year are Abram Cleag, a former slave who died in Long Beach City Hall; Arthur Branson, who witnessed oil discovery on Signal Hill; suffragette Cora Morgan, who knew dirty secrets of local politicians; policeman Otis Hoyt, who was on duty the day of the 1933 earthquake; Captain Alberto de Ruiz, first Latino graduate of the Naval Academy; and early aviatrix Ethel Broadwick.
HSLB members Roxanne Patmor and Kaye Briegel– the latter who is a historian– have chosen different grave stories to tell each year since 2005. They search the cemeteries in early summer and then research and write scripts, Patmor told the Signal Tribune.
The pair’s research sometimes uncovers verbal transcriptions, such as Abram Cleag’s wife’s deposition to secure his disability insurance and a 20-page account of Otis Hoyt describing the 1933 earthquake.
“When it’s in their words, like the deposition by Amanda Cleag or the oral history by Otis Hoyt, we’re basically just linking things they said into a narrative,” Patmor said.

But Patmor and Briegel also add contextual commentary to the scripts, such as Amanda Cleag reflecting, “Slavery was a monstrous institution. Time has not erased or eased my memories…or my anger.”
Among the acting talent bringing these stories to life are several Long Beach Playhouse veterans, including Halley Hardy, Lewis Leighton, Mitchell Nunn, Courtney Riel Owens, Rick Reischman, Laura White and Carl daSilva– the tour’s third-time artistic director.
Shots fired
One of the more unexpected stories this year is of the Cleags, former slaves set free after the Emancipation Proclamation when General Sherman’s army marched onto the Cleage plantation in Athens, Tennessee in 1863 and arrested the owners for not swearing allegiance to the Union, thus freeing 120 slaves.
Abram, after joining the army to fight against the Confederacy, eventually married Amanda and the pair found their way first to Texas, then Los Angeles in the 1880s and finally Long Beach.
“This is our third time to have done [Abram’s] story,” Patmor said. “What we had was an obituary from the early 1900s that he had been a janitor at city hall and was very beloved and he died on the job, basically.”
But this year Patmor came across a website by genealogist Kristin Cleage, a descendant of one of the plantation’s enslaved families, who had more information about Amanda Cleag and was able to access Abram’s disability file, which included the deposition by Amanda in which she literally describes General Sherman’s army freeing them.
“I felt like we were in a detective novel,” Patmor said. “These people had the most interesting life story ever.”
Kristin Cleage had not realized the Cleags had changed their name from Cleage upon arriving in California, perhaps because Abram was illiterate and Amanda could read but not write.
With the different spelling, Kristin Cleage was able to unearth a 1908 Los Angeles Times article describing how the Cleags’s son-in-law had shot a man over his wife, Sallie Cleag.
“Their daughter (Sallie) took up with a ‘pimp,’ as he was described in his arrest record in 1908,” Patmor said. “He was very handsome and he took up with the daughter, and the daughter’s husband shot at him but missed.”
The newspaper article states that a second bullet struck the man’s leg. Patmor said such stories are not only interesting but historically invaluable.
“It’s hard to find information about African Americans before World War II because it just wasn’t chronicled,” she said. “But here are these two people who lived in Long Beach– and their daughter, and their granddaughter– and we have an inch-thick stack of paper about them. It’s really exciting.”
Love saga
A story of very different circumstances is the love saga of Newell Stearns, a Long Beach realtor who died in 1967 and is buried in a monumental family grave along with his grandparents, aunt, parents, three of his siblings and one of his wives.
Patmor and Briegel found from their research that while Stearns had led a wide-ranging life as a farmer, army lieutenant, realtor, car salesman and café owner, he had a varied love life as well, marrying three times, never seeming to have divorced his first wife, whom he married young.
Briegel found a 1914 local news article about how Stearns, one year out of high school, had eloped with Olive McKnight, a 17-year-old girl still in high school, who was staying with her wealthy mother at the Virginia Hotel in Long Beach, where Stearns worked as a chauffeur.
“They eloped, and when the mother found out, she kidnapped her,” Patmor said.
Stearns hired the best attorneys in Long Beach– Roland and Phillip Swaffield– whom Patmor said seem to turn up in every such local story.
“They negotiated a deal where the couple could see each other twice a week, but [the mother] had to be there the whole time,” Patmor said. “They could write letters. They could look into one another’s eyes and say ‘sweet things.’”
The actor playing Newell Stearns– Dennis Kortheuer, HSLB member and veteran tour performer– said he appreciates the humor that audiences may find in such stories.
At the rehearsals last weekend he said, “One of the things I really enjoy is the interaction between us and the people who come and watch.”
For more information and tickets for HSLB’s Oct. 27 Historical Cemetery Tour, visit hslb.org/historical-cemetery-tour/.