Chapter 2 — The First Years   [<Chapter 1] [Contents] [Chapter 3>]

    The city chosen by the Molokans for their haven was in many respects ideal for their purpose though they may not have been aware of the fact at the time. Los Angeles in those days was not the overcrowded, smog ridden city it is today. Indeed, by present day standards it could not be called a city but a pleasant, quiet, overgrown town with a population of 102,000 according to the census of 1900. It was a center of a fertile agricultural district populated mostly by elderly people seeking health or a comfortable place of retirement in a healthy, mild climate.
    Few, if any, immigrants came here directly from their port of entry. Although there were some foreign speaking immigrants here when the first Molokans arrived, mostly Jews and Italians. These came after spending some time in the cities of the Eastern seaboard, and having heard of the wonderful climate in Southern California, its roomy new towns and cities, fled the crowded tenements of the East and remained here permanently.
    But the Molokans, profiting from the two year experience of the Agaitsoff group, were spared these needless trials when they came directly to Los Angeles. Had they by some unfortunate mischance landed in New York, Boston or Philadelphia as hundreds of thousands of other immigrants did and were per force compelled to live in the crowded, unheated, rat-infested slums of those cities, they would have abandoned their place of refuge and fled headlong back to their village homes as fast as they were able to save enough money to do so because such living conditions were simply not for them.
    In the first place they could not have endured life in a tenement house where dozens of families of all nationalities lived together. Secondly, it was a positive necessity for them to have a place of worship isolated from crowds of non-Molokans. It would have been utterly impossible for them to conduct their worship, their holiday feasts, their wedding or funeral ceremonies in the prescribed manner. It would also have been impossible for them to conduct prayer services in their own homes as they were accustomed to do because other dwellers of the multi-familied tenements would have forced them to give up the custom.
    On the other hand, Los Angeles, being a new city with no natural obstacles to expansion, was able to spread itself, allowing space between houses as well as front and back yards for the use of each occupant. Its houses too, were relatively newer with individual plumbing and in some cases, wired for electricity, which was not the case in the East. All these things combined, permitted the Molokans the environment to practice their religion undisturbed.
    After three years or so in Los Angeles, the more enterprising ones were able to purchase their own homes. These immediately proceeded to install in their back yards the typically Russian institution, the "bania" (Russian: bath house), which, for a fee of ten cents were utilized by those who did not possess such a luxury. It was not very long before other families also bad the added luxury of a home-made brick bake oven in their back yards where delicious bread was made by the enterprising housewives.
    Although during the first years the Molokan families made the utmost use of each house by crowding each bedroom, there was, nevertheless, some houses where a large room was made available for the community as a church and since the houses on either side were usually occupied by Molokan families, there was no disruptive interference from neighbors or from hoodlums.
    The section of the city where the Molokans first settled was in a close proximity to all their needs. Lumber yards, cold storage plants and the rail road yards where work was to be found were all within walking distance. The downtown shopping district was not more than half mile away.
    The district was bounded on the west by Alameda street, on the East by the river bed, on the South by East First Street and on the North by Aliso Street.
    Despite the fact that the gas works, a soap factory and a brewery were located on the perimeter of the area, it was still primarily a residential district, populated mostly by Jews, Mexicans, Japanese and others with a good school in the very center of the area. The Amelia Street School where many pioneer families attended classes became for many Molokan children from 8 to 14 years old the first contact with American culture.
    Within the area there was also a church and a settlement managed by a sincere devout Christian, the Rev. Dr. Dana W. Bartlett who was the first American to befriend the Molokans in Los Angeles and who later became a close friend of their leading elders and who was also very helpful to them in many ways and was respected by all who came in contact with him.
    This is what Dr. Bartlett said of his very first contact with the Molokan people: "One bright morning in the winter of 1905 as I was walking along the street near the Bethlehem Institute, an institutional church, I perceived many new and strange people, Russian peasants as they later turned out to be. They seemed quiet, industrious, dignified, preoccupied with their own affairs. I talked sign language to them, inviting them to come to my church. In a short time these people became the object of much attention in the neighborhood. Large numbers of Molokans continued to settle on and around Vignes and First Streets converting the district into a veritable Russian village." [Footnote: Quoted from "The Pilgrims of Russian Town" by Pauline V. Young.]
    The Molokans lost no time in establishing themselves in the district. In 1906 they already had their own grocery store and meat market on the corner of Vignes and Turner Streets where real Molokan bread, home baked in their own brick ovens, as well as meat butchered by themselves in local Jewish slaughter houses could be bought.
    In 1906 too, through the efforts of Dr. Bartlett, a regular church building located in the center of the district, on Lafayette Street between Jackson and Turner Streets was made available to them. It was quite roomy, with a large vacant lot in the back where, as occasion demanded many samovars were gathered and prepared for the use of the "sobraniia" (Russian: religious meeting).
    They occupied this building until 1910. After that time the great majority moved cast of the river bed to the district now know as "Flats". The church too was then moved to South Clarence Street address to the building now known as Klubnikins.
    When Dr. Bartlett said that the Molokans soon became an object of much attention he knew whereof he was speaking, for it must be said that their very appearance invited attention from various quarters. The men especially, wearing their beards long and clinging to their peasant clothes and boots, their shirts worn outside their trousers and girded like smocks, some even wearing home-made peasant pants, they were radically different from any other newly arrived immigrant seen in America.
    The women too, with their black woolen shawls and their vari-colored, bright-hued Sunday clothes, were different from any women on the streets of Los Angeles.
    Of necessity, they were compelled to walk daily along East First street, the main thoroughfare adjacent to their residential area. This thoroughfare abounded in saloons and pool rooms with the usual complement of the type of people that frequented such places. These hooligans naturally thought it was a great sport to tease and abuse these strange people, at times going far beyond the limits of innocent fun. The Molokans endured this as long as they could after which the hot-blooded younger men took forceful measures of retaliation. This had the desired effect and they were thereafter left alone.    Fortunately, however, not many people in Los Angeles were of that ilk. The great majority of Americans of that time were kindly, hospitable, church-going, religious people. The principal and the teachers of the neighborhood school in particular, were understanding and sympathetic when their primary grades were filled to capacity with children in peasant clothes and knowing not a word of English. Their problems were aggravated by the fact that their classes were composed of children whose ages varied from 7 to 13 and 14 years.
    Of course the older children, those 12 and 13 years of age soon reached the permissible age of 14 to quit school and went to work to help the family bread winner. The remainder were advanced rapidly until they caught up with other children of their age. It must be remembered that the peak year of Molokan immigration—1907—was a year of severe unemployment. Work, especially for men, was impossible to find. It was a little easier for the women to find work, usually in laundries at $5.00 and $6.00 per 60 hour week. Other found work doing housework in private homes at 25 cents an hour. Helped out by older school boys who sold newspapers on the down town streets, the women were the sole means of support for many families until the employment for men picked up in the lumber yards as the building boom slowly regained momentum. 

Lumber yard in Wilmington showing many Molokan men among other unloading lumber-carrying ships in 1914.  [Photo] Courtesy of James A. Samarin. Click to Enlarge

    There was yet another person attracted to the Molokans and whose appearance among them has since become a fascinating mystery almost reaching the proportions of a legend discussed among the older Molokans to this day, being even honored by a paragraph in one of their more popular songs (song 446, fifth stanza.)
    On a summer Sunday morning in 1904, when there were yet only a few Molokan families in Los Angeles, they were gathered together in the house of one of the elders for worship, when there came to them an elderly American woman of commanding appearance and accompanied by another woman who spoke Russian and through whom the elderly woman proceeded to inform them that she was there to ascertain for herself whether or not they were the people she saw in a vision forty years previously, and who were to be welcomed by her to America with a gift of land in the vicinity of Los Angeles.
    She told them further that she journeyed to Canada to see the Doukhobors when they first came there but that they were not the people she was expecting. However, she was now convinced that the Molokans were indeed the people of her vision but she wondered why did it take them so long to get here. Furthermore, the people of her vision were exactly like them in appearance and she pleaded with them not to change their religion nor their appearance in any manner else the grace of God and His mercy will no longer be with them.
    The Molokans, wrongly suspecting ulterior motives behind such fantastic story, did not respond with tact or gratitude nor asked for time to consider the matter but were rather careless in their remarks among themselves, one member saying in Russian: "Who is this pork-eater that we should pay attention to her?" When this remark was translated to her, she, being a vegetarian, was extremely hurt and terminated the conversation and left without leaving her name or address or the location of the land she proposed to donate.
    Although the whole story sounds unreal, the fact remains that there, are people alive today who witnessed the whole proceedings but who were too young at the time to be duly concerned; therefore they could not provide the necessary details that the story deserves. Nevertheless, the story could not be dismissed, as fiction but will probably remain a fascinating mystery and a subject of conversation for a long time to come.
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    In addition to their struggle to exist in a strange land, the Molokans very early in their life in America were faced with a problem that has plagued them for many years, even to this day, one which God alone could resolve. The same type of problem had to be faced by all nationalities that emigrated to America but notably by the Jews who also had to struggle with it unsuccessfully for many years who, in the end had to learn to live with it. This problem was intermarriage or assimilation with the local population.
    It was 1909 that an event occurred that was so portentous in its implications, for it brought the Molokans for the first time face to face with the problem of intermarriage. A young Molokan girl of about 17 fell in love with an American youth and, without informing her parents eloped with him and married him.
    Learning of this, the parents of the girl, helpless in their grief and ignorant of the ways of the new country enlisted the aid of the leading elders and retained a Russian speaking attorney to have the marriage annulled. But of course the sympathies of the public, the police and the courts were with the young couple, especially after the girl informed the court that she fled her home to evade being sold in marriage to a Molokan boy she did not love.
The parents, in answer to that charge, explained that it was a custom among their people to arrange marriage for their children as in the old country, and as there were more Molokans boys of marriageable age in the Molokan community than girls, there was much competition for available girls, and since their daughter was in such a demand, the parents of one suitor offered to reimburse the amount of the girl's passage to America if their son was accepted as a suitor, further explaining that the negotiations were still in the preliminary stage and that there was no intention to force the girl into marriage against her will.
    Although the elders and friends supported the testimony of the parents, the court was not convinced and the marriage was allowed to stand.
    The newspapers, as usual, made a sensation of the case, playing it up in headlines for about a week before dropping it for other sensations.
    The postscript to the story is typical of the many others of similar nature. The parents held back their forgiveness for a long time but eventually relented, but in any case the marriage eventually broke up and the woman returned to the Molokan community and died soon after and was buried without being accorded the full Molokan rites.
    This unfortunate incident caused the Molokans to have grave misgivings about their decision to live in the city. But even before this incident the leaders and the people in general realized that a permanent settlement in a city should not be considered. It was bearable as a stop-gap, a place to recuperate, to replenish the pocket book, but under no circumstances as a place of permanent settlement for simple, religious peasants.
    In Russia they were accustomed to independent life of a villager who tilled his land, planted his wheat, raised enough potatoes, cabbages, cucumbers and other vegetables for his own use. There he could take time off for his annual holidays and when winter came, he rested for five' or more months until the next spring whereas here, he, as well as his wife and the older children were in a set routine of nine and ten hours at work under the stern and watchful eye of the foreman six days a week, month after month and year after year, begging the foreman for time off for the annual holidays and, more often than not, losing his job for the devotion to his faith. But worst of all, there was no prospect of improvement in the routine.
    Some families, especially those who were comparatively well off in Russia, were soon disillusioned with America and returned to their village homes in Russia but, with exception of these few and despite the hardships, the great majority heeded the advice of Klubnikin, and being encouraged by elders who were steadfast in the belief of Klubnikin's prophesy, refused to consider the idea of return but began to look around for other means to escape the drudgery of city life, particularly to found a farming community somewhere, a desire that henceforth was never out of their minds.
    Before such a colony was established in the United States, agents for a large tract of land in Lower California, Mexico, learning of the Molokan desire to establish a farming community, contacted them early in 1906 with a proposition to sell them the tract which was called Rancho Guadalupe and on terms within reach of people who were still impoverished from their emigration from Russia.
    This tract of land consisting of 13,000 acres was located 60 miles south of the United States-Mexico border, in a pretty valley through which flowed a small stream but which turned into a torrent after a rain storm. The land was capable of producing a good crop of wheat in a rainy year but was also subjected to cycles of dry years in the same manner as other sections of California.
    In any case, 50 families were attracted to the proposition to purchase the tract. Led by Vasili Gavrilitch Pivovaroff and Ivan G. Samarin the land was bought for the sum of $40,000 and a site was selected for a village in the style of their native Russia, except that, for lack of logs, the houses were built of adobe in the style of Mexico.
    Soon a colony was established which was to exist until well into the middle of the century, becoming in time a tourist attraction because of its quaint, old country appearance and atmosphere.
    But in founding the new community, they adhered strictly to the age-old method inherited from their forefathers. Thus, instead of each family building a homestead on his own farm for more efficient operation as is the custom in America and other countries, a central site was chosen for the entire community where a village was established.
    Each individual was therefore compelled by necessity to transport his implements to his farm periodically to plow and cultivate it and harvest his crops in the summer, camping there for days at a time, coming home on weekends for a visit with his family.
    A writer who visited the colony in 1928 had this to say of their farming methods: "The founding of a large village in Guadalupe Valley is indeed contrary to any practical consideration and is to be explained only by the existence of an old inherited juristic notion, too deeply rooted in the minds of those peasants to yield before any environmental influence. Distance from the fields were largely such that men were unable to return to their homes in the evenings but often camped on their lots for weeks. Inconvenient conditions such as are typical for Southern Russia are thus repeated where they could be easily avoided. [Footnote: Oscar Schmieder in "The Russian Colony of Guadalupe Valley" as quoted from the "Pilgrims of Russian Town, page 253.]
    It is true that the method was inconvenient and inefficient, but the writer failed to perceive that it satisfied the colonist's hunger for companionship and spiritual sustenance in a strange land amid surroundings inimical to preservation of the brotherhood. It is to be noted that in 1911, when a Molokan colony was founded near Glendale, Arizona, the same method was followed.
    There were other examples of extreme allegiance to the methods of the forefathers which are rather astounding:

1. The title to the whole tract of land was vested in the names of three trustees.
2. No grant deeds or other evidence of ownership were issued to the individual owners. The names of individual owners were simply recorded in a community book, which was entrusted to a person elected for that purpose.
3. A government surveyor never officially surveyed the land nor was the subdivision recorded in government archives. Apparently, to save the cost of a qualified surveyor, they chose the method that was used by their fathers and forefathers in Russia. Measuring off a length of rope and using natural and artificial markers, such as large imbedded rocks or trees, they did the job in their own crude manner and proceeded to allot the land to the individual owners.

    The allotment of individual parcels was likewise conducted in a very ingenious and typical Molokan manner. To begin with the whole colony of 50 families were divided into 10 family units of five families to a unit. The whole tract of land was then divided into several sections, each section suitable for a certain crop. Thus there was a section of river bottom land; another section at higher level and suitable for raising grain, a hill-side section for raising hay and a section of untillable mountainous land which was left undivided for community use as cattle pasture.
    Each section of tillable land was then subdivided into ten parcels for which the ten family units proceeded to draw lots for their share of each category. The family units then drew lots for ownership of their individual parcels according to the need of each family.
This method was ingenious but crude, yet the amazing fact remains that, although forms changed ownership through sale and/or inheritance, the markers remained inviolate and despite the absence of deeds and of imbedded surveyor's markers, never in the history of the colony were there any litigation to decide tide to a property notwithstanding the fact that there were abundant seed for sowing not only law suits but bloodshed as well. One must marvel at the innate honesty of those illiterate peasants that knew God.
    However, the passing of a half a century showed that this method was not only naive but careless as well as dangerous, causing much anguish and worry to the heirs of the original colonists, for their sons and grandsons eventually had to struggle to prove ownership of the land when in 1952 squatters from the city of Mexicali, discovering that no deeds were recorded to some of the colonist's land, forcibly settled upon the land and despite the intervention of Federal, troops, at times successfully claimed ownership thereto through squatters rights.
    This proved to be the straw that broke the back of the first and most successful Molokan attempt at farm colonization in America. After these raids of squatters (Spanish: paracadistas) all but a very few families emigrated to the United States, and the colony as such ceased to exist.
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    Another most interesting episode in the Molokan quest for land occurred at about the same time as the purchase of the Rancho Guadalupe. It seems that an agent for a sugar plantation on the Hawaiian Islands appeared among them with proposition to sell them land on the island of Kuwai, northwest of Honolulu.
    The proposition was sufficiently attractive for the people to send a delegation to explore the possibility of establishing a colony. Upon their return, however, the delegation, composed of Philip M. Shubin and Mihail Step. Slivkoff, was in complete disagreement, Shubin strongly opposed the proposition while Slivkoff urged a favorable response.
    The upshot of it all was that 20 families and ten men whose families were still in Russia, agreed to the terms and sailed for these islands with high hopes. At this point in the episode there are different versions from different people. Some insist that the would-be colonists were deceived into thinking that they were signing a contract to purchase land when, in fact they were signing a contract to work for the plantation for a number of years.
    The following account is paraphrased from an article written in 1955 by Yacov Fetisoff and published in San Francisco in the same year by the Postoyannaye Community. [Footnote: The account of 50th Anniversary of The Postoyannaye Life In America, page 167.] Being one of the would-be colonists, he relates that, among other terms, the company agreed to provide the fare from Russia to the Islands for the families of those ten whose families were still in Russia and to bring them to the Islands not later than June 1, 1906. In addition to the ten families, the company agreed to bring in 100 other families from Russia by that date and at no cost to the immigrants. The names and addresses of these potential immigrants were given to the company and the prospective colonists were notified by their friends on the island to be prepared to join them by June 1, 1906.
But the company stalled and by various means delayed sending the passage tickets to those families until the agreed date. They then notified the would-be colonists that they failed to live up to the agreement, and that the agreement to bring the other 100 families is null and void but they could remain there as laborers if they wanted to.
    The colonists would not agree to this and gradually, as finances permitted, they sailed back to the mainland in small groups, the last group arriving in San Francisco late in October of 1906 when that city was still in ruins from the terrible earthquake of April 26, 1906.
    Thus, to their sorrow and expense, the Molokans experienced for the first time the sharp practices of American land sharks.
    But while these attempts at colonization were occupying the minds of the elders, the people in general were busy with their problems of making a living, of bearing of children, arranging marriages, healing the sick and burying the dead.
    The age-old habit of healing the sick without the services of a doctor continued in the midst of an abundance of doctors. The services of their own "lekar", that it, old man or woman skilled in reciting appropriate prayers for any given disease, were thought to be sufficient for any occasion. Doctors were called only in the last extremity. It was not until the second generation Molokans had their own families, that the services of doctors became general.
    In the matter of births too, it was thought that the services of a doctor was needless and "high falutin'". As long as several well-known and experienced midwives were available just a short block away, why not use them? It was a financial saving too.
    The use of these "babkas" (elderly women) in place of doctors was not entirely abandoned until the 1920's when the city health authorities insisted that the midwives be licensed to practice, and that they learn to write in order to be able to sign the birth certificates as required by law. Being too old to learn to write, they had to give up the practice but as long as they were able to do so they unselfishly performed their functions at all hours of the day and night, more often than not, without remuneration.
    Previous to this insistence of registering births, none were registered; causing many persons thus unregistered needless complications in securing their birth certificates when the need for them became a necessity to get a job during the Second World War.
    This disregard or ignorance of the city and state laws in the matter of vital statistics existed also in performing marriages. It was not until ten years or more after coming to America that the required marriage licenses became general at Molokan weddings.
But, the weddings themselves were very joyful occasions. After all the arrangements were made (at this time-1912—the boy and the girt had a lot more to say about their future mates than when they first came here) the trousseau prepared and guests invited, came the day of the wedding. To begin the ceremony the whole congregation as well as the relatives and friends of the groom marched, singing in a procession in the middle of the street from the groom's house to the home of the bride where part of the ceremony was performed. After this the whole congregation, augmented now by the relatives of the bride, reformed the procession for the return march to the place where the ceremony was to be completed. Since no church building of that time was large enough to accommodate such a large gathering, it was frequently held in a tent temporarily erected on the back yard of the groom's father or on the lot of a friend or neighbor whose lot was roomy enough.
    After the ceremony was completed the newlyweds, together with their invited friends, were seated in some large room adjacent to the tent but separated from the congregation. There they enjoyed their wedding dinner together with their invited boy and girl friends, singing songs of their own choosing and enjoying themselves in the traditional manner of young people, while the congregation was enjoying their own dinner in the tent.
    The practice of marching in procession back and forth, sometimes as far away as the Vignes Street area across the bridge to Utah Street area, continued until the police authorities decided that, because of increasing street traffic, it was becoming dangerous. They therefore requested the elders to discontinue the practice and some time around 1915 the wedding processions were abandoned except for the necessary relatives and friends who henceforth accompanied the groom to the bride's house and from the bride's house directly to the site of the marriage ceremony.

    Of course the use of the automobiles did not become general until the middle of the 1920's when the Molokan population scattered from the Flats to the various parts of east and south Los Angeles.
The funerals on the other hand, presented their own problems. These were solved in the characteristic Molokan fashion. Unlike present day funerals when all arrangements are left to the undertakers, all work was done and all arrangements were made by the family or by their relatives and friends.
    Immediately upon the death of a person, the members of the family bathed the body. If the deceased had been sick for a while before death, all necessary clothing would have been prepared before hand and the body would be dressed there and then in the new apparel and laid out on benches in the front room of the deceased's home. Meanwhile, friends and relatives of the family skilled at carpentry would build a plain, unadorned, redwood casket. A grave marker of 3x8 red wood plank 8-ft. long would also be prepared. This would be hand-carved with the necessary data prescribed by Molokan customs
    Other friends would see to securing a burial permit and to ordering a funeral car from the local streetcar company. They would also order two or three regular streetcars to accommodate the people for the trip to the cemetery.
    But if the death was sudden, women friends would drop their daily chores to sew the needed garments so that the body could be bathed and dressed as soon as possible and Placed in the front room to be viewed and wept over. On the morning of the funeral the body would be placed in the casket and everything was ready for the funeral.
    When the moment arrived for the funeral, the body was carried out to the middle of the street where a rug was spread out. A cloth-covered table was placed in the proper position and the casket was placed on benches near the foot of the table while the proper hymn was sung for the rise and resurrection of the deceased. After the usual prayers were recited, the body accompanied by the singing congregation and the weeping relatives and friends, was carried to the nearest streetcar stop.
    The casket would then be placed in the funeral car which would also have room for the relatives while the rest of the people would crowd into the specially ordered cars and, following the hearse, would proceed to the place of interment.
During the first five years in Los Angeles the interment took place in the Los Angeles County cemetery-for-the-indigent which was located (and still is) adjacent to the Evergreen Cemetery on East First St. But by 1909 the Molokan population increased to such an extent that there was much grumbling among the younger people that our dead deserved a better fate than to be buried among the county's indigent and undesirable elements and that the Molokans were now numerous enough to afford a cemetery of their own. Consequently they began to agitate for the purchase of a site for a private cemetery.
    But the urge to leave the city was so great that there was a strong opposition on the part of the older generation who argued that the Molokans were not going to remain in the city very long, therefore a private cemetery was not needed. Despite this opposition a half-acre site was purchased in 1909 on East Second St. near Eastern Ave. This part of the city was then an unpopulated barley field nearly a mile from the nearest streetcar line. It was at the terminus of the Whittier Blvd. car line near the intersection of Eastern Ave.
    As soon as the site was purchased and fenced, permission was secured from the County to remove all those bodies that were buried in the County cemetery to the new location. Approximately twenty or thirty bodies were disinterred and moved to the new site within a week with all due religious ceremony and emotional expression from the bereaved families who took advantage of the occasion to view their loved ones for another and the last time.
    Although the distance from the end of the street car line to the new cemetery was very long it did not deter the Molokans from performing the full rites for the deceased as well as to pay their last respects to them. The body was always carried the full distance by relays of pallbearers, followed by the full congregation singing the appropriate hymn the meanwhile. This custom prevailed for a period of 12 years or until the early 1920's when the motor driven hearse replaced the streetcar and was able to deliver the casket to the gates of the cemetery.
    Henceforth every Molokan was assured of a burial plot. The Armenian Molokans too, were participants in the undertaking and quite a number of their people were buried there.
    But the half-hazard methods that prevailed in the purchase and subdivision of the Guadalupe Valley Colony were employed here likewise. The plots were neither surveyed nor numbered. No custodian was employed until 15 years after the purchase and the nearest thing to a manager was the keeper of the keys to the gate.
    Whenever a death occurred in the community, the family asked for a half a dozen volunteers to dig the grave. These volunteers would ask their foreman for two days off from work, pick up the keys from the keeper and proceed to the cemetery early in the morning by street car and set to work, first selecting a plot that, in their opinion was appropriate. The ground was so hard that with a pick and shovel it took the half dozen men a day and a half to do the job.
    It was a custom at the time to dig out a niche in the side of the grave at its bottom, to protect the casket from the weight of the earth, and also, if the deceased had a surviving spouse, to provide a space for the survivor upon his or her demise.
    This half-hazard method of selecting a plot later caused some unpleasant complications. In time the cemetery became over crowded and the diggers, acceding to the wishes of the bereaved family, started to dig out the niche unaware that there was already a niche from the neighboring grave containing a casket. Of course they would immediately abandon the attempt; nevertheless, the relatives of the person whose grave had thus been disturbed, were sometimes bitter in their complaints.

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