Rose Hill Cemetery Book

A new book published this year by the East Bay Regional Park District documents the history of the Rose Hill Cemetery, now a part of Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve in Antioch. The book by Supervising Naturalist Traci Parent is based on her 30 years of research into the history of the people buried there.

From the 1860s to the turn of the 20th century, Black Diamond was the site of California’s largest coal-producing region. Known as the Mount Diablo Coal Field, the area once boasted the five thriving communities of Nortonville, Somersville, Stewartville, West Hartley and Judsonville.

Rose Hill Cemetery was created in the early 1860s and served as a Protestant burial ground for the coal field families. Although over 200 burials have been documented through research, it is likely that more interments exist. Once the site of neglect and vandalism, the cemetery and many of its gravestones have been painstakingly restored over recent decades by Park District rangers.

Researched over three decades through newspaper accounts, obituaries, and family histories, Rose Hill: A Comprehensive History of a Pioneer Cemetery is the only comprehensive account of the people interred in the cemetery.

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Coal field descendants, members of the Lougher and Sorgenfrey families, gather at the Elvira Thomas
and Rees G. Thomas gravesite, circa 1932. Peck Family Collection, Black Diamond Mines archives.