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• • •
Alexander Lynde McCurdy
Was BORN
in Lyme, Conn. In 1804
moved to Cleveland Ohio in 1834
To Santa Barbara in 1872
I have erected this monument in my
eighty-third year Conscious that my
long and pleasant journey has near
-ly ended I shall pass into the great
Beyond without regrets or fears
• • •
Died Sept. 17. 1886
• • •
Although the artists who created the monuments are mostly anonymous
or lost to history, the Santa Barbara Cemetery itself is associated with several
notable architects, horticulturists, and landscape designers, either through
the work they did there, and/or by the cemetery being their own final
resting place. The list includes Reginald Johnson, James Osborn Craig, Pete
Peterson, Lutah Maria Riggs, George Washington Smith, Ralph Tallant
Stevens and Windsor Soule, not to mention the indefatigable preservation
activist Miss Pearl Chase. The efforts of many talented and far-sighted
individuals transformed a “dreary resting place” (according to the
Santa
Barbara Press
in 1872) from a dusty graveyard of dirt and weeds to “a place of
rest so attractive that one might well wish to come to Santa Barbara to die.”
The Loved One
In fact, the Santa Barbara Cemetery incorporates the best of a rural,
picturesque necropolis, without the cloying qualities found in larger
operations such as that satirized in
The Loved One
. The novella by British
author Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was published in 1948, a year after he