East Lawn Memorial Park 43rd & Folsom Blvd. is a beautiful old well mantained cemetery in Sacramento, California.
Geo. B. Hinkle
1828-1913
Priscilla C. Hinkle
1829-1914
Geo. T. Hinkle
1872-1912
The Bodie Methodist Church, Bodie, Mono County, California.
The Rev. George Beall Hinkle and his twin sister Elizabeth, were born 25 December 1828 the fifth and sixth children of Jesse H. and Mary Ann Folck Hinkle, in Pleasant Grove, Allegany County, Maryland. He was raised on a farm four miles east of Cumberland, Maryland. At the age of twenty he was converted at a camp meeting. In 1853 he crossed the plains to California and engaged in gold mining for a while.
In 1860, along with fourteen other hardy young men, Rev. George was admitted to the California Conference of the Methodist Church. He then spent the next thirty five years of his life in the service of the church. His life was not an easy one. He was a circuit riding preacher being assigned to a new territory every year or two. He often had no horse and walked the long miles between his congregations. His territories were all in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains and north western Nevada. His assignments took him from Clover Creek, Mt. Shasta, Diamond Springs, Dutch Flat, Bodie, Bridgeport and Coleville in California to Reno, Humboldt, Elko, Aurora, and Genoa in Nevada. He was undaunted in his travels and his ministerial work. It is stated in his biography that he was often responsible for "... quarrying the stone for the foundations and shaping the timbers for the framework with his own hands, erecting parsonages doing much of the work and often furnishing most of the money..."
On 20 May 1869, at the age of 41, he married Priscilla C. Brown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were married in Carson City, Nevada. On 16 July 1872 their only child, George Toreson Hinkle, was born in Nevada.
In 1897 he finally took retirement and eventually resided in Sacramento. He died 7 July 1913 just 3 days after his twin sister died in New York. His son had died in 1912 and Priscilla out lived him by a year. All three are buried in the Pioneer section of Sacramento's East Lawn Memorial Park. A simple brass plaque marks their final resting spot.
A personal note: Rev. B.George Hinkle is not a close relative (4th cousin 4 times removed) but he does have a special interest for us. Lavica Hinkle Field was my great grandmother so we are closely related to the Hinkle family. I spent the summers of my college years working at Tuolumne Meadows Lodge in Yosemite National Park. I discovered the wonderful ghost town Bodie in the early 1960s and have visited there countless times. I was also raised in the Methodist church and when I discovered that the Methodist Church in Bodie had a connection to a Hinkle I became interested in his life. I found a book, Lakes of the Sierras, by Dr. George Hinkle and his wife Bliss McGlashan. It is mentioned in the book that Dr. Hinkle is a descendant of eastern Sierra pioneers and we were able to connect him to Rev. George Hinkle. Many years ago I wrote to the archives of the Methodist Church and received a nice biography of Rev. Hinkle. However, there was no reference to where he was buried. Another round of communication with the church revealed that they had no idea of his burial location either. Then, on April 26, 2011, Lucie and I were at the Sacramento City Cemetery locating the graves of Stafford descendants. We went to the cemetery archive office and while there we mention that we were also searching for the grave of Rev. G. B. Hinkle. One of the women began looking through Sacramento County death records and found him as George Bell Hinkle and there was the listing of his burial in the East Lawn Memorial Park. We drove to East Lawn and with aide of a very helpful woman and a gardener were able to locate the grave site of George B., Priscilla and their son George T. Another of the women at the Sacramento City Cemetery archives found the Hinkles in Sacramento city directories of the early 1900s and we learned that young George was a conductor on the S. P. Railroad. These serendipitous finds are the events that make genealogy a fun and exciting hobby for us.
Gene & Lucie Field
2 May 2011
Links of interest:
Hinkle Family Links
Timeline of Rev. George B. Hinkle
Biographies of Rev. George B. Hinkle & Priscilla Brown