Uncovering a Mystery at Columbia Cemetery

Grave of Jacob R. Giddis (Photo: Roland Boulware)

 A Native of Randolph, Morris County, New Jersey, Jacob R. Giddis was born in 1833, and raised on a farm with his father, mother, four brothers and two sisters. It is unknown what year Jacob decided to head out west, but we know it was by the mid 1850s that he had reached the Columbia area. His intention was to mine for gold, but after that didn't "pan out," he chose to take up a job as a collections agent for the Tuolumne County Water Company, which was big on supplying water to the miners. Perhaps he went out to collect on a debt, and the owing party was unwilling to pay; Either way, Jacob Giddis was murdered, and his body was dumped into the stream where it ended up at the reservoir in nearby Strawberry.

His body was brought back to Columbia and he was buried beside his friend, Joel Cumback who had died just four years earlier. After looking into the story further, it appears that Joel and Jacob more than likely came over to California together, as they were both from Morris County, New Jersey and both arrived around the same time.  In fact, the odds are that they knew each other growing up, and their families were probably close friends. The towns of Randolph (where Jacob was from) and Chester (where Joel was from) are literally a few miles away from one another.

It is unknown what Joel died from back in 1857, though it could have been any number of reasons such as tuberculosis, typhoid, small pox, measles, etc. Whatever the case, Joel's childhood friend, Jacob Giddis paid for and had erected the headstone you see below. For miners this is not uncommon to have a gravestone marked by a friend, or even mentioning the friend who commissioned the headstone for the deceased. Many times that was the only friend they had nearby, so that was a way of making sure that it was known that he was not alone, that he had friends there to make sure he was buried properly and not forgotten.

Sadly, Jacob lost his life just four years later when he was brutally murdered. Obviously the locals in town or even perhaps his employer must have took up a collection to have Jacob buried and afforded him the chance to have a proper burial and headstone, just like he had done for his friend.

(Copyright 2018- Roland Boulware)

Graves of: Jacob R. Giddis and Joel A. Cumback (Photo: Roland Boulware)