History: Dr. Henry A. DuBois Builds Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery

An early San Rafael village resident, Dr. Henry Augustus DuBois, Jr. settled in San Rafael in 1869 after serving as a surgeon in the Civil War and in the Indian Wars of New Mexico.

Born to a wealthy East Coast family, Yale-educated Dr. DuBois was a great-grandson of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and a president of the Continental Congress. In his memoirs, William Kent described DuBois as "a New Englander and a straight-laced and proper citizen. He was educated, skillful and much esteemed.”

Chickahominy Fever

Dr. DuBois may have been lured to San Rafael by its healthy climate. In the California Medical Society’s journal, Dr. DuBois recommended San Rafael as ideal for a “sanitarium for chronic diseases.” During the Civil War, DuBois had contracted Chickahominy fever, a camp fever with symptoms of typhoid and malaria named for the mosquito-ridden swamps of the Chickahominy River in Virginia. 

The 1870 Census shows Dr. DuBois residing with 40-year-old Dr. Alfred Taliaferro, the first physician to practice in Marin. They lived in San Rafael Village with a 23-year old Chinese servant named Ah Poy. Dr. DuBois subsequently purchased land west of San Rafael at the end of today’s Fifth Street in what was called Forbes Valley. His land was far removed from town and included a section of Red Hill.

Burials Prohibited

When Dr. DuBois arrived in San Rafael, the town was growing fast, and the cemetery at St. Paul’s Episcopal Churchyard, Fourth and E Streets, could not keep up. 

In 1876, two years after San Rafael incorporated, town trustee Dr. Taliaferro proposed and got passed an ordinance prohibiting burials within San Rafael’s town limits. On Sept. 14, 1876, the Marin County Journal reported on a town meeting held to determine where to locate a new cemetery: “Nearly all the money and land kings were present.”

Among several bids, Dr. DuBois offered a portion of his ranch for $13,000. The town trustees took no action, and the law to prohibit burials in town limits was rescinded. It was deemed "better to double up in the old yard than keep the dead above ground.”

A Committee of One

Not one to dawdle, by June 1878 Dr. DuBois had 40 men working on 113 acres of his land to build the new cemetery. He later stated, “I organized myself a committee of one.” He put enormous funds and energies into the venture, planting myrtle and ivy by the wagonload, laying out miles of roadways, setting out 2,000 trees and thousands of flowers.

In September the Marin Journal reported that Dr. DuBois was doing a great amount of work. Schooners came up San Rafael Creek to First and C streets with loads of urns, fountains, sample monuments, granite walls and fences. DuBois had drawn up plans for a bell tower and an artesian well 2,000 feet deep.

In December 1879 the Marin Journal reported that Dr. DuBois had toured 42 cemeteries in the East to collect drawings, photos, maps, statistics on water supply and other cemetery best practices.

DuBois’ Folly

In the late 1800s cemeteries were designed as parks for picnics and Sunday outings. DuBois expected that the cemetery would be a favorite destination and built miles of access roads. As he owned a portion of Red Hill, he hired Chinese laborers to build a zig-zag road up its heights to provide access from San Anselmo. Too steep for horse and buggy, the project gained the label “.”

The Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery was dedicated in August 1879. It eventually served some of San Rafael’s most prominent families, including the Dollars and the Boyds.

DuBois’ horizons, however, stretched beyond Marin. In January 1880 Dr. DuBois wrote in the Marin County Journal: “It is believed that, with the example of New York City, many burials from San Francisco will take place here…Objections [are] that San Francisco funerals must come on the boat and pass through town, but the midday, little-used boat will be used and funerals can pass on streets with few houses. Friends prophesy I will be ruined…I have been ruined so frequently – at least my friends have so prophesied – that I don’t mind it a bit.”

Dr. DuBois built a number of artificial lakes at the cemetery. In 1881, reporting that the carp had multiplied from 11 to over 750, he suggested, “Carp raising would be a good industry here.”

San Rafael in Denver?

In 1874 Dr. DuBois platted a development in Denver, Colorado, which he named San Rafael for his California home. He expanded this subdivision in 1882 and 1886 as demand increased for more lots.

The area, located 8 blocks northeast of downtown Denver, is now a heritage district on the National Register of Historic Places. An early advertisement described it as “beautifully located overlooking the city with a glorious view of the mountains.” 

Why Denver? The answer is unknown. Coincidentally, Lindsey Wiseman, great-great granddaughter of industrial magnate Captain Robert Dollar, former owner of San Rafael’s Falkirk mansion, is currently renovating homes in Denver’s San Rafael district. Dr. DuBois and Captain Dollar were great friends.

Despite his activities in Denver, DuBois remained in San Rafael, Calif., where two of his siblings joined him. In 1880 he lived with his brother Alfred W. DuBois, a 28-year old Chinese servant Ah Jim and a 44-year-old servant Amelia Schuthris. Later that year, Dr. DuBois married Emily M. Blois, and they subsequently had four children.

The Vaccine Farm

Building a cemetery, a residential neighborhood in a distant city, and a new family is more than enough to manage, but Dr. DuBois saw problems as opportunities. In the 1880s, vaccine panics often accompanied smallpox epidemics. Summer heat precluded transporting fresh vaccine from the East, and vaccine became scarce.

To provide a local source, in 1887 Dr. DuBois started the Pacific Coast Vaccine Farm in San Rafael, presumably at his ranch in Forbes Valley. At the time there were only nine other vaccine farms in the United States, none on the West Coast.

At the farm, DuBois injected heifers from ten to twenty times with cowpox vaccine. These injections created vesicles from which the vaccine was later collected, packaged and shipped.

 Shortly after DuBois started producing vaccine, San Francisco was overcome by an epidemic of smallpox. On short notice, Dr. DuBois provided a supply that the San Francisco Public Health Board declared useless.

In DuBois’ defense, Dr. William S. Whitwell inspected the farm and wrote in the medical journal Lancet, “Marin is a dairy county, and calves of the proper age are easily obtainable. They are kept in clean stalls and well fed for a day or two before being operated upon…the success of such a farm would, more than any other one measure, aid in banishing the periodic epidemics of smallpox with which the State, or more especially, San Francisco, is afflicted.” He went on to discuss financial losses when “tourists and others in pursuit of pleasure avoid the city.”

The Pacific Coast Vaccine Farm didn't last. Dr. DuBois died May 27, 1897 at age 55 of the typhoid fever he contracted in the Virginia swamps.  Du Bois Street in San Rafael is named for another DuBois, but Dr. Henry A. DuBois Jr.’s legacy lives on in Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery and in Denver's historic San Rafael district.

Several of these photographs were provided by the Marin History Museum. If you are interested in purchasing these photographs or others from their collection. please call 415-382.0770x3 or email photoservices@marinhistory.org.