The recent fight over Hillside Cemetery is the latest twist in a long story STORY AND PHOTOS bY JeRi CHADwell-SiNgleY
George W. Cassidy’s grave is near the cemetery’s northeast corner.
jeric@newsreview.com
eorge Williams Cassidy was born in Kentucky in 1836.
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At 21 years old, he moved to California to mine for gold, before embarking on a journalism career that brought him to
Nevada. He later served in the state legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives and, in 1878, as acting governor of Nevada. According to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, he was a delegate to the 1892 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The directory entry states that Cassidy died in Reno, although this seems unlikely since his passing came only one day after the convention concluded on June 23. Where Cassidy was when he died is a bit of a mystery, but his final resting place is not. He’s buried near the northeast corner of Hillside Cemetery. And his plot was the first that Fran Tryon cleaned when she started her volunteer effort to restore this privately owned burial ground three years ago. On Aug. 26, a sign was posted on a fence just a few yards from Cassidy’s grave. It was a notice of cemetery owner Drew Lawton’s intentions to disinter Cassidy and hundreds of other people buried at Hillside. At the bottom of the notice were a toll free number and the link to a website for people seeking more information regarding what Lawton had termed the restoration of the cemetery—a project with far different goals than Tryon’s, who had, on the day the notice went up, received word that her group of volunteers—the Hillside Cemetery Preservation Foundation—had been granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. Tryon and her fellow volunteers spoke with the media and reached out for support through social media, but it seemed their preservation efforts might be done for. The City of Reno issued a statement saying it had no authority over the disinterment, and the Washoe County Health District—which only a few weeks earlier had renewed the permit for disinterment—communicated in a statement of its own that it had no role in overseeing the process other than to ensure public safety. Then, three weeks after the notice went up, Lawton’s company, Sierra Memorial Gardens, issued a statement saying that the plans had been suspended. Cassidy and the others were to remain undisturbed—at least for the time being. As the dust settled, questions remained. What gave Lawton the authority to disinter so many people (1,434 by most estimates)? Didn’t the deeds to the plots—which specified that they were assigned to their buyers and
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