GRAVE SITUATION LINES DRAWN IN CEMETERY BATTLE.

Byline: Greg Botonis and Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writers

PALMDALE - A family trying to bury a woman next to her husband and brother in the Palmdale Cemetery was met Tuesday by sheriff's deputies and two women who are trying to get the 115-year-old cemetery named a historical landmark.

Sheriff's deputies stopped the backhoe operator digging the grave for Alice Randolph after being faxed ownership documents from Donald Jones of Tehachapi, who county officials in 1998 decided was the true owner of the Antelope Valley's oldest cemetery. Jones told deputies he was allowing no further burials.

``There are 192 graves here, most unmarked, and we want those graves left undisturbed,'' said Beverly Brusben, who with Trish Conley is trying to get the cemetery designated a historical landmark. ``They could be digging someone else up and not know it. That's not right.''

Ben Marquez's quest to bury his mother has already drawn in other people whose relatives are buried in the tiny graveyard, which was founded by Palmdale's earliest settlers and for years has been tended by volunteers who trimmed weeds and replaced grave markers destroyed repeatedly by vandals.

Marquez's supporters say Jones has no right to stop burials by families who have been burying their members there for decades, and that Conley and Brusben have no business interfering.

``Now we have somebody who's going to come in and tell us how things are going to run,'' said Calvin Humphreys, whose father, uncle, grandmother, grandfather and a cousin are buried there. ``I think they're going to have a fight on their hands.''

Conley said the situation is the fault of local mortuaries, who failed to keep track of burials, and criticized the city for turning down Jones' offer last summer to donate the cemetery.

``They don't want to take responsibility for it,'' said Conley, who started trying to find out who owned the cemetery five years ago after seeing it vandalized.

Marquez said his attorney believes the cemetery under state law has actually become the property of the city of Palmdale, and that the family will try again Thursday to bury Randolph.

``The cemetery belongs to the people who are buried here and their remaining family,'' said Marquez. ``Her wish was to be buried next to her husband and her brother and other family. That's all she wanted.''

Marquez and other relatives had gathered Tuesday morning to oversee the digging of Randolph's grave in preparation for a 2 p.m. ceremony. Randolph had died in August 1999 but was buried at Lancaster Cemetery while the family tried to get permission to bury her in Palmdale between the graves of her husband and brother.

Randolph's family said Jones told them they must survey the plot with sonar - an expensive process - to make sure they would not be digging up somebody else's remains. They say they are convinced there is nobody else buried where they want to bury Randolph.

Randolph's family believes it bought the plot when her husband was buried in the 1950s but doesn't know how or from whom the plot was acquired.

The family finally obtained a Los Angeles County permit last week allowing Randolph's body to be exhumed in Lancaster and reburied in Palmdale. Sheriff's deputies told family members Tuesday that without the owner's agreement the permit was invalid.

The dispute stems from the lack of records for the cemetery's plots, as well as from the tangled ownership records of the cemetery itself.

Established in 1885 by Zion Lutheran Church, whose members were German and Swiss immigrants from Nebraska and Illinois, the cemetery became the resting place for members of pioneering Antelope Valley families including the Ritters and the Coursons. Local legend says Indians and Chinese railroad workers were buried outside the cemetery boundary.

After the church became inactive, the cemetery was taken over by Los Angeles County in 1951 for unpaid taxes, according to the 1998 county investigation into its ownership. Conley said she and Brusben asked for the investigation because the county didn't seem to know who owned the property, and they needed the owner's permission for its designation as a historical site.

County officials closed the cemetery in 1979 because no one was keeping burial records, but it was reopened in 1981 for the burying of descendants of the original settlers when the Palmdale Kiwanis Club agreed to keep the records. Conley said the record keeping has been shoddy.

As early as 1972, county officials decided that they had erred in taking the property because a state law forbids taxing nonprofit cemeteries.

In 1998, county officials decided the cemetery belonged to Donald Jones, son of George Jones, who died in 1979 in Orange County. George Jones inherited the cemetery from Hannah Smith, who had acquired the land in 1905, county records show.

The county title report said the cemetery could hold up to 260 graves.

Last summer, Jones offered to donate the 2.5-acre property to the city of Palmdale but the City Council turned it down.

Mayor Jim Ledford, who said he has been approached in the past week by people from both sides of the dispute, said the city didn't want to get into the cemetery business.

``We analyzed the issue and declined to get involved,'' the mayor said. ``As far as a city operating a cemetery, the liabilities are great.''

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color in AV only) Ben Marquez stands at the grave of his stepfather, Melvin Lynn Randolph, at the 115-year-old Palmdale Cemetery. Marquez was stopped by sheriff's deputies Tuesday as he was attempting to dig a grave for his mother, Alice Randolph.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer

(2) Los Angeles County sheriff's Sgt. Vincent Burton, right, explains to Ben Marquez why Marquez cannot dig a grave for his mother at the 115-year-old Palmdale Cemetery.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer