(Tribune News Service) — The city of Arroyo Grande can trace its roots back to the 19th century. But who were the people who shaped the south San Luis Obispo County community?

The truth lies six feet underground at Arroyo Grande Cemetery.

Each year, retired teacher and author Jim Gregory, president of the South County Historical Society, hosts several tours of the cemetery, located at the intersection of El Camino Real and Halcyon Road off Highway 101. During the visits, he highlights some of the more historically relevant and fascinating graves.

Because historical records from Arroyo Grande's earliest years are far from complete, his tour changes each time he discovers new information, he said.

Even the cemetery's opening date — which is estimated to be in the 1880s — is not fully known, Gregory said.

"I grew up in Arroyo Grande and I attended the two-room Branch Elementary School in the upper valley, and I think that's where my interest in history began," Gregory said during a recent tour of the cemetery. "If you go to a school that was built that long ago, we still had desks with inkwells in them."

Here are some of the fascinating figures you'll find buried at the Arroyo Grande Cemetery — from Civil War veterans to a U.S. Marine who witnessed one of the biggest battles of World War II.

Arroyo Grande was home to Civil War veterans

To see the grave of a pivotal player in the formation of Arroyo Grande, look for the final resting place of Civil War veteran Bela Clinton Ide.

Born in 1842, Ide fought for the Union Army as a member of the 24th Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment — known as the Iron Brigade for its reputation as "the hardest fighting unit in the Army," Gregory said.

The Iron Brigade saw action at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, Gregory said, noting that 363 of the 496 men in Ide's regiment were wounded or killed in action.

Ide was one of around 60 Civil War veterans to settle in the Arroyo Grande and Nipomo area after the war, Gregory said.

In 1878, Ide "built a house on a street in old Arroyo (that) is named for him — Ide Street," Gregory said. "We think it's the oldest house in Arroyo Grande."

Gregory said Ide worked as a blacksmith, farmer and postmaster before his death in 1922.

According to Gregory, Ide's spouse Adelaide Wood may have been related to one of the first settler families to come to the Arroyo Grande region in covered wagons, predating the arrival of the Pacific Coast Railroad in 1881.

"This was the generation that really helped to build the town," Gregory said.

Another notable Civil War veteran, Otis Smith, also has the Arroyo Grande Cemetery as his final resting place, Gregory said.

Smith was a member of the 95th Ohio Infantry Regiment, which was charged with capturing Nashville in the winter of 1864, Gregory said.

Though the 95th's attack on the center of Confederate Gen. John Bell Hook's forces was unsuccessful, Smith and several other men were able to creep up a nearby hill without firing a shot, coming face to face with the 6th Florida Infantry, according to Gregory.

"In the process, Otis Smith captured the 6th Florida's regimental flag," and Union soldiers snipped away pieces, Gregory said. "To give up your battle flag to the enemy is the greatest dishonor that a regiment could suffer."

Gregory estimated that Smith fought through five or six Confederate soldiers to claim the flag, earning the U.S. Armed Forces' Medal of Honor.

Smith settled in Arroyo Grande but died in the Sawtelle Veterans Home located near what is now the UCLA campus, which Gregory said was under-resourced and unsafe.

Another Civil War veteran buried at Arroyo Grande Cemetery, Erastus Fouch, made it into the Union Army on a technicality, Gregory said.

Fouch, who was born in 1844, entered the Army illegally at 17 by placing a scrap of paper with the number 18 written on it in the heel of his shoe. That ensured Fouch was not lying when he told the enlistment officer that he was "over 18," Gregory said.

Fouch and his elder brother, Leonidas Fouch, fought in the same regiment, coming up against Confederate Fen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson in the Battle of the Shenandoah Valley in 1862, where Leonidas was killed in combat.

Though Erastus Fouch "never spelled a word the same way twice," he was intelligent, and kept an extensive diary of his exploits in the war, Gregory said.

Fouch settled in Arroyo Grande after the war as a farmer, and helped schoolteacher Clara Paulding save Arroyo Grande's first high school from closure in the late 1890s when it was in danger of failing, Gregory said.

Impacts of World War II apparent at cemetery

Gregory said the Arroyo Grande Cemetery is home to several influential figures whose lives were impacted by World War II.

Louis Brown, who was born in Arroyo Grande in 1924 and grew up farming in Corbett Canyon, was witness to one of the most iconic moments in the history of the war, Gregory said.

Brown joined the U.S. Marine Corps as a stevedore — essentially a shipyard worker, Gregory said.

Brown was stationed on the island of Iwo Jima in Japan with the 28th Marine Regiment. Six Marines can be seen raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 in a famous photo by Joe Rosenthal.

About six days after the flag was raised, Brown was killed in action on March 1, 1945, just two days before his 21st birthday, Gregory said.

"He was among strangers, and he stepped on what we today call an improvised explosive device," Gregory said. "(The) cause of death was burns to the entire body. It was a horrific way for this young man's life to end."

Brown was buried in a Marine cemetery, but his remains were repatriated to Arroyo Grande in 1949.

The cemetery is also home to the grave of Juzo Ikeda, whose life was also cut short by World War II, though not from combat.

Ikeda was born in 1888 and was passionate about baseball, forming the Arroyo Grande Growers with the Loomis family, Gregory said.

Two of Ikeda's sons went on to play baseball for Cal Poly, though Ikeda was tragically paralyzed in an incident involving a team of farmhorses, Gregory said.

Like many Japanese and Japanese-American residents of Arroyo Grande, Ikeda and his family were incarcerated at an internment camp in Gila River, Arizona, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.

There, Ikeda died in a camp hospital.

"I just saw a picture of the home plate at the Gila River camp, which is on loan to the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame," Gregory said. "Juzo's son Kaz caught (baseballs) behind that plate."

Town founders and local legends haunt graveyard

Some of Arroyo Grande's founding citizens can also be found in the Arroyo Grande Cemetery.

Clara Paulding and her husband Dr. Edwin Paulding are buried side by side. They were two of the town's original founders, Gregory said.

Edwin Paulding was Arroyo Grande's first doctor, and married Clara in 1886, Gregory said.

The Pauldings' 1889 home, now designated as a California Historic Resource, still stands on Crown Hill Road in Arroyo Grande, Gregory said.

One of the graveyard's most unique headstones belongs to Lino Giacomini, an Italian Swiss immigrant who lived on Branch Street in the late 19th century.

Giacomini's weathered tombstone sticks out from the rest with names that appear to have been carved letter by letter.

"If it looks a little rustic, that's because Lino made it himself," Gregory said. "One day he got it into his head: 'By golly, I'm going to carve my own tombstone.' "

Before his death three years later, Giacomini proudly displayed his tombstone in his front yard, becoming something of a local point of interest.

"The cemetery is really a microcosm of the town," Gregory said.

The South County Historical Society periodically conducts tours of the Arroyo Grande Cemetery.

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