The Georgia Fisher Monument

Inset, image of the original monument and fence at Georgia’s grave site; photos of Georgia Fisher and Martin Bergman, all taken from the online Historical Marker Database

They planned to be married on New Year’s Day 1876, but the nineteen-year-old bride-to-be, Georgia Fisher, died of typhoid pneumonia four days before the wedding.

Poignant tales of sudden, tragic deaths were not unusual in the 19th century, when medical science was still evolving. This is one of those stories, one with a highly romantic twist in the tale: Georgia’s fiancée Martin Bergman’s heartbreak was so profound that he built an elaborate monument on her gravesite.

The only known likeness of Georgia, a photo taken in death, shows a sweet-faced young woman with blonde, or light brown hair, falling in ringlets around her neck. Possibly, the dress she is wearing, with its ruffled bodice and ribbon trim at the neckline, was meant to be her wedding gown. 

Georgia Fisher was born in Louisiana on February 25, 1856. Georgia’s mother, known as Narcissus Tucker Kirtlan in extant records, apparently identified with her Tucker relatives instead of a first husband with the surname Fisher; a man who either died, or perhaps abandoned her, when Georgia was an infant. In any event, it appears that Narcissus and baby Georgia joined her parents in Arkansas, then traveled overland to California with them. There, in Calaveras County, she met Thomas Jefferson Kirtlan, formerly a life-long resident of Ohio. They were married in August, 1858.   

In 1869 the Kirtlan family, now enlarged by two half-siblings for thirteen-year-old Georgia, moved to Sacramento. Thomas Kirtlan, a blacksmith, opened a shop at Twelfth and K Streets. More children arrived. In her late teens, probably in 1874, Georgia left her parents’ home to take a job as a live-in domestic for the John P. Bergman family, immigrants from Sweden who lived on L Street, farther east of downtown.

The Bergman sons John and Martin, who lived in the household, were professional potters and sculptors, and the owners of Sacramento Pottery, located on the east side of Thirtieth and N Streets. In October, 1873, the Sacramento Daily Union ran a long article describing the high quality of the Rockingham serving ware and decorative terra cotta pieces from their new kiln; the brothers’ plans to build another kiln, manufacture other items, and expand their facilities to employ up to 80 men. In January 1874, Martin Bergman applied for United States’ citizenship.

The future looked bright. And although he was about 31 and she was much younger, Martin Bergman and Georgia Fisher fell in love. They planned a church wedding ... but then, all of a sudden, Georgia became ill.

A small item in the Sacramento Union on December 28, 1875, announced Georgia’s death on the previous day, and invited friends to attend her funeral that very afternoon at two o’clock, from the residence of J.P. Bergman (Martin’s father) on L Street between Twenty-first and Twenty-second. She was buried at the city cemetery on Broadway.

Not long afterward a devastated, tearful Martin, with the help of his father and brother, began creating a beautiful monument for the gravesite of his beloved. Martin designed and constructed a warm terra cotta-toned, ornately tiled base, rising to form a pillar which held a large shield-shaped plaque displaying her name. His father contributed a statue of the angel Gabriel for the top of the tile pillar, and brother John created a beautiful, decorative pillar to the right of the first one. Together the Bergmans built and installed a clay pedestal fence around the plot. Georgia’s picture, in repose, was placed beneath the angel.

In earlier times the monument must have been a sight to behold for anyone strolling through what today is the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery, but the complete structure isn’t there anymore: weather, theft, and vandalism have substantially reduced it. Parts of Martin’s ornate tiled base remain. The attached plaque on the tiled column is there—cracked in three places—but the angel, the second pillar, and the clay fence, are all gone. A tableau on a pedestal to the right tells the story to sightseers.   

Martin Bergman did finally marry, in the 1890s; but, according to one source, it was an unhappy union. He died in 1920 in Spokane, Washington.