Every so often, someone wanders into the San Anselmo Historical Museum, after a walk along nearby residential streets, with a question about the narrow terraced yard below a hidden house. With its stone markers and tombstones, slender wooden crosses, and a lovely carved angel watching over it all, it appears to be a tiny, aged cemetery. Judy Coy, who's a docent at the museum and chairperson of the San Anselmo Historical Commission, says that most people are disappointed to learn that it’s not.

The tipoff, I would think, is the historic sign over one of the three small garages—“Chrysler Plymouth * parts - accessories * wholesale - retail”—as well as a less prominent sign advertising Robertson Drayage Co., Inc.

 Then again, those gravestones, especially the one for Father Alpheus C. Leetham (May 26, 1891-December 29, 1969), look awfully authentic. So what’s the story here?

The house and property—particularly the landscaping elements—was the topic of some discussion on the “I Grew Up in San Anselmo” Facebook page last summer. Locals remembered a house originally built by a former town mayor named Kemp (hence, we’ll assume, the street name) and playing up and down the hillside; they recalled a formal rose garden behind the stone wall edging the street, and an “awesome” rope swing. There were no headstones before the current owner moved in.

According to the comments on Facebook, that was in the mid sixties, when neighbors also began seeing the new owner’s “large collection of antique cars, including an old fire engine that he would drive in parades.” Oddly enough, no one thought to contact the homeowner, Sheldon Donig. Or maybe he just didn’t reply.

But I can tell you that Donig is such a collector, he has a whole building full of stuff, the Collectors Museum, in San Rafael. It’s open by appointment only, to groups, at no charge. Donig has a Facebook page, too, devoted to the Collectors Museum, which is full of vintage items from old lamps and billboards to 16mm films to its main display: beautifully restored classic cars and motorcycles. I know these details because Donig sent me the links—and only the links—when I emailed to ask for an interview.

Coy, however, knows something about the denizens named on the tombstones. The late Alpheus Conover Leetham, for instance: through genealogical research, she told me, she learned that he was born in Lake Shore, Utah, “was a bookkeeper/cashier for an insurance company [and] had three children by his first wife.” He died in Mesa, Arizona, and was buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. She even found a photo of him on ancestry.com.

Coy’s research raises a couple of more fascinating questions. Why does the headstone refer to this man as Father Leetham? And how the heck did his headstone get to San Anselmo from Salt Lake City?

And, there are no bodies? Right?