Tag: Tombstone

Making the Most of Your Research Trip – Part 7

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 31 Aug 2016.

I was on the way to visit the home of a minister who had old cemetery records from a previous church that was no longer in existence.  I’m a farmer’s daughter so driving down country roads and acclimating myself to finding directions isn’t that big of a deal to me.  I was pushing the speed limit, though, as the Reverend had not wanted to meet with me today as he had other plans and I didn’t want to hold him up.  In about 20 minutes I whizzed past the turnoff.  I call it a turnoff because it wasn’t a named street.  It was a gravel drive that appeared to belong to one family but after making a 3 point turn I realized that several families lived on this lane.  An elderly gentleman flagged me and I rolled down the passenger side window and asked him if he was the Reverend.  He asked why I wanted to know (so clearly, he wasn’t or if he was, he had a serious case of forgetfulness.)  I told the man I had an appointment with the Reverend.  He looked skeptical and pointed down the road, informing me that the Reverend lived behind the barn.  I drove off and was soon flagged down by an older woman who looked like she stepped out of the 1800’s.  I again rolled the passenger side window down and told her I was meeting with the Reverend.  She shook her head like she didn’t believe me and pointed behind her.  The lane curved slightly between her home and the large barn.  I came to the end of the lane and parked; I knew this was the Reverend’s place as I recognized the truck from that morning when I had been in the cemetery.

 

I was

There was no doorbell so I knocked firmly on the door.  No answer.  I knocked again.  No answer.  It dawned on me I should go to the back door and not the front door.  I walked around the house and the Reverend was coming in from the field.  I gave him a perky hello but he was not too keen to see me.  He immediately said, “My wife looked and didn’t find the people you wrote in your note.  They aren’t buried there.”  I told him I believed his wife had done a great job but I wanted to see who was buried next to the Pentz’s as I had found the people I was looking for in the cemetery that morning.  He looked surprised.  I whipped out my phone and showed him the tombstones.  He shook his head and invited me in.

The Mrs. Reverend and daughter were baking and it smelled wonderful!  I said hello and mentioned how good it smelled.  Neither responded.

I followed the Reverend through the dining room and into the living room.  He told me to sit at a table and he would bring the maps and book.  We looked through the book and found no one named Pentz.  He asked me if I was sure that I had been in his cemetery and not some other cemetery.  I was not only sure, I produced the Find-a-Grave page for the people I was looking for.  I pointed out the background that clearly showed the other church so it had to be his cemetery.

He was quietly pondering how this could be when he asked me to point on the map he produced where I had found the graves.  He asked me if the plots were near the apple trees.  I hadn’t noticed apple trees.  I told him it was close to the smaller, fenced cemetery, three rows in from there.  He replied, “Well, that explains it.  I don’t have records for that part of the cemetery.  That’s the old cemetery.  My records start in 1897.”  The tombstones I had photographed were from prior to that.

I asked where I could find the older records.  He said there weren’t any.  Huh?  Evidently Price’s Church kept no records or if they ever did, they were long gone.  He said they all knew where everyone was buried or married to so they didn’t need records.  Great!  So I would not be finding a marriage record for my Ancestor 1’s sister, either.

The Reverend could see I was deeply disappointed and asked me why it was so important that I find this information.  I told him I was a teacher and was going to be retiring soon and was planning a second career as a genealogist.  I needed the records for a paper I was writing to become certified.  He informed me his daughter was also a teacher.  He thought for a moment and said he had been told by elders that there were no burial spaces remaining in that older section.  It was possible that the stones for the people I were seeking were sunken, which would have explained why the area looked depressed to me.  He said there had been several problems with sunken stones in that area.  He suggested I go back and look carefully at the ground to see if any remaining part of a monument might be visible.  I mentioned that the stones had deteriorated a great deal since the picture had been taken and placed on Find-a-Grave.  He suggested I spray the stones with bleach water and lightly brush the lichen off.  I thanked him for his time, said good-bye to the family, and was on my way.

I stopped back at the cemetery and kicked with my foot into the ground to see if I could feel a stone.  Nothing but the area was clearly sunken.

I examined a tombstone closer and could see that it had sunk:

When I had visited in the morning I thought that the stone was on a pedestal but that’s not the case.  Upon closer inspection, and moving the dead grass off the base, I discovered that the death date is below the ground level.  I would return with bleach and a brush first thing the next morning!

On my way back to town I stopped at a third cemetery – Burn’s Hill – hoping to check records in the office as I have never been able to reach anyone by phone.  When I arrived I realized why – there is no office.  I drove through and found lots of Harbaugh’s but the stones were all newer than what I was looking for.  On to the library…

I made one last walk through of the stacks to make sure I hadn’t missed anything from the visit yesterday.  The volunteer genealogist still hadn’t come in and there was no telling when he would. There were different librarians on duty so I asked them where I could find the Union Cemetery records.  Checking the database I wasn’t surprised to get the same response as yesterday – we don’t have them.  I signed on to a computer and finished searching the newspaper archives that had been digitally uploaded.  Nothing discovered.  I asked where I could find the newspaper that had been mentioned on the pedigree chart in the museum.  They had no idea.  I was calling it a night.  Hopefully, I’d find something tomorrow.

Making the Most of Your Research Trip – Cemeteries – Part 4

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 21 Aug 2016.

Last time I wrote about my meeting with the Cemetery Director on a recent research trip I took.  His records did not direct me to the grave stone I was seeking but gave me an area in which to look.  That was due to the re-internments of the stones from an older cemetery, Union, that had been exhumed when the land was sold.

I drove by the building that housed the re-internments.  I thought it was a large shed to contain the tools to maintain the cemetery.  Hmm.  Nothing noted it to be a mass grave.

When the road started turning I knew I had somehow passed where I needed to be so I turned around and looked again.  I parked and decided I might do better on foot.  Very quickly I saw the older stones laying flat on the ground.

The grass had recently been cut and the stones were covered with debris.  Having flown and then taken a rental car, I did not have my cemetery tools with me.  It was about 8:45 AM and already starting to get hot.  I hated to get all dirty and then have to be in that condition the rest of the day as I had two historical museums and a return trip to the library.  It looked like rain so I decided to go for it.

Let’s give a cheer for fast food!  I returned to the car and grabbed a knapkin I had from the Dunkin Donut stop earlier that morning.  This is what I was dealing with:

Underneath all that brown stuff in the picture was tombstones.  One lone Dunkin Donut knapkin and a bunch of dirty tombstones from the early to mid 1800’s.  Oh, joy!

After taking the pic, I started at the bottom right hand corner and walked hunched over using the knapkin as a fan to blow the grass and dirt off the flat stones.  It didn’t work very well but I kept at it.

By the time I got to the 3rd row (that’s the one the tall stone is in) and the 6th from the right (not visible above), I had found my man!  There was Bart Bear’s stone (not his real name) in far worse condition than when it was first photographed for Find-A-Grave.  To the immediate right was a smaller marble stone that was completely unreadable.  It sort of looked like there had been a lamb shape in the center at one point but maybe it was just my mind trying to make sense of the senseless.  I had assumed that per the cemetery and church records, that this stone listed as “Unknown” would have been Bart’s maternal grandfather’s marker as the church records stated they were buried next to each other.  These were the only two stones that were made of the same marble but why the grandfather’s stone would have been so small didn’t make sense to me.  Perhaps this was the marker for Bart’s missing sister, Barbara, who had not been recorded in church or cemetery records.  She had also been missed in census records having died between census years.  The only reason I knew of her was that one of her siblings had given her name to a family member who had written a genealogy of the family years later.

I cleaned the two stones the best I could and verified that the stone to the left was not a family member.  It, too, was difficult to read and I wasn’t sure at first.  After taking pictures, I then walked quickly through the remaining stones using the same fanning technique but with the knapkin a mess at this point.  I found nothing else.

I stopped back at the cemetery office to let the Director know I much I appreciated his help.  I guess I looked disarrayed as he asked if the stones were clean.  I told him they were not and had tried to blow off the grass and dirt with a knapkin.  He shook his head and told me the people who maintained the cemetery were not responsible workers and he would report them to their parole officer.  Yikes!  Wish he had warned me before I was out there alone wandering around. Would I have done something differently?  Probably would have kept my phone in my hand and not in my pocket.  Please keep this in mind when you’re out stone hunting.  I’ll soon write about some other unsafe really dumb things I did on this trip that I would not do again (well, I probably would but I shouldn’t)- stay tuned!

No Headstone? Here’s Some Ideas

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 3 Jul 2016.

“Memory has become a sacred duty of all people of goodwill.” Elie Weisel


 Hubby and I went to the cemetery last week – not to check a record, take a picture for a memorial request or to honor an ancestor.  Instead, we went to check on space availability for what would become our final real estate purchase.  It was a very weird experience.


 We grew up with the Jackson 5, literally.  There are some historical moments that most Boomers claim to remember for the impact that it made on the world and to them personally  – where they were when the Kennedys and MLK was shot, the moon landing, and 9-11, for example, but one of the most pivotal moments to me was the death of Michael Jackson.  Seriously.  I grew up about a mile away from the Jackson family household in Gary, Indiana.  As a student council representative as a freshman in high school I was placed on a committee to select a band for an upcoming dance the organization would be sponsoring. That was how I first became involved with the Jacksons…


 I am tone deaf – most people say they can’t carry a tune but for me it’s so bad that people ask my to stop singing  I can dance, though, and quite well.  So keep this in mind as I tell the tale….


 The committee met one day after school to listen to 3 bands that had been narrowed down, I guess, from others that had expressed interest in playing the upcoming dance.  The Jacksons were one of those bands.  It was before they were famous. I’m not sure if Dianna Ross was dating Mayor Hatcher then.  Likely she hadn’t yet arranged for all those talented people to transform the Jackson family into – The Jacksons.  Michael was still too little, as was Janet, when the band auditioned.  I’m older then both of them.  The song they played was not danceable.  Very weird beat.  


 I was not impressed with the Jackson’s performance and neither was the others on my committee.  Which says a lot about our ability to recognize talent or about how much practice (and the right coaching) makes perfect.  Either way, we selected another band.  Can’t remember their name, can’t even remember the dance very well but I remember the Jacksons because within a very short time after this they were everywhere.  


 Gary’s previous favorite sons were Karl Malden (who had gone to high school with my uncle) and George Karras, who’s brother owned the house next door to us and who I price gouged once but that’s another story.  Oh, Gary was also famous for the dumb song from the Music Man that repeats “Gary, Indiana.”   Gary was not known for music so your can imagine the city’s pride in the Jackson 5.  They performed a concert at Gleason Park, just 3 blocks from our home.  They sounded great that night.


 Like the Jacksons, my husband and I left Gary to follow our dreams elsewhere.  I haven’t been back there since 2001 when my mom passed.  


 When Michael Jackson died I was on a bus with fellow educators on I 75 south of Tampa coming back from visiting a then brand new state of the art community college that had been built out in the sticks.  It had been a tiring day and we were being driven back to where we had all parked our cars so we could go home.  A counselor who was sitting a few rows up had gotten a phone call and I heard her exclaim, “Oh, no. That’s …” and her words trailed off.  I knew she had an elderly mom and assumed something had happened to her.  The woman ended the conversation, rose from her seat and half standing, announced, “Michael Jackson is dead.”  


 I couldn’t process this sentence.  How could he be dead?  He was younger than me.  Certainly my lifestyle was not as stressful nor did I make the life choices that he had but….. he was younger than me.  Certainly I had experienced in my lifetime the passing of those that were young – several fellow students, friends of the family, colleagues and neighbors’ children.  But Michael, well, he was bigger than life.  In my mind, he was permanently young and invincible.  My memory wasn’t of him after the numerous plastic surgeries.  I still remembered the little kid and I was stunned.


 I told my husband as soon as I returned home that afternoon.  I reached the conclusion, on the drive home that day, that our preparation for death needed to occur.  So we scheduled an appointment with our attorney the following day and had our wills updated.  That was as far as we got – didn’t think further than that.


 A few weeks ago I received a thick packet in the mail from a rural Indiana county.  I was delighted to examine the probate file of a couple I was writing about.  My delight soon turned to sadness as I read that the grown children had to come up with the money for the burial, repay the man’s debts and take in their mom, all due to the lack of planning on the couple’s part.  When the mom died several years later the kids again had to put their money together to make sure the burial was paid.


 I don’t want that to be me.  Hubby and I discussed it and decided that he, too, was going to donate his body to science.  I’ve previously written about that so check out my blog Death and the Genealogist from 23 June.  He wants his cremains returned so that’s how we ended up at the cemetery last week.  


 Burial is big business and expensive.  I am thrifty.  We reached our decision of where to be buried based on 

  • where we live – we wanted it close to this area that we’ve called home for many years, 
  • what the place will be like in the future – have experienced too many forgotten cemeteries so we wanted assurance there would be some level of maintenance
  • reasonably priced

That led us to a local city owned cemetery.  On the way there the song, Stairway to Heaven, played on the radio.  Had to snicker about “and she’s buying a stairway to heaven…”

When we arrived we learned there was a problem (why is there always a problem?!).  The cemetery was running out of space.  We looked at the limited options and Hubby jokingly said it was kind of noisy, being right off the main street.  I laughed and reminded him we both grew up on main streets so it would be coming full circle.

In our community we can no longer be buried in ground.  Looking across the expanse I saw lots of empty space so I didn’t understand how there wasn’t much space left.  I was informed that many people didn’t have markers.  Lots of reasons for that – the cost, lack of planning, couldn’t decide, it aged and fell apart, and so on.

That made me really sad!  I recently did some client work and that was the case with the woman’s great grandma.  Buried between two of her children she was the only one with no marker.  The client was upset and said she was going to see that a marker was put up.  So I really wanted a marker


 The cemetery employee said we could order the brass plaque now and they’d put the final dates, included in the price, on it later.  We sat in an office and looked at insignias to add to personalize the plaque and wasn’t real impressed.  Discovered my real first name, with my maiden and last name, is too long for the plaque so had to go with initial of my maiden name.  Can only put the year of birth and death and no relationship to each other.  Wow, so much for helping out a genealogist in the future.  I will be leaving in the cemetery file copies of our birth and marriage certificates and the obits for our parents so at the very least, if requested, the future inquirer will have a start of a paper trail.  Check to see if that’s available when you do your planning.


 Yesterday, hubby and son were building a brick bbq grill in our backyard.  He had laid the cement foundation a long while ago but had never gotten around to finishing the project. Last night, he remarked about an idea that came to him when he was building.  I have to admit this is quite humorous to see how one’s mind works but here is the trail…. Building the bbq grill reminded him of my family stories about my grandmother’s house that had a bbq grill just like the one he was working on.  That led to him thinking about my mom who loved helping us with around the house projects and who would have loved to know that the crematorium had sent us a rebate after death because she had over paid.  That made him think about the cemetery we had just selected and the people who had no stones and why couldn’t inexpensive “stones” be used.  He recalled laying the cement for the bbq and he figured, if he could do it, anyone could and a cemetery base could be prefab and easy to install, too.  Always looking to recycle, why can’t someone use excess countertops, like Corian, and engrave the deceased’s name and dates, then affix it to the cement base?  I dunno!  Why can’t they?  Probably because there’s no money in it!  All I know is that as difficult and strange is the experience to select one’s final resting place for us, it’s done and we can happily live the rest of our lives knowing we planned til the end.