Tuesday Tales: Cemeteries - Sometimes Places Neither Final Nor Restful

Just in time for Halloween, Mary's back with tales from some cemeteries.

I spent a Sunday “tombstone tripping” in Rhode Island, and the experience made me think of some of the things that can happen to ancestors’ remains after burial in cemeteries. In 2008, I went to the Old Cemetery in Suffield, Connecticut to find a number of tombstones. Unfortunately, the church had expanded right over the early Kent graves!  They were now buried under the church, and the tombstones were gone. I guess their early 1700s bones were dust by the time of the construction, but the situation was unsettling.

On this Sunday in Bristol, Rhode Island, I went to Juniper Hill Cemetery, one of the most beautiful cemeteries I have ever seen. It was located, as the name implied, on a gentle hill in a wood of juniper trees. You walk along and a cleared area of tombstones, usually all of one family, would appear. Two of my ancestral families were early settlers in Bristol and were founders of St. Michael’s Church and were buried there. The stones from St. Michael’s cemetery were moved to Juniper Hill, and some were moved back to St. Michael’s later and placed near the church. Members of one family, the Pearses, were in a nice clearing in the woods; however, I was dismayed to see their stones stacked in rows with a foot or two between each stone. Obviously, only the stones were moved. Where were their remains? And what about the stones moved back to St. Michael? Shouldn’t our ancestors be left in peace?

The early members of the Monro/Munro family were also moved to Juniper Hill to join later family members. One important member was missing originally. My 4^th great grandfather, Dr. Thomas Munro, lived in Bristol but died in 1785 on a trip to visit friends at the Davis farm in Stonington, Connecticut. He was buried there; however, his granddaughter, Lydia M. Cook, had the remains brought to the family plot in 1900. The original stone was also relocated and seems prophetic. Part of the transcription reads:

O, Death, thou hast conquer’d me.
I by thy dart am slain,
But Christ hath Conquer’d thee
And I will rise again.

I feel somewhat better about this move.  He was buried alone in Connecticut, and his remains and the original stone were moved to join the other family members in a lovely cemetery.  All these examples remind us that being buried in a cemetery does not guarantee that we will be left in peace for eternity.

– Mary Mettler

Photograph by Julie Nathanson, used with permission.


Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library

Blood on the Ramparts

Board member Jeffrey Vaillant sent this announcement. Jeff serves as Secretary of the Friends of Civil War Alcatraz.

The 26th Annual West Coast Civil War Conference will take place November 12-14, 2010, at the San Francisco War Memorial Building located at 401 Van Ness Avenue. Nationally known speakers will address the subject of coastal defenses so the conference is called Blood on the Ramparts. The conference is co-chaired by Fred Bohmfalk who ran the last conference in Sacramento and Brad Schall who is the Commander-in-Chief of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, a 6000 member organization. Along with Fred and Brad there have been about a dozen people (Jeff included) who have been planning the event for the past eighteen months.

After two days of presentations, Sunday, November 14, will be tour day of Fort Alcatraz, Fort Mason, Fort Point and the Presidio. The event is co-hosted by the Friends of Civil War Alcatraz and with the San Francisco Civil War Round Table. The key note speaker will be the renowned Civil War author and speaker James McPherson. His book Battle Cry of Freedom has sold six hundred thousand copies.


Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library

San Francisco Bay Area Genealogy Calendar: November 2010 Published

November 2010 events have been published on the San Francisco Bay Area Genealogy Calendar – a collection of local genealogical society classes, workshops and meetings within a 75 mile radius of San Francisco.

The November calendar includes thirty-eight offerings from twenty-three listed Bay Area genealogical societies. Two seminars are planned for Saturday, November 6, 2010:

Family History Keepsakes sponsored by Sacramento Regional Family History Center

Using and Interpreting Records with Michael John Neil sponsored by the San Mateo County Genealogical Society.

If you would like to add your group's events to the calendar, please email the information by the 20th of each month for publication on the 25th. (Please put "SFBA Calendar" in the subject line.)


Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library

Wordless Wednesday

California Genealogical Society

Board of Directors Meeting

Photograph by Kathryn M. Doyle, Oakland, California, 7/21/2010.


Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library

Tuesday Tales: Mary's Uncooperative Ancestor

Mary Mettler sent one more installment of her adventures on the road. Anyone out there have some clues about Oren PARKER?

Some ancestors just don’t want to be researched, and they let you know it! In 2008, I drove out to Westford, Vermont, which is in the middle of nowhere. My second great grandmother, Sylvia Parker, was born there, the daughter of Oren/Orin/Orrin and Lavina (Farnsworth) Parker. The Farnsworths have rarely been a problem, as they reported births, marriages and deaths to the various towns in which they lived in New England. Oren, however, left few “footprints.” I dug into the dusty town records and found very little. From other sources, I found that he and extended family moved to what was then Antioch Township, now Lake Villa, Lake County, Illinois in the late 1830s.

Over the next year, my cousin Aimee Miller and I did more digging. In the Westford census, Oren lived next door to an Aaron Parker, who was the same age as he was. Perhaps he was a cousin? Later censuses all reported that Oren had been born in Massachusetts. We searched and searched and came up with nothing! Other researchers provided possible fathers; however, land, probate and family records disproved them all. In Antioch records, we discovered that Oren was buried in Angola Cemetery, which was on his original land. Of course, he had no tombstone; however, the sextant reported the place of his burial. I was in Indiana on my way home, so, I decided to go to Antioch to dig some more there.

I waited until after rush hour to take on the formidable Dan Ryan freeway in Chicago. That’s when Oren started giving me fits! I struggled through bumper-to-bumper traffic, major construction, and closed freeway exits. When I finally reached the cemetery, I gathered up all of my camera gear for the various Parker and Farnsworth tombstones and, of course, the empty spot which was Oren’s burial plot. As I stepped out of the car, a huge rainstorm began! Okay, I just hopped in my car to go to the Lake Villa library. Halfway there, the rain stopped. Ha, I’ll fool Oren and sneak back to the cemetery. As soon as I stepped out of the car, the rain began again in earnest! So, back and forth I went until I just gave up and took pictures in the rain.

Later at the library, I discovered that Oren and his two brothers, Abel and John, were some of the founders of Antioch. But, to this day, Aimee and I have been unable to find Oren’s birthplace and his parents. We will continue to search and look forward to whatever tricks Oren might have to block our research!

– Mary Mettler 

Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library