Is there a word for going from cemetery to cemetery looking for the grave markers of ancestors? Word or not, that's what we did on Wednesday. Megan and my grandchildren (Robin, 3 1/2, and Ryan, 2)--and me behind the wheel--headed out of Plainfield on US 40 west toward Putnam County before noon, with lists of cemeteries and names, hoping to find the final resting place of quite a few of my daughter's ancestors (on her father's side), going back four or five generations. (Meg is very organized and thorough. She had a notebook with maps, lists organized by last names and cemeteries, etc. Pretty impressive!) It was a beautiful day with abundant sunshine and jacketless temperatures--a good day to be outside instead of doing housework!
We stopped at cemeteries in Stilesville, two in or near Fillmore, two in Greencastle, one near Belle Union, and looked for one (a family plot) up near the Brick Chapel area...but never found it. But what adventures we had along the way! (Robin called it an "inventure".)
Just because a cemetery is located in or near a town doesn't necessarily mean that it is easily located; and even when it is located, there isn't always a way to approach with a vehicle. Then, each grave marker has to be read in order to find the names in question. Sometimes, the markers are so deteriorated that the names can't be read at all. We tried to be somewhat systematic about our search, but that wasn't always possible. Sometimes, the names just jumped out at us. Other times, we walked and walked and were about to give up when a familiar name would emerge from a clump of unfamiliar ones. Meg took pictures of all, and when we had checked off the names on her list, we moved on to the next cemetery. (There were some challenges along the way. Suffice it to say I am SO thankful that the Fillmore Cemetery has an outhouse!)
Some notes of interest:
Fillmore, Indiana, is the homeplace of many of the McNarys and Bryans that we were looking for--but the town is in the middle of nowhere. We couldn't find a restaurant or a public restroom in the whole burg!
One of the cemeteries in Greencastle (Hanna Street) is landlocked. It is an ancient plot with no new burials taking place, so it is fenced with no street access to it, being surrounded now by DePauw University. The only way we could get to it was to park illegally. MOST of the stones in that cemetery were so worn as to be unreadable, and we found that doing rubbings on worn stones was futile because the surfaces were so rough with pock-marks and lichens and moss. It's a shame! We finally found who we were looking for there, but it took longer than it should have.
When we arrived at Forest Hill Cemetery in Greencastle, Meg and I looked at each other and said, "No way!" The cemetery was huge compared to the others we had been in. We were looking for the marker for Pearl Bryan, the relative that was murdered by decapitation back in the 1800's--and only a base, at that. There had been two markers erected for her but both had been vandalized over the last 150 years, so the markers have been buried on the property somewhere, with only a base remaining at her grave--a base with pennies left on it by visitors as lucky tokens that she may find her head in the afterlife. (It was never found.) In any case, locating one grave marker base in that sea of tombstones was going to be impossible; nonetheless, it was a pleasant cemetery, so we took a drive through. I noticed some older-looking stones up on a hill so took the road in that direction. As we neared the top of the hill, I said, "There's a Bryan." Meg asked which one. I had to move the car a few feet in order to get past another marker in the way to read the names off to her, but only got one name out before she started yelling, "That's one I couldn't find any records for! I didn't know where they were!!!!" We stopped. Meg was ecstatic. Quite by accident, we had found some grandparents (I forget how many "greats") who were the parents of Pearl Bryan. And, since many families were buried together, we found Pearl's be-pennied marker base nearby. What are the odds???
The last "inventure" of the day came in trying to find the New Providence Cemetery. The instructions we had said that it was south of Mount Meridian which isn't even a town. There is no town of New Providence, but I remembered singing Easter cantatas out of a New Providence Baptist Church in the country when I lived in Cloverdale, so we decided to look for the church, hoping the cemetery would be nearby. I turned south where I THOUGHT the sign said to turn. ("Go 3/4 mile and turn right.") Well! I turned onto a narrow country road which became a narrow, wooded, hilly, gravel road with a "dead end" sign on it, but I was thinking the church would be before the dead end. Right! The road narrowed to one lane and became rutted; the hills got steeper; the woods closed in. I'm thinking this is no place for my car, but there was nowhere to turn around. We crossed a "bridge" that was made of planks and a dry cement ditch meant to lead runoff water in a certain direction--then came to a steep hill. By now, I was just looking for a place to turn around to go back to civilization! When we crested the hill, a clearing opened up with four or five nice houses and people in their driveways and yards. Here, at last, was the dead end! We looked around for another way out, but didn't see any. We turned the car around and asked a young fellow--about 14-years-old, I'd say--if there was another road out besides the way we had come in. He just grinned and said, "Nope. Only one way out." The way we had just come in! The folks there had a sign calling their little piece of heaven "Sunshine Praise Point". The "praise" part should be "Praise the Lord that we made it home again!" There is no way that those folks can get in or out of that area in the winter, and Meg and I mused that the residents really must want to be left alone by the outside world--although the homes looked new and nice and normal. Did we happen upon some small religious community? We won't know because I will never drive back up there again to find out! (We eventually did find the New Providence Cemetery...the NEXT road down from where I had originally turned south...and yes, it was across the road from the New Providence Baptist Church.)
I don't know how many miles we traveled, but the children were really good in spite of the fact that there really wasn't anything for them to do. Both had car naps and both played with my blanket and flowers in the cemeteries. At one point, Ryan found a grave that interested him because there were "toys" on it. He stayed by it, quietly on his knees for a LONG time, totally out of sight of the rest of us. It got kind of spooky, actually, because when I finally got back to him to change his diaper, he said he had found a "mice" but it wouldn't wake up. "I wouldn't hurt her," he said. Huh? (Meg went back to the grave hoping she wouldn't find a dead mouse or something. Nothing, thank goodness!) And yes, we changed diapers in three cemeteries, around the graves of great-great-great-great-grandparents. (And perhaps another "great" in there.) Somehow, I don't think the old folks would mind if they knew their grandbabies were there for a visit!
We got a little sun and had an interesting day. We didn't run into a single other live soul in any of the cemeteries, and no funerals. Meg worried that I would be bored because the folks we were looking for weren't my relatives, but I love doing that sort of thing. We got home about 7:30, tired and hungry, but feeling like we had really accomplished something! Meg's heritage website will be a lot fuller now!
