52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 22: Cemetery – Oh, the Visits We Have Made

This is my second year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

My first visit I remember to a cemetery was the old cemetery at the Columbia State Historic Park in Columbia, California, that we visited on an 8th grade field trip. It was an informal visit, just a bunch of us wandering around looking at the oldest dates we could find.

Next visit was during the funeral of my grandfather, Tom Johnston, Jr. at Oakmont Cemetery in Lafayette, California in 1973. I don’t have much memory of the time at the grave site, but do remember the funeral and his open casket. I was a bit startled by it as it was supposed to be closed.

Once I started doing genealogy research in the 1990s, I made the effort to visit cemeteries. I revisited my grandfather’s plot and took photos of his marker: one of the  marker itself and one of my daughters next to it.

My daughters and I took a couple of road trips to visit cemeteries: once with their grandmother to Hilmar, California, where we checked out both cemeteries in town as well as records from the Covenant Church.

The other trip with my daughters was to Montana, where I was searching for records of my paternal grandparents’ families: Hork and Sullivan. We visited cemeteries in Hamilton, Anaconda, and Butte.

I accompanied my mother-in-law to the memorial service of my father-in-law’s sister, Ada, in Kankakee, Illinois. The next day I requested a side trip to Joliet to check out St. John’s Cemetery to check out all of my Sievert ancestors buried there. There was no office and we had to walk about the cemetery looking for their stones.

My husband accompanied me to cemeteries in Faulkner County, Arkansas, looking for Loveless ancestors of mine. We checked out seven cemeteries and got help from one person who noticed us wandering around and stopped to help us. He had helped the lady who created an index of the cemetery.

Lastly, my school girlfriend helped me find my husband’s ancestors buried in cemeteries in Ross County, Ohio. These tombstones can be found on FindaGrave, but I wanted my own photo to use in books or on my blog. Some, though, we didn’t find.

Documenting the stones with my camera always brings them closer to me. I study the stone, recording on paper their words. I try to listen – perhaps a hint for future research will be revealed from the beyond. But mostly, I find peace in being with family from the past.

Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.