Two Mysteries

Vans Valley Cemetery

I spend alot of time in the Galena / Sunbury area in Delaware County. On the northwest corner of  County Rd. 605 at the intersection of St. Rt 37 there is a small rise near the edge of a farmer's field. There are only 6 markers for the Lewis family in what is known as Vans Valley Cemetery. I lived less than 4 miles from this intersection for 20 years and never even noticed the markers. Granted they might not have been visible until recently. From what I understand, for many years the area was very overgrown and uncared for. Only within the last few years had the township cleared the land and repaired the headstones. I only knew about this cemetery because it was listed on FindAGrave. Once I knew it was there, I always looked at it as I drove by, thinking that one day I would stop and take some pictures. Unfortunately it is on private property, so "just stopping by" could be seen as trespassing. I would first need to get permission from someone, but I had no idea who to ask. Well, last time I was in the area, I had some extra time on my hands and it was a nice day, so I decided to stop.
I was a little frustrated because at the first two houses I tried no one was home. At the third house, on the other hand, before I even turned my car off, there was an elderly gentleman at the door. He informed me that he had owned the property for many years and that it now belonged to his brother who lived in Columbus. He gave me permission to go and take as many photos as I would like. I got the feeling that he may have been a descendant of the Lewises, but he never said so.

Four of the six headstones were legible, but for 2 there were only crosses. A little bit of research led me to believe that one is the marker for Robert Jr; as the cross is between Robert Sr and Rebecca (wife of Robert Jr.). The other, I was unable to figure out. It is between Lois (wife of Robert Sr.) and Thomas (son of Lois and Robert Sr.). My best guess is another child of the couple, as they had several that died around the same time. All of the death dates on the headstones are within an 8 year period. Another possibility would be the wife of Thomas, although I could not find anything that even stated he was married. The only names that are on any of the county cemetery transcriptions are Rebecca, Robert Sr, Lois and Thomas.

Later that same afternoon I was in Fancher Cemetery to take photos of the Needles family. I was easily able to follow the transcriptions to find Cubbage and Sarah. I posted the image on FindAGrave and several days later got a message from a descendant. They wanted to what the inscription on the marker stated. I couldn't read it from the photo, so I checked the transcription record. Sometimes whoever did the reading will include any information written on the headstones. Unfortunately, this one did not. I made a note to check the headstone itself next time I was in the area. Today I was only a few miles away, so I stopped by to see if I could read it. I could only make out a few words; When Christ..., appear..., shall...  I put this into google and within 5 minutes I found the answer! It was the King James version of Colossians 3:4 "When Christ, who is our / life, shall appear, then / shall ye also appear / with Him in Glory." I compared the verse to the picture and was able to make out even more words. I felt confident that this was the inscription.

These little triumphs are the reason I do this.

Memorial Gardens

I made the ritual trip trough the country today. Seems like every week I have requests for Sunbury, Galena, and Trenton; or at least some combination of these. Today it was Sunbury and Trenton. I also have frequent requests for Stark and Fancher, though not as often as the others. I made it out to these today also, and Africa, which I rarely have requests for.

Whispering Waters

Creek

Cremains Vaults

Walking Path

Memorial Rocks

Fountain and Bridge

 I had several requests for cemeteries I had never been to, one being Kingwood Memorial Gardens. From the main road, the cemetery didn't look like much; just a bunch of flat markers with little flower stands attached. I knew I would never find the marker I was looking for so I stopped in the office to ask. First of all it took forever for the office workers to stop talking to each other and even notice I was there! At one point I thought of just leaving and taking my chances looking for the marker myself. Once I got helped I learned that I would not have been able to find it anyway, as it was in the mausoleum. The guy from the office went with me and on the way drove through a newer part of the cemetery. I commented on how beautiful it was and he immediately went into his sales speech. The section was not like any cemetery I had ever been in. The Whispering Waters section is very landscaped with rock gardens, a pond and a walking path. Created specifically for those that wanted to be cremated, yet still wanted a nice place for their family to visit,  there are memorial benches and markers scattered throughout the area. It was so serene. It put ideas in my mind of a new letterbox to plant. I also think if I ever decide to be cremated this is where I would want to be "planted".

New Friends

Another first time visit was to Northlawn Memorial Gardens. Not as pretty as Kingwood, but the staff was much more helpful and friendly. I was even given a map to the gardens and was able to find the plaque rather quickly. While there I saw a cute little family of Canadian Geese. The little babies were trotting along behind their parents and when the came to a grave marker they would kindly walk around it like they knew it was something special.


The last cemetery I was going to visit today was in Gahanna. I didn't have the transcription for it, but I knew it was available through the library. I hoped the New Albany library had the information I needed, since I was not near the Westerville library. I was wrong. So I drove to the Gahanna library, surely they would have the information about their own town. Nope! It seems their libraries are branches of the Columbus Metropolitan library and all of the local historical information is housed at the main building downtown. I'm glad Westerville is not a branch and I hope they don't change that anytime soon. They have the whole set of Franklin County cemetery transcriptions, so I can almost always find what I need.    

Sorry but I don't have stats for today's trip. (I'm writing this many days later and just don't remember how many pictures I took.)

I'm getting tired of titles...so I'll just call this: 4/23/12

Yesterday I made a trip to some of my favorite cemeteries; Galena, Sunbury Memorial and Trenton. I also managed to drive all the way up to Stark Cemetery. I had a photo request for the headstone of a little girl named Phoebe. She died in 1855 at the age of 13. After doing a little research, I found that her parents were buried in Iowa. Her sisters, Almeda (d. 1853 aged 1 year), Frances (d. 1855 aged 6 months) and Emma (d. 1860 aged 2 months) are also buried in Stark cemetery. I can't imagine how it must have felt to have 4 daughters die at such young ages. I'm not sure why, but there was only a photo request for Phoebe.  Almeda was listed on FindAGrave, but Frances and Emma were not. Maybe the person requesting the photo didn't even know about the others. Phoebe was probably the only one who showed up on a census record. I know they are all siblings because the headstones all say: dau. of Z.P. and M. H. (Zachariah and Margaret).

I am always a little sad to visit this cemetery. The local kids hang out here, you can tell from all the beer bottles and graffiti. There are already a lot of broken headstones and it is not well taken care of.



I know I said I don't like going to cemeteries in Licking County because I don't have the transcription logs for any of them, but I was so close-by yesterday, and the photo requests had been out there for a long time.
The first of the cemeteries I visited was called Patterson Cemetery. I wasn't worried about having to walk row-by-row as there were only about 50 graves. I had never been to this cemetery before and was a little surprised to see that it was a field with 20 or so markers. The headstones were spaced very far apart, making me think there are a lot of graves with no headstones. I couldn't find Rebecca, the one I was looking for. When I got home I did a little more research on this one only to find out that I was in the wrong Patterson Cemetery. There are 3 cemeteries in this county with the same name. Apparently I was not the only one to get them confused. I found the same people listed in each cemetery. I was lucky enough to find a cemetery transcription on-line for the largest of the 3 cemeteries and learned that this was the cemetery Rebecca was buried in, not the one I had been sent to; and there was already a photo attached to her memorial. So I sent a message out to get the duplicate memorials listed in the right cemetery or deleted.

The next cemetery was a smaller, but very old, cemetery at the back of a small neighborhood in Johnstown. Again, I had no transcript for this one, but with a little luck and intuition I found it on the first try! As I was walking in I happened to look at the Veteran's Memorial plaque at the base of the flag pole and saw the name of the man I was looking for; Abel Jewett. Once I knew he was a veteran I decided to just target the headstones with flags. I wasn't sure this would work, but if it did it would save a lot time. Sure enough, the first headstone I looked at belonged to Abel. It was leaning forward quite a bit so getting a good picture was difficult.

Finally I visited Tuller Cemetery. Yet again, no transcription log. I was worried because I had been here before and knew that many of the headstones were too worn to be easily read. Then a thought struck. Look for a big marker with the last name; go to that section and look for Moses' wife, Sharloty. Usually I try to very methodical about looking for headstones, but something told me to just look for a big marker. So I did and found her headstone a few feet away from her husband's.

All done; 2 counties, 7 cemeteries, 6 photo requests, 23 photos needed but not requested, 10 found mistakes, in under 3 hours. Not a bad day (except for the 25 mph winds.)

I'm back!

You might think that I haven't been posting anything because I wasn't able to get out in the bad weather this winter. Well, that's not the case. There was no bad weather! I think we had about 4 days of snow. I was actually able to get out and take photos quite a bit. One thing that helped was that my husband started working from home. I could get out for 1 or 2 hours several days a week instead of having to wait for my "day-off", hope the weather was good and make a big trip of it. So I have been taking pictures, but I just didn't get around to blogging about it.

Green Lawn front gate on a foggy day.

I have also been working on several cemetery related projects. The first was a for a guy out west named Devon. He saw on FindAGrave that I had posted several pictures for some of his relatives. He was planning a trip to Columbus in the spring and wanted to visit his ancestors at Green Lawn. He was asking for advise and contact information so he could do as much research prior to his visit as possible. I hated telling him that to get the information from the cemetery office is costly ($3.00 per name); since he was looking for about 35 names. The alternative is to go through all the microfilm at the Metropolitan Library downtown. I offered to do this for him if he would send me the names and as much information as he could. He was so happy! I was able to find the majority of the names on his list and mailed him a packet including the death certificates, individual section maps of the cemetery, and a larger map of the whole cemetery. I'm not sure if he has been here yet, but I hope what I sent to him was enough to make his search easier. (The pictures of Green Lawn are from one of the trips I made to get maps for Devon)

Soldier's section.

Foggy day in October 2011.

The second project I have been working on is creating my own library of cemetery transcriptions. I made a list of all the cemeteries I visit and started looking for anything I could find about each one. I don't mind walking cemeteries row-by-row, but it's a lot faster if I have then headstone readings in hand! I found that many of the ones for Franklin and Delaware County cemeteries are available either on-line or at the Westerville, Sunbury or Delaware libraries. Licking County on the other hand is totally frustrating. Yes, most of the cemeteries were transcribed (back in the 1980's), but they were published in alphabetical order; not order of headstone placement. I can tell who is in the cemetery, but not where to find them, so I still have to walk row-by-row. Because of this I have been staying away from Licking County to some degree. This is unfortunate since there are a number of photo requests for Green Hill Cemetery in Johnstown. Anyway, I now have a 4 inch notebook with about 50 tab dividers holding all of the transcriptions that I have.

Green Lawn...again.

I went back to Green Lawn Cemetery on Monday. I had about 24 names in 5 sections. I knew it wouldn't take long because many of them were families. I really only had to look for 12 plots. But you never know when there will be workers mowing or a funeral occurring in the precise area you're poking around in, so I wanted to get an early start anyway. As soon as the last child got on the bus, I jumped in the car. A quick stop at Tim Horton's and I was on my way.

The first half of the day was fairly uneventful. I found most of the headstones I was looking for. Although I did run into one mystery; the Phillip Van Fossan plot, where I had a request for three pictures. I found the plot, but there were no headstones on it. All I could find was a small square cornerstone with the initials P. V. F. I find it interesting that there was a cornerstone, but no headstones. I assume it was a cornerstone as it was not near the center of the plot, but closer to the next plot. Maybe the cornerstone was purchased and erected when the plot was bought and by the time someone died there was no money for the headstones. Or perhaps the headstones were destroyed somehow. Oh well,  I guess I'll never know.

I finished up that round of pictures just before noon. I had no idea where to get lunch, but I knew there wasn't anything near the front entrance. Since I had never been out the back gate before I thought I would give it a try. I never worry too much about getting lost. I'm pretty good with directions and besides, I had the iPhone. Lucky me, there was a McDonalds right on the next corner. I thought about it and decided to eat as quick as possible. After all it was lunch time and I wanted to go to the cemetery office to get 4 more maps. I didn't want to interrupt anyone's lunchtime and get the double-glare. It's bad enough just asking for the maps! I already knew which maps I wanted so I gave the man my sticky note and waited. I noticed a pamphlet for the cemetery which had an index of famous burials and interesting headstones. That could provide me with something interesting to write about and post pictures of, I thought; so I grabbed it.

Coral appearing monument

Indian Chief

I was happy to see that one of my favorite monuments was on the list. If you've ever been to Green Lawn you'll probably recognize it. The pamphlet calls it a "coral appearing monument". It reminds me of the kinds of little graveyards I saw in Mexico.
Also on the list of interesting monuments was one of an Indian Chief. I had seen it on the way in and made a mental note to take a picture of it on my way out.
I also took a picture of a bronze fisherman, just because I was in the area. I wish I knew more about the stories of these monuments, but the pamphlet only mentions the names and locations. There are more on the list, but I will save those for another day.

Bronze fisherman

I also passed by a nice little family monument and the sun was shinning from behind it right through a stained glass window. It was so beautiful, I had to stop.




Ok, back to the task at hand. I got the 4 new maps and was able to find about 10 more family plots. I did get side tracked on one. I saw an older couple walking around, map in hand. My first thought was letterboxers? But the papers didn't look like clues, so I figured they were looking for headstones. I asked who they were looking for just to make sure we weren't out taking pictures of the same headstones. As it turned out they were from Washington (state, not DC) and they were looking for a long lost great-grand father. Luckily someone had posted a picture of his headstone on the FindAGrave website, so we were able to find it fairly quickly. There were several family members in that plot, but the headstones were very hard to read. At first I was mortified when the husband went to the car for a scrub brush and 409 to clean the headstones! But I got over it. After all they were his relatives and how much damage was it really going to do? I was just glad he was able to find them at all. My husband asks why I do this, and there's the answer. The satisfaction of knowing you helped some one find a puzzle piece that was missing.

Lots of Work

I was surprised to find out Tuesday morning that the baby was going to Grandma and Grandpa's. I just planned to stay home and do laundry since it was raining. Then around 10:30 it started to clear up and I got the fever.

Camp Chase Monument

I wanted to go to Camp Chase, the Civil War prisoner encampment cemetery, but then what? I only had 2 requests. Even if I had to search each marker, there were only 2,000 something of them, it wouldn't take that long. I know, it sounds like a lot of markers, but this is a military cemetery. All the rows are nice and straight and the graves are close together. Most of them are uniformly printed, so the soldier's last name is always in the same place. But what would I do with the rest of the day?

Green Lawn was close by, but that cemetery drove me crazy last time I was there. First of all, it's huge! Over 100,000 headstones, and over 400 photo requests. Although, I did already have much of the information about where the people were. I got that during the spring when I spent 2 full 6 hour days in the downtown library, going through their cemetery records on microfilm, A-Z! 
The second thing that drives me crazy about Green Lawn is the office staff. You can get a map of the whole cemetery online, but that will not help much in tracking down the headstones. For that you need section maps. There are about 100 sections, so about 100 section maps I would think. Well, you can only request 3 or 4 section maps per visit. And even that few will get you an icy glare from the person at the front desk.
Lastly, Green Lawn is not a normal cemetery. I like order and symmetry. At Green Lawn the sections are not square, nor even rectangular. Some are round, some are oval, some are just a blob. This makes for very odd groupings of headstones; some this way, some that way...but nothing resembling normalcy. Just thinking about it makes my ADD brain hurt.
But, it was close by. And there were so many requests. And I had spare time.

The first order of business was to look at my spreadsheet from the info I got at the library. What sections had the largest concentration of photo requests (6 months ago!)? How many of the requests were still open? After checking on the FindAGrave site, I found that about 90% were still open! What? Doesn't anyone go to Green Lawn? That sealed the deal. I felt compelled to go.

Camp Chase Monument

Since I didn't know how long it would take at Camp Chase, I went there first. It was just beautiful! All nice and neatly laid out. Being a Southerner at heart (and by birth) I got a little weepy walking all those rows. I saw a couple of sir names that I recognized; like Corley and Sease. They were both from South Carolina, so it's possible we could be related.
I didn't find the names I was looking for, which is sad. One of the requests even had a grave number listed for it, but that grave was missing a headstone. I don't know if the person was really buried there or not. Either way there was nothing to take a picture of. The other name, I just couldn't find. I took some pictures of the monuments anyway, just so I would have something to post here.

At Green Lawn I had about 29 names in 5 sections. Last time I was there it was for a letterboxing event and I had asked some friends to go in and get me a few maps, since I had already used up my daily allotment. So I already had several of the ones I needed, but I went in a got a few more anyway. I didn't think there was enough time to get all the pictures I wanted. Better to have too many planned than not enough right? (Kind of the same with letterboxing clues.) Somehow I managed to get them all! It wasn't nearly as hard following the section maps as it had been 3 months ago. I guess having more experience at this has given me more intuition as well , and I didn't give up as easily as I used to. I took the last picture, drove home and still had a few minutes to relax before the kids got off the bus.
Since it went so well, I like Green Lawn much more now. Requests are pretty well taken care of in my neck of the woods; only 1 or 2 requests in several cemeteries. I think I will make Green Lawn my priority for now. I'll try to get over there on my free days until the weather gets too bad. Then I can spend some time at the library researching the newer requests.
Bad news for my readers; spending so much time at the same cemetery is really going to make for a boring blog! Oh well. Maybe I'll find something interesting to write about.

Military Tribute

Since Monday is a holiday, and all the kids will be home, I probably won't get out to any of the cemeteries. To make up for that, I decided to post some pictures that I had previously taken.

Several weeks ago I was in the vicinity of the Ohio Fallen Heroes Memorial. I really love visiting that little park. (I even planted a letterbox in it, but it's gone now.)  The memorial was established in 2005 as a tribute to all of the men and women in uniform from Ohio that were killed in the Global War on Terrorism since September 11, 2001.

Ohio Fallen Heroes Memorial

Eternal Flame

The most recognized name in this park is Sgt. Keith Matt Maupin, from Batavia Ohio.
April 10, 2004- Maupin was captured near Baghdad,  Iraq,  when his convoy came under attack by individuals using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.
April 16, 2004- Maupin was listed as MIA.
June 28, 2004- Arabic-language television network, Al Jazeera, aired a low-quality video purportedly depicting Maupin's execution.
June 30, 2004- an Army spokesman said the video was "totally inconclusive."
March 29, 2008- an armed forces medical examiner confirmed that human remains recovered in Iraq were those of Sgt. Maupin.


Since I only have a few pictures of the memorial, and I have a military theme going, I will also post some pictures of veteran's markers taken in Westerville cemeteries.

War of 1812

Revolutionary War

Civil War

I had to look up what SAR stood for. At first I thought it was ASR, but that didn't bring up any results that made since. So I tried some other key words and realized it was SAR; Sons of the American Revolution.











 I also had to look up GAR. It stands for Grand Army of the Republic. Being in Ohio all of the Civil War markers I have found are Union Soldiers. I will have to make a trip to Camp Chase soon  so I can get a picture of a Confederate marker.

Spanish American War

I haven't seen any of the Spanish American War markers on actual graves, but there is a war memorial in Otterbein Cemetery and this is one of the markers featured. Now that I know what it looks like I will be able to spot its unique shape from a distance. I'll keep on the look out for a veteran of this war.  






    

World War I

World War II

Korea

Vietnam

Ok. I didn't think I would have any free time to go to a cemetery, but I realized I didn't have a Vietnam War marker. I just couldn't leave the list incomplete! I had to try, right? At least Blendon is really close so it's a quick trip. This was a tricky marker to find. It is similar to the WWI marker so it's hard to spot from a distance. I drove around for a few minutes before I spotted one. Then I realized that there is also one in the veterans memorial area. Next time, I'll look there first.

When I got home and started posting the pictures and writing about the Fallen Heroes Memorial, it dawned on me that I didn't have any markers from the Persian Gulf War, Iraq War or Afghanistan War. I did some quick research and found that there are at least 2 Iraq War veterans buried in Blendon Cemetery. So off I go...again. Unfortunately, the office is closed on Saturdays and if I wanted to find them I would have to drive up and down. That's like looking for a needle in a haystack! Blendon is a large cemetery. I actually found one of the two men, but he did not have a marker. A military plaque, 4 American flags, lots of flowers and little tchotchkes, but no marker. Oh well, I know there is another soldier buried in Berkshire Cemetery and he has a marker; I saw it on his FindAGrave memorial page. Next time I am in that area, I'll have to stop in and take a picture. Maybe I can get a complete set of military grave marker pictures.

Shots in the Dark

Today I started with a list of 10 names in 6 cemeteries; Hunt, Trenton, Stark, Blue Church, Sunbury Memorial, and Galena. I figured it would take awhile because I only had plot information on 2 of the names in 1 cemetery. All of the others I would have to walk row-by-row. But I was kid free again, so I had plenty of time.

Hunt Cemetery

I had been to Hunt Cemetery before and remembered there weren't very many headstones, maybe 150 or so. There's a small pull off to park in on the corner and a short walk through an open field to get to the cemetery. The grass had recently been mowed and being 9:00 in the morning all the clippings were wet. I'm just glad I thought to wear tennis shoes and not my regular flip-flops.

When I walk a cemetery row-by-row I always see which way the names on the headstones are facing and start with the very front row. (As opposed to starting with whichever row is closest to where I park.) As I was walking to the back of the property (western most edge) I happened to look over my left shoulder to adjust the camera strap. I saw the headstone I was looking for out of the corner of my eye. What luck! That took less than 3 minutes. And I got a photo of the husband's headstone as well.

I had 4 names in Trenton Cemetery. One Cheadle and three Walkers. I was hoping I could just drive through and find the names. It's times like this that I wish I had an automatic transmission. Even though I only had photo requests for 3 Walkers, I had looked up on the FindAGrave website and noticed that there were 4 other Walkers that did not have photos attached to their memorial page. I also learned from the county burials website that there were 2 additional Walkers that did not even have a memorial page on FindAGrave. Out of 9 Walkers I only found 3 with the drive-by method; and no Cheadles. I had the burial dates, so I knew about where in the cemetery 6 of the Walkers might be, so I started walking rows. Still nothing. Time to go find the caretaker, Rodney. He didn't even have to think twice about the Cheadles; pointed them right out. He had gone to school with the couples' kids. I had driven right by it and looked at it, but it was far off and low to the ground. From that angle I couldn't quite make out the name. He wasn't sure about the remaining Walkers. He pointed me in the direction of an area across the drive from the section I had already walked and said to start there while he went to the shop to grab his map. I found the headstone right as he walked out of the shop. It was one big family marker with 5 names on it. That just left 1 Walker. When I told Rodney the first name, he pointed right to the grave. He also went to school with this man's son. Now that I had all the pictures that I needed, the tricky part was to make it out of the cemetery. Rodney has great stories and we usually talk for a long time. I still had 4 more cemeteries to visit. As feared we talked about 2 hours! I learned why there is a field in front of Hunt Cemetery. The church that built the cemetery used to be there, but it was razed many years ago. I learned a little about the trend in headstone styles. Before the 1900s, they were made out of limestone, as that is what was available locally. Even when the railroads appeared, not many families could afford to have granite brought in from the east. As more families prospered it became more of the fashion to have big, elaborate, granite and marble headstones. Then the Depression hit and the headstones became smaller and more plain for a time. Then after WWII things picked up again.

I heard a lot of other things that I can't remember off the top of my head. Rodney even showed me the lot where he would one day be buried. Just in case I ever need to take his photo, I guess. By the time I got out of there I was starving. I took a look at my list and knew the next cemetery would be another row-by-row walk and it was a big, spread out area. So I decided to skip it; for now.

Blue Church Cemetery

At Blue Church Cemetery I was looking for Mary Gaston and her husband James. I had found pictures of their headstones on another website. It would have been easy to copy the images and put them on FindAGrave, but that is a copyright infringement. I needed to actually take the pictures myself. At least I knew what they looked like, so it was a pretty quick search.  I thought this cemetery was a little odd. There was a central drive with headstones on both sides of it. Usually you can see where the first headstones were put and as you go farther away from that point, the headstones are more recent. But this one seemed to have old and new mixed together on both sides of the drive. And why was it called Blue Church? I didn't see anything resembling a church. On my way out of the back side of the cemetery, behind some bushes, I found the remains of the church. All that is left is the church bell and a sign.

Bell from Old Blue Church

I had 2 names for Sunbury Memorial. One was left over from last week. The memorial page listed the lady as Marie Shannon Holland, while the cemetery office had her listed as Frances M. Holland. The memorial page also had an incorrect date of death; off by one year. This explains why I couldn't find her last time. It really didn't make a difference. She didn't have a headstone anyway. I already had the plot information for John W Culver. He was buried in a family plot with about 7 relatives. All the others already had photos attached to their memorial pages. I thought this was strange. It took me a few minutes to find him. As it turns out he was on the back side of the family marker. His mother was on the right side and his father on the left. When the original photographer took pictures they must not have walked all the way around the obelisk and missed seeing his name. It wasn't until I got home that I realized I already had a picture of him. I had taken it in the spring when I had a request for his nephew Jay. I'm not sure why I didn't just post the picture then?!?

My last stop for the day was Galena Cemetery. I didn't think there was any chance of finding this one. Daniel Weeks was buried in 1817. If there was still a headstone, it would probably be impossible to read. Again it was a walk row-by-row search. But where to start? This cemetery had 3 distinct sections of older headstone with sections of newer stones mixed in. Of course the Week family plot was in the last of the three! All of the headstones already had photos attached, except Daniel Sr. I did find Mary, Daniel's wife who was buried in 1811, so maybe his was still in good shape too. But I never did find it. I have a name and number for the caretaker, so maybe I can have him check his records and get a better idea of where Daniel might be. I also found the headstone of a mother and daughter with the last name Weeks that was not on the FindAGrave site. I wrote down all of their information and created memorial pages for them. When I went to attach photos of the headstone, I couldn't find the pictures. Was I just scatterbrained and forgot to take the picture? Or did someone not want their picture taken?