3-in-1

Mondays are my 2 year old's day with Grandma and Grandpa, so I decided to spend the day in a larger cemetery where I had several photo requests. I headed over to Berlin Township Cemetery with 12 requests, and another 95 names that were not requests. I usually try to find all the people with the same last names as the requested photos. It's easier for me to look for "Smith" and take a picture than it is to look for "Smith, John" and ignore all the other Smiths. Although I do check which "Smiths" already have photos and ignore them.

 A  little history about Berlin Township Cemetery. It's really 3 cemeteries in one location. Back in the 1970s, when Alum Creek Reservoir was being built several cemeteries needed to be moved; Blockhouse Cemetery (aka McNamara Cemetery), Berlin House Cemetery and the old Cheshire Cemetery. According to reports I've read, many of the headstones were in bad condition; being either broken or missing. When they moved the graves they were unable to identify a large portion of them. Today you will find a lot of markers reading "Unknown". Some of them have dates, some don't.

One of the reasons I like this cemetery is because they have a huge sign out front. On one side is a map of the whole cemetery and on the other side is a listing of all the people buried there! I'm not sure how up to date it is, but it does help. Unless you're looking for someone buried in the Blockhouse or Townhouse sections; or the person you are looking for is one of the Unknowns.
I spent about 3 hours here, looking for all the Lackeys (a big name in this area ~ with Lackey-Old State Rd. right around the corner),  Rusts, Nettletons, Thompsons, Gardners, and Janes/Jaynes. That last one started to really get to me. The spelling of the name is very inconsistent. In the end I wound up with 66 pictures. Of course when I got home I noticed the majority of them had to be rotated slightly. My head must not have been on straight!

After a 30 minute wait at Subway to get lunch, I went over to Sunbury Memorial Park to fill a few requests. I have maps of this cemetery with names, but I still like to stop in the office to get the info from the caretaker. She always tells me a little extra info about the people. Today I learned that one of the ladies I was looking for was murdered by her husband! Cause of death - gunshot wound. It's amazing what what you can learn from the index cards.
The Sunbury Memorial Park is right across the street from a really cool Fallen Heroes Memorial, so I ran over to get some pictures of it too. Unfortunately my camera's memory card ran out of space after only one picture. Oh well, at least I got all the headstones I wanted to.