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.