Find a Grave
Jul. 18th, 2017 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadnessThat was the theme of the day. Mom wanted to find her grandparents in one cemetery, her mother's sister and brother in another and to show me my paternal great grandparents in a third. This last one was easy enough as they knew where they were but for some reason we've never gone to them which is bizarre because it's the same cemetery as my paternal AND maternal grandparents. Dad’s family is odd, not particularly close in some ways and very in others but why in the world we’ve never been to his grandparents’ grave and had to be told about them by his cousin earlier this year is anyone’s guess.
We then went to Fairview Cemetery in Burgettstown to look for the Ms (my great grandparents on Mom’s father’s side) with only knowing ‘they’re by the trees.’ Um tehre are many trees here and all five brothers spelled their surname differently, don’t ask because I have no idea why. We didn’t find them but I suggested find-a-grave to see if we could locate it that way. I will say I want to spend more time in the cemetery (which is directly across from the h.s. football field I spent 4 years marching in but I never went to the cemetery). It’s a strange cemetery. The graves are higgly piggly not lined up in any way. They’re perpendicular to each other, parallel, practically on top of one another. Then there’s a section of tiny headstones with numbers so pauper graveyard but there’s SO many of them, too many for a small town. Prison? Asylum? I truly need to know so I’ll have to investigate it.
Then we went to St Patrick’s cemetery in Oakdale. My great grandfather, Giovanni and his son, Libertino share a headstone there but in the last decade or so no one has gone out there sadly. Worse, Grandmother’s siblings Mary and Joseph who died of flu in the same week are there but no one knows where. “over the hill near the road” was as close as Grandma would ever say. Why she never found them or put up a marker is anyone’s guess.
Mom misplaced the grave in her mind but I hadn’t. I found John and Albert (their Americanized names) and the grave was in shockingly good shape except another headstone from up the hill had fallen and landed against their stone.
Find a grave had zero info on Mary and Joseph nor the Ms nor my dad’s relatives in Fairview I didn’t even know about until we got back. I’m very annoyed that almost all census data is no longer free.
But there was a bit of story fodder in all of this. Returning to the car, I found a grave that said Elizabeth & Theresa (mother and daughter) and elizabeth’s date of death was listed as ‘unknown.’ Oh the questions that spawns. And in the other graveyard was a tombstone entirely in Greek. Neat.
The worst part of it was it was 92 today but with the humidity it felt like 100. Whee.
We then went to Fairview Cemetery in Burgettstown to look for the Ms (my great grandparents on Mom’s father’s side) with only knowing ‘they’re by the trees.’ Um tehre are many trees here and all five brothers spelled their surname differently, don’t ask because I have no idea why. We didn’t find them but I suggested find-a-grave to see if we could locate it that way. I will say I want to spend more time in the cemetery (which is directly across from the h.s. football field I spent 4 years marching in but I never went to the cemetery). It’s a strange cemetery. The graves are higgly piggly not lined up in any way. They’re perpendicular to each other, parallel, practically on top of one another. Then there’s a section of tiny headstones with numbers so pauper graveyard but there’s SO many of them, too many for a small town. Prison? Asylum? I truly need to know so I’ll have to investigate it.
Then we went to St Patrick’s cemetery in Oakdale. My great grandfather, Giovanni and his son, Libertino share a headstone there but in the last decade or so no one has gone out there sadly. Worse, Grandmother’s siblings Mary and Joseph who died of flu in the same week are there but no one knows where. “over the hill near the road” was as close as Grandma would ever say. Why she never found them or put up a marker is anyone’s guess.
Mom misplaced the grave in her mind but I hadn’t. I found John and Albert (their Americanized names) and the grave was in shockingly good shape except another headstone from up the hill had fallen and landed against their stone.
Find a grave had zero info on Mary and Joseph nor the Ms nor my dad’s relatives in Fairview I didn’t even know about until we got back. I’m very annoyed that almost all census data is no longer free.
But there was a bit of story fodder in all of this. Returning to the car, I found a grave that said Elizabeth & Theresa (mother and daughter) and elizabeth’s date of death was listed as ‘unknown.’ Oh the questions that spawns. And in the other graveyard was a tombstone entirely in Greek. Neat.
The worst part of it was it was 92 today but with the humidity it felt like 100. Whee.
