Forgotten in a maintained cemetery. It is a thing. I learned of it today. I suppose I have known it all along. Or at least have seen it even if I hadn't actually consciously realized it at the time.
To explain I should backtrack some.
As I have mentioned in prior chapters, I inherited the family genealogy some time back. Having pretty much hit a brick wall on every ancestor branch at one level or another I decided to push out and research all the various branches and sub branches - all the aunts, uncles, and cousins. Even those seriously far afield. You can appreciate how many thousands of people this has turned into with many more thousands to research.
I have a 'thing' for research and logic. This can be the mental equivalent of eating potato chips. Easy to start and hard to stop. And about as detrimental to one's health,
Last night - just for some light mental exercise mind you - I was perusing a census from the 1800s. I was looking at who lived around one of my ancestors at the time. One thing led to another and I realized that I was seeing names that applied to a semi-forgotten cemetery in the area. I had noted it before, but had not make the effort to go investigate it.
This lead to the realization that one of my distant female cousins had married into that family! She was one of the branches I had not yet attacked. Her and her sister.
Down the rabbit hole I go.
Several hours later and I have fleshed out a lot of both sisters marriages and children. More of that in a moment.
A bit more background:
A year or so back I found some of TW's kin's (distant uncle, aunt, cousin and her husband) graves in Hollywood Cemetery in Atlanta. Our trip there to locate the graves also led us to another cemetery a few yards down the road from Hollywood Cemetery: Magnolia Cemetery.
Naturally this meant we had to explore Magnolia, too.
Unlike Hollywood which has only about 15% of its space under "Perpetual Care" leaving the remaining acreage - substantial acreage - essentially abandoned and overgrown, Magnolia is about 97-99% perpetual care. I use these percentages for Magnolia because there are clearly graves around the borders that are not cared for as is the majority of the property. Whereas the main grounds are mowed and (to a lesser extent) trimmed, the border is being allowed to encroach on the graves there.
Back to last night.
Well sumbitch. Doing that research last night reveals that I have a cousin in Magnolia! Sadly, he had never been recorded in Find A Grave. His wife had been. But he is listed in a book of all cemeteries and graves in the region done by a local historian in the 1930s, so he clearly had a headstone at the time.
Back to present day. Time to go looking for my cousin!
Today was another gorgeous day. Well, except for the lingering fog of pollen. I hate the taste if pollen. At this time of year you really can taste it. We are off tombstone tromping.
I noted earlier how the borders of Magnolia are not so well maintained. Well, the whole site could do with a higher grade of maintenance. I realize that it is not really the cemetery's responsibility, but I still wish that it would take on the effort to do things like reset fallen markers. More on that in a moment.
Those ill maintained border sections? I spotted a relatively recent burial literally back in the bushes surrounded by obvious unmarked graves.
Bizarre.
We have no idea what kind of marker my cousin and his wife might have. Or even if they have one at all. This means a concentrated gird search of each and every marker. Row by row and section by section. The cemetery has a mixture of headstone types, too. Some are upright, others flat. Stone mixed with bronze. Uprights are easy as you can read most of them at a distance.
The flats are another matter entirely.
We quickly realized that our search was going to be much harder than we anticipated. A vast number of the flat headstones are literally hidden! These images should give you a good idea of what we found (or could not find in so many cases).
Sometimes the only indication of a headstone or marker is dead or discolored grass.
A frightening number of these are deeply sunken into the soil. Obviously no family is visiting and tending the grave. Nor is the cemetery doing anything to preserve them. Hell, it is easier to run the mower over such spots.
Lost in a crowd. The cemetery is not exactly forgotten, but so, so many of these graves are.
What shocked me more, I think, was that so many of these are VERY recent burials. As in less than 10 years old. That makes me wonder if the cemetery is deliberately getting them installed so deep.
About halfway through the cemetery I decide there are simply too many unmarked or 'hidden' markers to make finding the two we were searching virtually impossible to find. If they even existed in the first place. So I call 'no joy' and abandon the search. We opt to wander about for a few minutes to simply look at the artwork.
Son of a ....! There is his marker. And I suppose the one next to it, face down in the dirt, is his wife. It has the same shape as his.
So end the end, mission accomplished. I will take the win.
Rambling through the cemetery something drew my eye. I can't say for certain what or why, though I can speculate that the combination of a photo and the same birth and death year caught my sub-conscious.
July to December 1941. 5 and a half months. Not much time for photographs. And looking closely the infant's eyes are closed.
Just damn. Losing a child two weeks after the US is plunged into war. Life can be cruel.
I feel pretty confident that this is a post-mortem photograph. The only image these parents would ever have of their son. I know the practice was common in the 19th century. This, though, is perhaps the latest example I have personally encountered.
All in all a sobering day seeing many things we have never seen before.
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