"You seriously don't know?" or "What a way to go"

Many days when Ol' Br'er isn't out in the world scampering amongst the tombstones, he is ensconced back in the warren, in his shorts, and surfing the web researching dead folks. With more than 10,000 people on the family tree, there are plenty to research.

And all these cemetery visits just end up adding to the research list. Interesting people are found who just beg to be researched. Hell, they sometimes even get their own tree built to further the research effort and help to update Find A Grave memorials. 

Find a child who is not linked to its parents? Research and update the memorial.

Find a veteran without birth or death dates? Research and update the memorial.

Find someone with a surname in Br'er's tree? Research to see if they are related.

I think you get the idea. Rare is the time when Br'er doesn't have several Find A Grave updates queued up for approval. And all that doesn't include updates to cemeteries and graveyards themselves. Descriptions, directions, GPS coordinates - they all need to be checked and updated as well.

All this research has the natural result of reading a lot of death certificates as well as comparing data from multiple sources. More to the point, this reveals discrepancies between the various sources.

And these discrepancies drive me crazy with questions.

One of the most common is age or birth year. I have lost count of the number of times I see someone with conflicting birth years. 

Let's use fictional Mary as an example. Her Find A Grave memorial gives her birth year and 1881. And that is the year given on Social Security records. But! she appears on the 1880 US Census as being 2 years old. Skipping the lost 1890 Census for obvious reasons, we find here again on the 1900 US Census still in her parents' household, this time age 20.

Neat trick, that. No question that this is her on the Census. The location, parents, etc. are all correct.

The current movement of "Gender Fluidity" has nothing on prior generations. Hell, they had Age Fluidity and Spelling Fluidity in spades!

To be fair, specific age was less important in the 19th century. Exhibiting maturity and judgment were far more important and drove when one might be considered an adult in the eyes of the community.

The less said about spelling the better. Education was not as important as being able to work.

It is the errors and missing data on death certificates that befuddles me.

I am not talking about cases where a 'friend' or acquaintance provides the details on a death certificate because the deceased has no family around. No, I am talking about a spouse or child who apparently knows nothing about the deceased's parents, birth details, etc.

The initials "D.K." infuriate me. Don't Know. 

If I am generous I can forgive not knowing birth locations for parents of the deceased. But not even their names? 

Then again.....

I can't complain too much when there are so many examples in my own family. 

• My father did not know his grandmother's name.
• I had the first and middle names of one of my uncles reversed. This is what my father told me his brother's name was. We were both shocked when he died and saw the official paperwork and learned that we were wrong.
• My father reversed my first and middle names on some banking paperwork.
• My aunt (by marriage) did not, after decades of marriage, know my uncle (another of my father's brothers) was named for his grandfather.

I am beginning to sense a pattern here. My family knows next to nothing about each other.

Another habit of mine is reading people's causes of death. At least when I can READ it. Deciphering handwritten cause of death is second in difficulty only to reading written prescriptions. I mean, I have horribly poor handwriting but these people make me look like a medieval monk making illuminated manuscripts!

I thought about sharing the images of some of the more interesting cases I have encountered but decided against it. Yes, these are public documents. And yes, these are a century old, more or less. But on the ridiculously remote possibility that a member of the individual's family might come across this, I am opting to not share the images. I could spend a lot of time 'greeking' (a video production term meaning removal of all identifying data) the images, but frankly, that is too damned much work.

Some of the more typical causes I've seen:

• Stillborn (always tragic and heart-wrenching)
• Influenza (Gasp! These seem to be concentrated in the late 1910s!)
• Dysentery (I will forego the obvious jokes about what a way to go this is - that fruit is too low hanging)
• Various cancers and heart issues

Then there are the more unusual, though still tragic

• Suicide
• Bullet in the brainpan (that is literally what is listed as COD)
• Self-inflicted gunshot (sometimes noting to the head - yes, I have seen more than a couple of these)

And then there is my all-time favorite. I repeat that, for the families involved, all deaths are tragic - even those where the deceased is over 90 years old and passed away from natural causes. But this one, well I still laugh thinking about it. Before I came across it I would have bet any amount of money that it never happened.

"Sudden deceleration trauma". 

The individual died in a car wreck.

Thinking about it now, one could write an interesting book based on an analysis of death certificate data over time. Aside from the more colorful CODs like sudden deceleration trauma, breaking out the data by age, COD, date, etc. could be fascinating. 

Or maybe I am just a data nerd and no one else would give a damn.

Yeah. That is probably the case.

Flabbergasted

"I've never seen anything like it in my life!" - Albert Blossom

If you need another clue to place that reference, well, recall a two headed llama.

What? You don't know what a Pushmi-pullyu is?

Yesterday presented me with the cemetery equivalent of the Pushmi-pullyu. And I've never seen anything like it in my life.

But more on that later.

The whole day started with a sojourn out to Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta for one primary quest and one secondary.

The first quest was to allow Mrs. Br'er to find an illicit cenotaph she had read about on Facebook. It seems that the family erected a cenotaph without the knowledge or permission of the cemetery. The cemetery cannot legally remove it, the family refuses to move it, and the monument company that was hired to place it will not remove it without the permission or direction of the family. So it is a three way standoff.

Personally I don't see the big deal. It is a stone placed by the family in the family plot. It is their space to do with as they choose.

Still, it is a funny story. When you add in that the man was a former slave as is considered a Confederate Veteran, well that just makes it all the better.

If you are so inclined you can read more from the two Find A Grave entries for the man at Oakland and Marietta.

The secondary quest was to see the rather large and relatively newly placed sarcophagus for country music star Kenny Rogers. If you click through the link to his Find A Grave memorial there are several photos. The design is clearly symbolic. And we were taken aback a little when we realized that only his name appears along with reference to the gospel song, "Will the circle be unbroken?" There is no reference to birth and death dates, family, nothing. Just the name and quote. Odd. Perhaps there is a bronze plaque on order. Perhaps not.

In planning that little outing, I checked the surrounding area to see if there were any interesting cemeteries we haven't yet visited. I located a smaller one (fewer than 1,000 burials, if that counts as "small"). Mrs. Br'er jokingly asks if there are any relatives in it. When you have several generations of family in an area it is almost a certainty that you will find them in various cemeteries. So checking for family surnames is a virtual habit.

Yup. Found one of the main surnames. Checked the family tree and wouldn't you know it? 1st cousin thrice removed and his wife. This gives us a specific goal when we get there beyond just traipsing around.

What we found, well, that was the shock. Not that it is an abandoned cemetery. No, that is expected. Even though this is a city area and one would hope it would be maintained by someone - a civic association if not the city or county itself - it is clearly not been maintained in some time. Though there has obviously been some recent work done in terms of grass cutting.

No it was the camper that threw me.

Seriously. A full size trailer camper. The kind you tow behind a truck or SUV. With a rather large portable generator providing electricity. And it has clearly been there for at least several days as there is a used campsite fire spot nearby.

And lest you think this was as abandoned, too, there were some three people living in it. We saw them as we pulled into the cemetery. A couple were in a back section and one was near the camper. 

Naturally we attracted their attention and one of the women (it was two women and one man) engaged with Mrs. Br'er (yes, I deliberately used her as a decoy while I sought to accomplish our mission to locate the distant relative ASAFP so we could get out of there) while I stayed focused on finding the graves.

I don't think anyone noticed, but I kept head on a swivel and my hand in my pocket at all times. Yes, I had a certain protection on me ready to deploy immediately if needed.

Good habits came to bear along with more than a little luck. There was already a photo of the headstone on-line so I knew what I was looking for. I have a better than average knack at pattern and shape recognition. So it is not uncommon for me to be able to spot a particular sought after marker at a distance just based on shape.

Such was my luck this time. I spotted the headstone less than a minute from exiting the car and mere seconds after the woman approached us. So I headed off to it while Mrs. Br'er chatted. A quick check to confirm the details are correct, everything is logged, and I am done. Well, almost. There is a small headstone immediately adjacent to these graves. I check and it is a child with the same last surname. Obviously a child. But the child's memorial in Find A Grave has no photograph or GPS, nor is it linked to anyone. I upload a quick photo, GPS tag it, and mark it for follow-up and head back to Mrs. Br'er and the car. All in all less than 90 seconds from spotting the headstone to being back at my starting spot.

Now ordinarily I am a chatty person in a cemetery. But all my alarms are going off so I do not want to be trapped into a conversation at the time. So I usher Mrs. Br'er into the car and we head back to the warren. On the way she shares with me that the woman told her they are there cleaning and documenting the cemetery. 

Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. I have never seen anyone doing any cleaning and research who sets up a literal camp in the cemetery before. And I am not wholly convinced that I have now. Yes, there has be some work done. But that could be a cover to try and keep from being run off. And I have encountered too many people who push for "donations" to "help with the upkeep". Mrs. Br'er tells me that the woman admitted to having done only some 6 or 7 Find A Grave updates. 

The whole thing is simply too sketchy for my comfort. So sketchy that I was not even comfortable enough getting a quick photo of the whole setup. Not even surreptitiously. My Bunny Brain was telling me to get the hell out of Dodge. So that is what we did.

So I am left with the mental image that "Cemetery Squatters" is a real thing. I have come across 'urban outdoorsmen' camping near or next to cemeteries and graveyards before. Just never IN the cemetery. I may have to return in a few days to see 1) If they are still there, and 2) If they have really done any additional cleaning. Maybe I will take a photo from a distance if I do go back, just as proof of the whole setup.

Back in the warren I set about looking into the child and my cousin's line. The only thing I could find on the child is the Find A Grave memorial. Not really surprising considering she lived no more than one day. If that long. Birth and Death are the same day. But considering she is buried next to the only two people with the same surname in the whole cemetery. I was comfortable and confident enough to link her to them as her parents. And to put her in the family tree as such. 

But all that led me further down the rabbit hole (pun intended) on this branch of the family and some interesting revelations.

See, the cousin we started out to locate was named for his father making them Sr. and Jr. Only there is some contention in the documentation on whether the father was Wallie or Walter who was called Wallie. Most of the files list Wallie. Most, but not all. Especially not the early census records.

Whatever the name actually started out as it settled on Willie. So we have Wallie, Sr. and Wallie, Jr. Then Wallie, Jr. has a son and names him Wallie III. (Yes, I am leaving out the details so you will not be able to locate any of the graves or the cemetery squatters). Care to take a guess what Willie III chooses to name his son? 

Yup. Wallie IV. Makes for the first person with a IV suffix I have in the tree. I think. That is not something easily searched for. It is the first I can remember at the moment. If I am wrong, sue me.

A side note: In the research I learned that Wallie, Jr. served overseas in the military in the 1950s. I have a record of the whole family - including Wallie III and siblings - sailing to Frankfurt. That had to be an adventure for the kids! This record also confirmed that Wallie, Jr. married late in life, and who the mother of the children was. There was some question as the records are sparse, and until the 1950 - yes, 1950 - Census is released in about 11 or 12 years this travel record is the only document I have linking them all.

Cases like this used to make me wonder if I would someday bump into someone and, after hearing their name, realize that we are distant relations. I say "used to" because it has kinda-sorta happened already. One of the nieces on the wife's side has a friend of many years. One day the two of them asked if I had a certain person in the tree. I did. Come to find out it was one of the friend's direct ancestors who was in turn a direct descendant of one of my ancestors making us distant cousins.

You never know where all this research will take you. Just look at the niece's friend. One day the world is wonderful. The next she learns she is blood kin to me. Talk about a nasty shock!