Let Me Ask Grandma

You know you are dealing with an almost forgotten cemetery when the individual trying to tell you about it needs to go back and check with Grandma for details.

And you know someone is in bad shape when they turn to ol' Br'er for help. Talk about going to a dry well.

I suppose some kind of explanation is warranted. If not, then I failed to pique your curiosity.

I was contacted by someone in the Social Media wasteland who was impressed by my ability to find cemetery data relatively quickly. I would not say my skills are that good, but, on the other hand, a few decades as an IT analyst may have paid off. 

Nah!

Anyhoo, the person recalled a cemetery from her childhood. Unfortunately, the area is under development, and she was concerned that it may be destroyed. 

Ok. A noble effort. 

The first thing was to see if the cemetery appears in FindAGrave. Short answer: It did not. At least where she thought it was located. But it has been decades since she was there. Her memory was fuzzy. Thus the statement, "Let me ask Grandma." 

I cast a wider search net to see if the cemetery might not be exactly where her memory placed it. I found one, 13 graves (actually 11 - there are two duplicates recorded) not too far away. It was not the one she was remembering. But as I soon learned, it has one of my 1st cousins 5x removed with her husband and some descendants. This I file away as somewhere to visit the next time I am in the area.

Once we had a more precise location, I rechecked and confirmed that it was not recorded. My contact also went to it and photographed the markers. That allowed us to search FindAGrave for their individual memorials.

Nada. 

What we have here is a missing, almost forgotten cemetery and a number of unrecorded graves.

Before taking any other steps, I built out a family tree to see if I could link the names on the headstones. Was this a family cemetery? Was it a church cemetery? (Ok, church graveyard for the pedants in the crowd.) 

I learned that there are two primary and two secondary families involved. Specifically, there are three Middlebrooks sisters buried there, two with their husbands and one child of one sister. The two husbands are Hollis and Montgomery. Additionally, there is an infant Montgomery. Lastly, there are two grandchildren.

I named the cemetery Hollis - Middlebrooks for the two primary families. Hollis came first because that was the first name I came across and because it is the name that appears the most on the headstones. Middlebrooks came second. In retrospect, I think this was a Middlebrooks family cemetery, and the husbands just ended up there. More on that later.

Until I had done all this research, I was considering just passing the information along and seeing if someone more local might be interested in picking up the torch. But now I was hooked. I had to see it through. 

Recall the second cemetery I noticed earlier on? The one with one of my distant cousins? While I cannot prove anything, it appears that her husband is a first cousin to the Hollis I am researching! 

Unfortunately, the location is almost an hour away from the warren. This is going to take the better part of the day. I make certain to take all my cemetery excursion tools with me, including my ground probe. 

Oh, yes. I am compelled to take up this one myself! I have too much invested at this point!

Once I arrive, I let my contact know I am there and starting on the research, and she joins me in a few minutes. 

The first thing we do is walk the perimeter to ensure it encompasses all the graves. There is one fieldstone that is not marked with a grave flag outside the line. I probe around it and the probe easily sinks several feet down. This is a good sign that the soil has been disturbed to that depth. Undisturbed soil - soil that has never been dug up - has much greater resistance. The probe seldom goes in more than a few inches. So we secretly move the flag a few feet out so that the probable grave falls within the overall cemetery perimeter.

After creating the cemetery record in FindAGrave, I begin adding each grave, linking families, adding more photographs, and setting GPS locations for each one.

Good thing I reserved substantial time for the effort!

B. M. Hollis was where I started my research and why I (almost certainly incorrectly) first named the cemetery Hollis. Would you believe his name was Bartley? Most likely Bartley Martin Hollis.

T.C. Hollis turned out to be Talithia C. (Middlebrooks) Hollis, 1st wife of Bartley (he married a few years after her death and fathered several more children with her). She was the first Middlebrooks I noticed but should not have been, as I will explain later. No clue as to what the 'C' stands for!

As best I can uncover, little Isaac S. Hollis was the only son of Bartley and Talithia. That had to be soul-crushing for them. 

Permelia, here, should have been the first Middlebrooks I noticed. But I was not paying close attention and missed the obvious appearance of her name on the headstone. She is a sister to Talithia.

Permethia's husband - Bluford Terrell Mongomery. So help me, his name was Bluford. It appears that way on many records with it clearly spelled out. No chance for mistaken handwriting!

I am confident in saying that I don't think I shall ever encounter a living Bluford!

Little Hale passed at a mere 9 months and 9 days old. He was a son to Marcus Judson Hollis and his wife, Laura Felix (Haile) Hollis. Seriously, all the records list her name as Felix. It may have been Felicia, but it was not recorded that way so far as I could find. Marcus and Felix are buried in the nearby Rutledge City Cemetery.

Marcus was a son of Bartley M Hollis through his second wife, Mary Ann (Gresham) Hollis, making Hale one of Bartley's grandchildren.

Speaking of grandchildren, Little Pearl Stanton is another of Bartley M and Talithia's through their daughter, Ollie Jane Hollis.

Ollie Jane married Isaac Anderson Stanton. There is a marker next to their graves in Circle View Cemetery in nearby Social Circle. It reads, "In memory of Little Pearl Stanton Age 1 year." That FindAGrave memorial gives her dates as Dec 1878 - 9 December 1879. 

I am convinced that the Circle View stone is a cenotaph, and Pearl's actual grave is here. Her parents passed away in the early 1930s (Isaac in 1931 and Ollie Jane in 1934) - more than 50 years after Pearl passed away. Circle View lists only about two dozen or so graves dating from 1879 or earlier, and the cemetery is several miles from where Isaac and Ollie lived at the time. It would make no sense for them to take an infant daughter that far for burial where there was an existing family cemetery much closer. Further, looking at the two stones, the one here is clearly of the right look for the period, whereas the Circle View stone looks much newer in style.

My theory is that they wanted something closer to their gravesites to remember their infant daughter lost a half-century earlier. 

Oh! The Circle View record mentions a Middlebrook Family Association. Put a pin in that for later!

The following two graves are less certain. I have to speculate on who they are based on what I could make out on the stones and what I could learn building the family tree.

First up was a child's grave. My ugly boot in the lower left-hand corner gives something for scale (I did not have a banana. Sorry. Internet joke there.). 

I could just make out what appeared to be a J or T and F Montgomery. Looking at the family tree, I found Talulah F Montgomery, born about 1863. She was a daughter of Bluford and Permelia and only appears in one record - the 1870 US Census, where her age is listed as 7. That page was enumerated on 1 June 1870, so the odds favor her being born between June 2 and December, 31 1862. That is a 7 month period vs. the alternative period of January 1 and June 1, 1863 - a 5 month period. The age recorded on the census is "as of last birthday," so she had to be born in one of those two periods (Ok. Was probably born in one of those two periods, assuming whoever answered the census did not screw up. Like that would ever happen.) 

Perhaps someone will clean the stones with D/2 one day, and more can be learned from the stone.

Second up was an adult's grave. The top slab was leaning next to the false tomb base.

There is clearly a lot on the stone, but all I could make out was the beginning, "Sacred to the memory of Martha Jane Roberts." But, again, D/2 might reveal more.

But I had Martha Jane in the tree already. She was born Martha Jane Middlebrooks in 1829, a sister to Talithia and Permelia. 

Martha Jane married Silas Robertson in 1851 and had at least (probably only) one child, a son William Franklin Robertson in 1854. She passed away before 24 Aug 1859, though the exact date remains a mystery. I know she passed away before 24 Aug 1859 because of her father's will. That is the date he signed it (he lived until 1861). In the will, he names William Franklin Robertson as a grandson receiving the share of the estate that would have gone to his deceased daughter, Martha Jane Robertson. 

 This will was that of Isaac S. Middlebrooks. He was the father of Martha Jane, Permelia, and Talithia. All the evidence now leads me to speculate that he and his wife, Olly (Phillips) Middlebrooks, are in two of the 20 unmarked graves here. That makes the most sense when you consider three sisters are buried here. If I had to bet, I would place my money there.

I mentioned earlier that I found that there is a Middlebrook Family Association. And it appears to be active. I have dropped a message to several listed association contacts sharing what I have found. No replies yet, but it has only been a few hours. 

Still, I cannot imagine they will be anything less than ecstatic at all the new data.

I can't believe how much time I have sunk into this. And I am not even related to them!