Done? Ready to continue? Good. Let's go.
Papa Br'er wanted to do "Flower Day." This means two things. First, he has "tactically acquired" several cubic feet of silt flowers. (If you are unfamiliar with the term, ask any military veteran to explain it.) And second, he wants to go and place them on the graves of family and friends.
This means a busy day for Br'er serving as chauffeur and general flunky. Today was no different. These excursions always entail a visit to two cemeteries. One is the sizeable perpetual care where Papa Br'er's parents, grandparents, and numerous friends are interred. The second is the small family cemetery noted above.
Today included a third location to place flowers on one of Papa Br'er's aunt's grave for one of his cousins. But that is not relevant to the matter at hand.
The first stop was the large cemetery. We split up to be as efficient as possible. Papa Br'er took the graves of his childhood friends. I took the family (primarily because I knew where these are). Because we got an early start, and I thought to take my cemetery gear bag with me, I was able to take a few extra minutes at each headstone to clear back the encroaching grass, weeds, and dirt. And to brush off any debris on the marker. Everything looked much better when I was done if I do say so myself.
Exercises like this inevitably mean hearing tales from Papa Br'er about the people whose graves we are decorating. Sometimes this means uncomfortable moments for Papa Br'er. Today involved one such moment.
We were decorating the graves of three brothers Papa Br'er hung around with 'back in the day.' He paused to read the dates on the markers. I mention that one looks more like a father or uncle to the other two. His birth year reads 1911 whereas the other two were born in 1937 and 1939. This, Papa Br'er confidently announces, is wrong. The third brother was not that old.
Naturally, this is a gauntlet thrown down to old Br'er. I whipped out the smartphone and executed a quick search on the elder brother. The first thing I pull up is the 1930 census. Hmm, his age in 1930? 19.
This was a stunning revelation to Papa Br'er. It was a classic "I now question my whole life" moment. And it was glorious.
Then it was off to the family cemetery mentioned at the outset.
And to the Great Discovery.
And to the Great Discovery.
Just in case you haven't read the previous post, allow me to pull an Inigo Montoya and "sum up."
This is a small cemetery in a heavily wooded area that is, fortunately, next to a gravel road. It has at least two generations of my direct ancestors buried there. Possibly more in unmarked and unrecorded graves. It is near the homestead site where my paternal grandfather and his siblings were born. I have been working over the years to find the names of all those buried there that I can. And to uncover the relationships of each to my family. A married couple there, H G and Judie Lane with hand-marked concrete slabs remain a mystery (I have found the relationship to me line for all the other marked graves, and for those unmarked but reported or suspected to be buried there. Yay, me!)
I suspect the reversed "N" is intentional rather than an illiterate error.
We occasionally visit to clear brush, maintain the site, and swap out flowers in an effort to protect the cemetery. The reasoning being, if it looks visited and maintained then it less likely someone will disturb or destroy it. Hence "Flower Day." You can appreciate how many times we have walked these grounds over the years.
Imagine my surprise to see something new.
I noticed a straight line where I had not seen one before. Nature is not a big fan of straight lines, so it stood out in my mind.
Can you spot it?
How about now?
I grabbed my tools and started digging. What I found as a matrix of roots holding a combination of dirt and duff (Yes, that is a proper word in this case. It means 'decaying organic matter of a forest floor."). Some of the roots were upwards of a quarter inch thick and had to be cut. They were too thick and firmly in the ground to just pull up!
The whole thing eventually rolled back like a section of shag carpet revealing a slab marker no one - and I do mean no one - has ever recorded. It does not even appear in the volume of cemeteries published by the county historical society.
This is clearly a child's grave. It measures about 4 feet long and about 2 feet wide. H G Lane's marker is about 5 or 6 feet to the left as you stand looking at this marker in the photo.
"Ok, gang! We've got a mystery to solve!" - Fred Jones
Seriously? You don't know Fred Jones? Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo? Come-on, man!
Name, location, and size are good clues that this is a child of H G and Judie. So I dusted off my prior research to (unsuccessfully) link the Lanes to the my tree.
H G was Harrison Greene Lane (1825 - abt 1861). He married Judith Leak "Judie" Maddox in 1844. They went on to have several children :
Francis Jane (1845 - ? - still researching)
Joseph Laban (1848 - 1938)
Harrison (1850 - ?)
John Dixon (1850 - 1898)
James Charles (1851 - 1942)
William Bell (1853 - 1924)
Eliza A (1857 - 1954)
Harrison and John Dixon present a puzzle. Harrison appears on the 1850 census age 6/12. That page was dated September of 1850 making his birth March 1850. John D first appears on the 1860 census age 10. Harrison does not appear on the 1860 census at all.
What the . . . ?
Additional research fo John D gives a birth of 12 Mar 1850. Nowhere is there anything indicating John D and Harrison were twins. For the moment I am treating them as separate people. And based on that have a Find A Grave memorial for Harrison . But, I am seriously reconsidering this and facing the aparent likelihood that Harrison was renamed John D at some point in the 1850s. That fits the data better. More on this later.
Harrison Green died intestate in 1861. Judie does not appear in the 1870 census.
Joseph, John, Fanny (Francis), and Mittie (Eliza ) appear together on the 1870 census with 22 year-old Joseph as the head of house. Clearly their parents are dead by this point.
But nothing about Alace.
I keep building out the Lane Family tree and find a copy of a handwritten family tree (list, really) for Joseph Laban Lane. It appears to be writen by one of his children as it refers to him as "Papa" several times.
It is a good thing I have atrocious handwriting. Being able to read what people like me write makes reading what people like this write.
Two things leapt out from this handwritten version in comparison to what I had found from all the other sources.
First, no one named Harrison is on the handwritten history, though John Dixon is.
Second, Alice (who died in infancy) is listed as being born between William Bell and Eliza. These two I have birth dates for!
Let's look at the first item. I know that Harrison was born in March of 1850 because he was 6 months old in late September of that year. And, John Dixon's birth date is given as 12 mar 1850. Let's think about this. There is noting on either the 1850 or 1860 censuses, nor in anything else indicating that Harrison and John Dixon are twins. Indeed, the data would tend to indicate that they are not. The only other logical conclusion then is that at some point between the two censuses Harrison was renamed to John Dixon. It is not like that was an unusual occurrence back in the day. And, it is not as if there was anything preventing parents (or even the person) just changing a name. It did not have to be filed with a court or the government.
So, I am now leaning to the conclusion that Harrison and John Dixon are one and the same, and that the Find A Grave memorial I created for Harrison should be deleted. Sadly, of all the children of Harrison Green and Judie, John Dixon is the only one whose grave I cannot find. He married in 1881 and fathered several children before passing away in Greene County, Ga about 1898. His widow appears in that county in 1900 with the children and listed as a widow.
I was fascinated to learn that another of the siblings, Joseph Laban Lane, served in the Confederacy (apparently notably), and received a formal invitation by the U.S. Government to attend the famed 75th Anniversary reunion at Gettysburg. I don't see any evidence that he was at the battle, so I suspect this was an invitation issues to every living veteran of the war.
Now we come to Alice.
Elder sibling, William Bell was born 9 Jul 1853. That means that the absolute earliest Alice could have been born would have been around Mar 1854.
Younger sibling, Eliza, was born 24 Jul 1857. Using the same generous math, that means the latest Alice could have been born was Oct or Nov 1856.
Let's be honest, those dates mean pushing biology to the limit. It is far more likely that her birth was some months later than Mar 1854 and some months earlier than Oct 1856.
Taking into consideration the birth dates of all the siblings, there is a pattern of a 1-2 year gap between each birth. The one exception being the 5 year gap between the first two children, Frances J and John Dixon.
All this makes a compelling case that Alice was born in 1855 and died in either 1855 or 1856. Though it is possible that she was born late in 1854. Still, the pattern screams out to me. I prefer the symmetry of an 1855 birth.
And, frankly, the gap between Frances J and John Dixon makes me wonder if there was not another child born and lost between these two that was simply never spoken of. If that was the case, it would make the birth pattern all but perfect! Is it morbid of me to say that I actually want this to be true?
I don't care. I want it to be true!
At this point, I am in full-bore research euphoria. I cannot stop. So I press back on Harrison Green and Judie's lines. That revealed a bit of irony.
Harrison Green's paternal grandfather served in the American Revolution.
Judie's ancestor? He was a Tory (British Loyalist)! And he is noted in the above referenced family history as owning the land on which the Battle of Kettle Creek took place (A small victory for the American Rebels, and one of only a handful of actions in Georgia during the war).
Care for another little coincidence? Guess who had a 5th Great-Uncle who was a Captain in the American forces at the Battle of Kettle Creek?
If you guessed Old Br'er then you guessed right!
If you guessed Old Br'er then you guessed right!
How odd the long chain of totally unrelated events that led to an infant girl being buried and forgotten in a remote family cemetery with some of Br'er's ancestors and family only to have Br'er rediscover her grave almost 170 years later?
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