Rehoboth Cemetery

 There are dangers to getting lost, though you would not expect one of these to be finding what at first glace appears to be an old cemetery. As goes the old saying, looks can be deceiving. 

Having completed his mission to complete a full search of the cemetery where one of his great-aunts and her husband are buried in search of their markers (turns out they don't have markers - and there are two burials in their plot that are totally unexplained thus making for ANOTHER mystery to plague me - but that is a whole 'nother story for another time), Br'er was scampering off to another location by dead reckoning. 

Turns out his navigation was dead wrong. He wasn't precisely lost, mind you. But he found a really long way around to his destination. Out on a seriously 'out in the country' road he spied an interesting cemetery and decided to investigate it, if for no other reason than to stretch his legs a bit. This led to what that little girl experienced chasing a snowy bunny - a proverbial trip down the rabbit hole! What was to be a few minutes pause en route between destinations turned into a two day ordeal!

Any visit to a cemetery begins with pulling it up on Find A Grave to gather some basic information: How old is it? How many graves are recorded? Anyone famous or interesting? Any noted description or history? Any photo requests outstanding?

There is a photo request, so mental note taken to look for it (even though a problem has been flagged on the request). And there are some fairly old markers, so the brief stop is definitely going to stretch out a bit.

One of Br'er's many quirks is looking for military headstones. One of those is spotted straight off. But  either the marker has settled or the surrounding soil has risen over the years to obscure details at the bottom of the market. I could still see markings, but could not make out the details, nor determine what it said.

I usually pull up Find A Grave first and check it against the marker. Is something missing or in error? Is there a photo? GPS location?

In this case Find A Grave had only the name and cemetery. No birth and death dates. Was that what was at the buried bottom of the stone? Using a stout stick, I excavated to the base (the marker was set in a cement base) and revealed not only his unit but his birth and death dates. For whatever reason no one had made the effort to gather this data before.

Yes, yes. I added the data and photos to the Find A Grave memorial record.

There's at least one good deed for the day done!

But as I continued I started into a full audit of the cemetery. In the August heat and rain this was far from the wisest of choices. Especially as I came wholly unprepared for such an undertaking. I had brought none of the usual tools needed. No gloves, bug spray, pruning clippers, etc. 

What the hell. I am already started and daylight is burning. Let's do this!

Using a grid search I carefully pull up each marker in Find A Grave and insure that the facts are recorded, there is a photo of the marker(s), and the grave has its GPS location tagged at a minimum. This leads me to add several memorials that are not yet in Find A Grave. It also leads me to the realization that, all appearances to the contrary, this is very much an active cemetery. The last burial was about a year previous in 2019! Not at all what I expected.

Several hours later and several brier scratches to boot (not to mention the loss of a pound or two in water leaking from my skin) I am forced by nature to give up for the day. A light sprinkle, or even a short downpour, isn't enough to make old Br'er run for cover. But a torrential rain coupled with lightning will do the trick every time.

Just as well as I want to do some research on one grave. There is an infant marker with the surname of some of my ancestors from this area. Now I must learn if he is a relation or not.

I will leave off the hours spent on the search. The bottom line is that he is a 3rd cousin twice removed. And being the only one in the entire cemetery with that surname it makes for YAM (Yet Another Mystery). How did he come to be buried here of all possible locations? Alas, there is no way to every learn for certain.

All my research turns up something I wish I had had at the beginning: Someone make a detailed list of all the headstones and names back about 20 years previous organizing them in something of a Row and Column list. I had difficulties locating some graves that day. Having something giving me a better idea of who is next to who is a big help. So I bookmark the web page so I can reference it on site the next day.

Oh, yes. There has to be a second day. I am too committed to this now to quit before I have completed the audit.

Finding the previous list and returning paid dividends. First, I was able to locate one grave that was only ever marked by a funeral home "temporary" name plate in 1959. Knowing where the grave should be based on nearby marked graves I poked about a but and uncovered the nameplate. It had fallen over and been covered with leaves and weeds. I reset it as best I could and made certain to update the Find A Grave memorial with a photo and GPS coordinates. It may well be in a few years that that GPS tag is the only thing confirming where the grave is.

And I was able to find a marker for that photo request despite someone in the past saying there was no marker for the child (a distinct possibility for any child born in 1870 and dead by 1871). 

Another good deed accomplished. I think that clears my quota for those through 2025.

Add in identifying a couple of duplicate memorials and getting those corrected, adding about a dozen new memorials, and fully auditing a cemetery and you have a rather productive weekend!

A few random thoughts before closing: 

Another example where the previous list of graves and general locations paid off. This marker was totally covered by debris. Because I knew where it should be I was able to dig about a bit and uncover it. This is the first - and probably last - photo of it. I wish I had the time, skill, and wealth to restore markers like this.

Spotting bones in a cemetery is usually cause for alarm. Fortunately I could readily discern that these are not human.

Locklin Cemetery

 The allure of a road named for a cemetery is simply too strong to long ignore. Add in the facts that the name is known to be associated with Br'er's distant kin starting over two centuries back AND that it is smack in the area where all those kinfolk lived, and, well, checking it out becomes something of a moral imperative!

These days a LOT of initial research about where to go scampering is done on the internet. Learn what should be there, who should be there, what kind of access there is, and whether any distant relations might be buried there. Let's face facts - it is not possible to check every interesting old cemetery in the immediate area. And that only gets exponentially worse as one moves farther out from the home hutch.

So pick and choose are the order of the day. That means trying to stick to known people on the family tree, or the occasional famous grave or really interesting monument. That is not to say Br'er doesn't stop in on the occasional old cemetery on a whim. He does. More on that when I post about Rehobeth Cemetery in the future.

In this case the initial link is a 3rd cousin thrice removed who did not survive even his first year. Always a sad case to find. Pushing a bit further and it is clear that there are several more distant relatives there. Cousins all of various distance and generation. Time to go exploring. 

Ol' Br'er's nerves always get to twitching when it is obvious that there has to be some level of trespassing done to get where he aims to be. This was one of those cases. The cemetery is supposed to be a few yards off the road in a stand of trees between two houses. Out in the countryside. Where folks learn to shoot young and to be damned accurate. And usually do not cotton to strangers traipsing about their land without permission.

(sigh) No guts, no glory. In I go.

Fortunately there is not a lot of underbrush to hamper progress and visibility is good meaning and vertical markers should be readily visible at a distance. All this means saved steps. No need to grid search the area as would be the case if all the markers were flat.

Pausing to look around just a few feet into the trees and damned if I don't spot the cemetery! It is always better to be lucky than good.

(Ok. I stole the photos from Find A Grave. These are far superior to the ones I took.)

At least one marker previously photographed has gone missing or has fallen and been covered with leaves and weeds. I must confess that the layout has me perplexed. The graves are oriented on the East-West line as is traditional in Christian cemeteries (though less observed in recent times). But the border wall is not. This has the graves at an angle within the borders. Why? 

In researching how everyone here is related (and all those with names are, though three are spouses of blood kin) I uncovered a sad mystery.

At some point in 1978 - some 52 years after the wife died - relatives of one couple interred here had them disinterred and moved to a large city cemetery. Reasons were not stated (that I have been able to uncover), but I can easily imagine that they wanted their ancestors somewhere better maintained than the original family cemetery out in the woods. In and of itself this is not particularly odd or noteworthy.

It is what they did not do that is sad if not criminal.

They left the couple's infant child behind.

This couple was born in the mid 1800s, before "The Recent Unpleasantness", They married in at the end of January 1868,  a few years after the war ended. Later that year they had their first child. Their only child. There is no way of knowing whether the child was stillborn or lived a short time. But what we can state for certain is that it did not survive long enough to even be named. 

Whatever day the child was born, it died two days after Christmas 1868. And it was loved enough that its parents managed to purchase a headstone for it in the days of Reconstruction in the South when few had money to spare for luxuries.

They left the child behind. How? Why? I will never know. Perhaps that is best because I believe, were I to meet them face to face I might be moved to violence.

Pentecost Methodist? Are you serious?

Once more Mrs. B'rer and Old B'rer scampered off into the hinterlands locating graves of distant kin. In this case a 4th Great Uncle (on the branch what can't spell right - these are 'eth' instead of the correct 'ith' Griffiths. 

Let's face it. Spelling was highly variable in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this case we have brothers (two of several) where one used 'eth' and the other 'ith' spellers. No one can say why this was.

In this case the 4th Great Uncle, his wife, and a spinster daughter (She passed away at age 65 having never married. That is the very definition of 'Spinster'!). But also an infant that could not immediately be placed. The infant's birth and death made it highly unlikely that he was the son of B'rer's uncle. A little digging revealed that he was a grandson of B'rer's great uncle. Pity. The little fella lived but a scant 18 days.

Spinster Cousin (flat stone), 4th Great Uncle, 4th Great Aunt (upright markers), and infant cousin (flat marker)

Infant's stone held up for photo (normally laying flat)

But finding the child's stone and reading it firsthand showed that his Find A Grave entry in error. His name was totally wrong and he was not linked to his parents. Both things have now been corrected.

That is the least we can do to keep his short life from being totally forgotten.

Before we could locate the graves we sought, we noticed something we did not anticipate at all: A Revolutionary War Veteran!

And he explained the oddity of a Pentecost Methodist Church!

The church is indeed a Methodist Church. But is it named for the man who founded it - one William Pentecost. Our Revolutionary War veteran was also a Methodist preacher!

William Pentecost's marker

The number of Patriots we are finding in these far-flung places is astounding. Not at all what we expected given how remote the area was at the time.

Thyatira

"They call the wind 'Thyatira'". At least that was what kept bouncing around old B'rer's brain every time he saw the name.

B'rer and the Missus were out in the hinterlands once again and spotted a sign:

Now we've all used the term 'frontier', but seldom does it sink in just what that means and where it was at various points in history. In basic, generalistic terms it refers to the outer limit of "civilized" settlements. The Frontier differs from the boundaries of a State or Territory in that it is generally not under the jurisdiction of a formal government. That is, it is more the "wilds". As (cough) Civilization moves in and takes hold, and formal government is enacted, what the Frontier (it was originally the Front Tier, but that is a much longer and convoluted matter!) is pushed out. So it was that what was deemed "The Frontier" in the United States varied over the decades and centuries. In Colonial times places like Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, most of Georgia, and other 'eastern' lands were The Frontier. As these lands were populated, the States grew and the Frontier was pushed westward.

In 1796 the land where this church sits were barely out of the official Frontier stage. In fact, this area had only been an official part of the State of Georgia a mere 10 years. And we are talking about a church that was established only 13 years after the end of the American Revolution. You are not getting much older unless you start looking at any Native Tribes who previously occupied the area. Raids and attacks were not exactly over at this point! Let's just say that the locals were not always welcoming of the newcomers.

So seeing anything away from the original Parishes (Didn't know that Georgia started with Parishes and changed to Counties later? Well you learned a thing!) dating from that period makes the old ears perk up! There weren't a lot of them to begin with and few survive to this day. They are all worthy of exploration.

Mrs. B'rer got a good laugh when B'rer tried pronouncing the name. It was not one he had heard of before let alone tried speaking aloud. Apparently it is Thy-a-teerah. 

Go figure.

Sadly, everything from the early days was either a field stone or was a wooden marker long disintegrated. More permanent markers tended to date from the late 1800s on.

Mrs. B'rer asked across the cemetery what the USS Akron was. My ears perked up.

This is footage of the airship the year before it crashed at sea and was lost taking 73 of the 76 member crew with it.

Almost everyone knows of the Hindenberg Disaster, largely because of the dramatic film of the event. Both ships were Zeppelins/Dirigibles  (A Zeppelin or Dirigible differs from a Blimp by having a rigid frame. You can see the frame of the Hindenburg in the crash film and that of the Akron in photos in the Wiki link above).

Turns out that one of the crew from the airship has a marker in the cemetery. This is almost certainly a cenotaph as I am relatively certain that few of the victim's remains were recovered.

Why all this interest? The Akron was a greater disaster in terms of loss of life than the Hindenburg. Indeed, it had greater than DOUBLE the fatalities (73) of the Hindenburg (35). It remains (and unless some twist of fate resurrects the use of rigid frame airships will forever be) the greatest airship disaster in history.

Think of the Akron as the airship equivalent to the Sultana. Never heard of the Sultana? Bet you have heard of the Titanic, though. Numbers vary, but in most respects the Sultana surpasses the Titanic as a worse (the worse?) maritime disaster. It was a riverboat with a capacity of 461 passengers and crew. It had 2,137 people on board when its boiler exploded and it sank. Depending on whose numbers you believe, it had more fatalities than the Titanic. To have been carrying the same level of excess passengers as the Sultana the Titanic would have had to had a over 16,100 people on board instead of the 2,208 it actually had!

Look at all the learning you are getting today!

If you are curious, William's rating was Pattern Maker - 1st  Class. The acronyms for Naval Ratings (all military ratings and ranks for that matter) could almost make for a book themselves. They are incredibly varied. If you pause to consider this one, it begins to make sense. An airship has a cloth or material covering made of many different sections. The same holds true for much of the interior as well. Whenever something had to be repaired, a pattern was necessary. And someone had to draw them up. Hence a Pattern Maker rating. Not something you would likely see today.

No doubt that William was excited to be so far from his country roots. To be in the service, seeing the country and world. Pity he did not live long enough to return home with all the tales of his adventure.

Oodles of Disappointment

Virus be damned! Mrs. B'rer bailed out of the warren and scampered into the hinterland recently. The weather was simply too gorgeous to all it to be wasted. We declared it a 'medically necessary' excursion - we all need sunlight to make Vitamin D!

Many times in our excursions back and forth to old B'rer's ancestral grounds we had noticed a sign for a 'Smith Cemetery Rd". This time we determined to check it out and see what was to be seen.

Our hopes rose when we transitioned from asphalt to a gravel road. All the best stuff has directions that include "turn off the paved road". Mrs. B'rer immediately started calling out "Crack House" in a throwback reference to that extremely risky excursion to one of her ancestor's resting place.

I had to point out to her that we were nowhere near Crack House territory. That was clear based on the quality of the homes and the presence of actual new construction.

We then turned a corner and I had to reconsider my argument. Oy! Move over Fred Sandford. There is some serious junk going on here!

We located the cemetery and were pleased to see a well maintained, attractive family cemetery. Even more interesting is that it is clearly active. The latest burial being January 2020. That is most unusual in such situations.

Many stones were clearly later placements for older graves, and many had no dates for the lifespans of those they note.

But one was of particular interest.

The location, name (this surname is the only one in the cemetery), the minimal but provoking inscription, the age, and the fact that the exact style marker is used for others who passed in the early 1900s all conspire to fuel old B'rer's imagination.

Could this be the grave of a former slave who, after emancipation, remained with the family of - if not her actual - former master?  These are cases you hear of, or read about, but never actually encounter.

Details are noted so that I can do the research and learn the history.

(Intermission: Let's all go to the lobby and get ourselves a snack)

A few days and a LOT of research later, I have my answer. Sort of.

There is absolutely noting 100% solid on her on-line. What there is indicates that she was probably born in the early 1800s and died around 1900, was married and had children and grandchildren. And being white was not a slave (though even that is not a guarantee - white slaves were exceedingly rare but did exist).

I shall probably never know how a Twitty came to be in a Smith family cemetery.

Looks like I shall have to learn to live with being disappointed.

Mysteries and Questions: Chapter 2

Like everyone else, Ol ' Br'er has been hunkered down in his warren for the past weeks and months with his well stocked pantry and full deep freezer. And enough TP to take him through a few months in quarantine. Being a bright bunny, he tries to keep enough supplies on hand to make dealing with short term emergencies no great effort.

But a bunny's gotta get out of the hutch every now and then! And visiting a cemetery or two makes for a relatively safe place to get a little sun and exercise without risking bumping into people. So using researching in more detail the family branch covered in the last post, Br'er has been able to keep busy and get out and about a bit.

And he found some sad and scandalous things!

Picking up from the search for the grandparents of a couple of newly learned of cousins, that effort lead to building out the extended family tree for that branch. Naturally more questions and mysteries came up from that effort.

All of this research centered around one couple T J and Etta. These are the cousins' great-grandparents. Etta had a brother, Emmett, who purchased an eight grave lot some time in or before 1914. Emmett's lot is the central link that drove all the research when I found Beulah (T J's sister and thus a distant cousin to me) buried in it.

First up - The Sad: The cemetery provided me with a copy of all the burials in Emmett's lot. Looking at the dates, the first was an infant girl with the same family name as T J and Beulah (before she married). This is NOT the same family name as Emmett, nor Beulah's married name. I was able to locate a tiny funeral notice in the city newspaper stating that Etta Mae, T J and Etta's daughter passed away at age two. This in early 1914. Etta Mae is the first internment in Emmett's lot.

The next burial came in May 1915 when Beulah passed away (she was a mere 22 years old). Being his sister's husband's sister it had to be a great kindness for Emmett to allow her to be buried in his lot.

The third burial came mere months later when T J and Etta lost a second child, a son named Joseph Alfred. Again, only a tiny funeral notice marked his passing. Unfortunately there is no record I can find of his birth. He was born after the 1910 Census was taken. So whether he was minutes, hours, days or some years old when he passed will never be known now. But he was no more than five years old. Probably younger. Probably a year or less because he is not referenced in his sister's funeral notice from the prior year.

In a touching footnote, at some point in the process, Etta Mae was exhumed and re-interred next to her brother who in turn lay next to his Aunt. That had to be a heart wrenching decision.

None of these three graves are marked. This, along with the graves being provided by someone else, tells me T J and Etta probably did not have the funds to purchase even a minimally inexpensive marker for their children. I cannot place markers, but I can note their resting places.

Second up - The Scandal: Etta's name was Frances Henrietta. With the exception of her appearing once in her father's household in the 1900 Census where she is listed as Fannie H, she appears on the Census as Etta. This being the 1910, 1920, and 1930 Censuses.

In 1930 she is living with T J and some of their children. And they have a boarder - J B.

The 1940 Census has TJ with his wife Frances. And T J shares a headstone with a Frances R who passed away in the early 1980s. Research by others (and indeed my own) had Rebecca R and Etta as the same person.

One problem. There is an Henrietta who died in 1940 married to J B, the boarder from 1930! And her death certificate clearly states that *she* is the Etta originally married to T J .

Both things cannot be true.

Further research (that clearly no one was willing to do before) reveals that Frances R listed with T J in 1940 has to be a different woman. Her age is different (though age is 'fluid' in Censuses, especially for women), she lists as being born in a different state, and there are suddenly two daughters (one an adult) with a last name never encountered before in the household with T J and Rebecca.

That SOB! T J remarried and to a woman with the same first name as his first wife!

We don't know exactly what happened, but I choose to read it that Etta took up with the boarder, J B, and it broke up her marriage. Some time between 1930 and 1940 T J and Etta divorced with both remarrying before 1940. Etta died before the 1940 Census leading to further confusion of the facts.

Whatever the actual facts, getting divorced and marrying someone who had been living with you under the same room with you and your husband in the 1930s had to be scandalous.

Br'er and Mrs Br'er also made an excursion out to another relatively nearby cemetery to view the Holocaust Memorial established there. It was striking. Those constructing it make no bones about their thoughts and intent. 

The six white posts visible at the top are a modified Menorah with each one representing one million Jews killed in the Holocaust. They are piped for natural gas. Inside is what was apparently intended to be an eternal flame. None of them are lit today.

The cemetery itself warranted its own small Wikipedia entry.

We were surprised to learn there are distinct segregated sections. Adjacent to the memorial is a Jewish section. There are also Chinese and Greek sections. The cemetery was established in 1904. Being in Atlanta, finding a large Chinese population is unusual to that time.

The Greek section was most interesting as well with all the markers being almost entirely in the Greek language using Greek Letters. Old Br'er's tongue damned near fell off trying to pronounce those names!

Mrs. Br'er is very interested in cemetery symbology and iconography. We passed one memorial that she missed the probable inferences for entirely.

There is potentially a long going on here. And I could be wrong in my interpretations. But here goes.

Directly translated the name in the latin alphabet appears to be Chantzaras or Kantzaras.

The "X", in the Greek Alphabet, is Chi. So the X in the marker is both the initial of the departed's last name and traditionally the symbol for Christ - Christos.

Atop the Chi is something that can be interpreted as one of two primary things. It is either a sphere or an ovoid.

As a sphere it could be construed as an Orb, a typical symbol for kingship.

As an ovoid it could be construed as an ova or egg. In the Greek tradition the egg is a sign or rebirth, new life, or resurrection. It is a staple of Easter celebrations appearing in numerous foods and displays. Bear in mind that in the Greek church Easter is a far more important and spiritual celebration than Christmas.

Atop the orb/sphere/ovoid is a dead or weeping eagle. For that I got nothing. But for the other items I see several religious statements. 

I had to chuckle imagining the 'discussions' over one marker we passed.

Obviously cigarettes and cards were important to Mama. Was this her wish? Something the kids decided to do? (Papa predeceased her, so unless he did this before he died and Mama let it stand...) Were there arguments over it? The imagination reels!

Mysteries and Questions

Recently a heretofore unknown distant relative appeared out of the ether looking for information on some of out shared ancestry. Theirs was, naturally, a branch that I had not delved into before. Of course this meant a mad dash to flesh out that branch of the overall tree.

And of course that lead to their burials. And cemeteries. Turns out that one pair of their great-grandparents are buried a few miles from me, and a great-uncle and aunt (a son of their great-grandfather) are in another nearby cemetery. Their grandmother (daughter of the great-grandparents) is also relatively close, but in the opposite direction. Despite inclement weather, I had a mission to locate them all and insure that each was properly logged in Find A Grave - including GPS coordinates and photos. It was a moral imperative.

Nothing like tramping about in a cold rain to make a day special. Good thing I had a good pair of duck boots.

Prudence requires that one does one's research and due diligence prior to setting out on a journey. In this case that means 1) Knowing the basic route to get there, and 2) Knowing the *AREA* you are heading into. These two cemeteries are not in what one would call 'nice areas'.

Great. Br'er is alone in this jaunt. That means he is prepared to fend off wolves, foxes, bears, wild dogs, and every other predator that would like to make a meal from him.

Ol' Br'er is crazy. He ain't stupid.

Up first: The cousin's great-grandparents. Fortunately someone had provided a photo of the headstone so there is something to reference. It is a shared, upright marker with the family name prominently visible. Great! That means that I can scan many markers from any given point rather than being forced into a detailed grid search. This place is HUGE, so I *REALLY* appreciate that advantage.

And that advantage paid off in spades. It only took about 15 minutes to locate the grave. To be honest, had my eyes been sharper when I first arrived I might have spied it immediately. It is only a few feet off the drive lane and I passed it when I pulled in 

Mission accomplished, I wander about for a bit just to see what there is to see. There are some 'information' stations set up so I check those out. Turns out the cemetery is considered abandoned. The company that was responsible for it went bankrupt and ceased operations. Several families with relations interred there have started an organization trying to maintain the property. They have managed to set things up to have the grass mowed on a regular basis (at 7-10 acres this is no small feat unto itself). Everything else remains the responsibility of the individual families for the individual graves or plots.

Good for them for stepping up!

But looking about it is obvious that, though abandoned in the legal sense, the cemetery is still active. There are several noted death dates that are after the date the operations ceased officially. Indeed, there is one grave that is obviously only weeks or months old (the bankruptcy was over a decade ago).

This is not a situation I have encountered before and it presents myriad questions. Who knows who owns what sites? And what sites are not in use vs which are unmarked graves? Who is responsible for opening and closing the graves? Just to name a few!

A little research reveals that "it depends". Basically the Organization set up to try and maintain the place has on-going efforts to get and transcribe all the original documents (that story is long and bizarre - at least from my perspective), They have a lot of the data and will help with the requisite research on who is where and what is open. Grave opening and closing, vault purchase and placement, headstone purchase and placement are more complex matters. Many of these services must, by law, be done only be licensed operators. Whether these are coordinated or provided by the funeral home is open to the individual. Some may opt for 'one stop shopping', others for 'a la carte'. And not every funeral home is necessarily willing to deal with these items in an abandoned cemetery.

In retrospect, this should not have been all that surprising. I have come across a number of older, family cemeteries over the years which are on private property and have seen decades between internments. It is just that this is the first time I have encountered a bankrupt cemetery.

Sadly, as much effort is being made to preserve the place, there are many markers that have toppled (due to the ground heaving rather than vandalism) and many that are in danger of vanishing. These all date from internments around the late 1960s and are in the very back of the site.

Casting my eyes further afield I see several interesting markers. Two are for veterans of the Spanish American War mere feet from each other (by and large there are not many markers for these veterans - at least not in Br'er's territory).

Note the bronze marker added at a later date. This is new to me.

It is also worth noting that neither of these two are VA issued markers.

I also was drawn to this monument.

 

I need to research more to see if I can learn whether this Marine was interred here or on Iwo. And if that latter, whether his remains were later repatriated. It would appear that there was once a portrait on the marker. Sadly it is long since vanished.

In military terms a "retread" is someone who serves a term, is mustered out, and later re-enlists for a second time. Usually the second enlistment is with another branch entirely. I recently learned that the term began as a reference to men who had served in WWI and later ended up also serving in WWII.

This gentleman was a Old School Retread! Only the second or third I have ever encountered!

Something else I noticed several of, and I have often seen before, are monuments for couples where one of the two is missing an date of death.

Grace here being but one example. Yes, she could still be around at ag 112. But it isn't very likely. And there were several others (harder to get a good photo of those) where the individual was born in the latter part of the 19th century. No arguing THEY are still alive and kicking. No way, no how.

Thus the mystery: Is this a case of someone failing to have the stone updated with the date either due to a lapse or refusing to pay to have it done? Or was the individual buried elsewhere? And if so, why? Remarriage? Moved far away? Next of kin did not know of this grave? Or did they simply override the deceased's wishes?

So many questions that can never be answered!

Speaking of unanswered questions, I noted several markers with the same family name as the one I had set out in search of. But I don't have them in my tree. So now I have to flesh out more of this overall branch of the tree to learn if these additional folks are related or not.

So much research. So little time.

Finally it was time to head off in search of the second set of family - a great-uncle of the newly discovered cousins, and a son of the gentleman I set out to find in the first location.

When I pull onto the property I start to wonder if it is abandoned as well. Were it not for there being a couple of cars at what has to be the office I would have been certain it was.

The burglar bars and 'buzz to enter' I encounter on the office don't exactly scream "SAFE AREA!!!"

But the staff was exceedingly nice and helpful. And they did not laugh as the name I asked them to look up.

It is not a name common today. Indeed, I will wager that it was never a 'common' name.

They are even nice enough to provide a map with the grave location highlighted. Such Service!

What they did not prepare me for was a semi-nameless marker.

Had it not had the family name *and* I known his spouse's name I would not have found the grave.

Another mystery: Why was his name plate never installed? Is it another lapse? Another case of too cheap to buy it? What? Aarrrgghhh!

Still, I updated Find A Grave with the photo (there was not one yet) and updated the GPS location before I called it a day.

I saved the cousins's grandmother's grave hunt for another day.