We Return Now to Regular Programming

Yeah. It's been a while. Not that there has been nothing to share, just that I've either been too distracted to too damned lazy to write it up. So I will atone, a little, for those sins now.

First off - and in no particular order - is Whaley Cemetery. This is a small family cemetery TW and I checked out last fall or somewhere there-abouts. At the time there were only some 5 recorded graves and only about 3 headstones visible. The small fenced lot was completely overgrown in briars and vines making it almost impossible to traverse the space. Even so I managed to find at least one unrecorded headstone for a child, a girl, and updated the database accordingly. I also updated the cemetery description in Find A Grave.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago and someone from the county historical society contacts me asking if I have more details on the cemetery and if I have any relatives in it. An Eagle Scout had cleaned up the cemetery for his project and the society was looking for more data on those buried there.

Naturally this required a revisit. That it was rainy, hot, and muggy mattered not a whit.

But before setting out, I revisited my search efforts on the names of those buried there. Especially the child. I have a thing about identifying the children and matching them up with family.

Well last efforts produced little data. But the gods were smiling on my efforts this time. I started finding more information including a 1934 survey of the cemetery by Franklin Garrett. That yielded several additional graves with markers that were not in Find A Grave. Is there any cemetery in the Atlanta area that Franklin did not visit and document? That man was a research BEAST!

This time I took my tools and ground probe. Systematic searching and probing found all the missing headstones save one! They were under several inches of accumulated soil and debris. I unearthed and photographed them, updated Find A Grave, and shared what I found with the historical society. I also linked several children, apparent siblings, with parents. Though I did note of a couple that my efforts were supposition based on names, dates, and the graves being set together. Logical conclusions based on the data, but not conclusive proof.

Now that is an experience few people will be able to claim. Probing the ground in a cemetery, locating missing headstones, and digging them up. 

I need to go back in better conditions and see if I can find that last missing marker!

Second, TW and I made an initial attempt to clean a Revolutionary War veteran's headstone. The old boy was buried on his land under a False Tomb and later (in the 20th century) marked with a VA issued stone. Unfortunately the gravesite is under a large oak tree in a damp environment. Algae and mildew have severely stained the stone making it all but unreadable. There are clear signs that others are buried nearby, but only field stones and sunken spots remain to show where the graves are. Who they are is lost to history.

Our attempts with D/2 did give impressive results, but as with prior cases it will take weeks and months for the real effects to manifest. We have it on the list to revisit later in the fall.

Third, someone had requested grave photos from a small cemetery, Brown Gresham Cemetery. near Herndon Cemetery where some of my first D/2 efforts lie. This made a great excuse to go check those results. 

I managed to find Brown Gresham back in the woods (why are all these places back in the woods?) and was able to provide all the requested grave photos save one. Could not locate it. But in doing so I learned that fewer than half the graves there were recorded in Find A Grave! Lots of sweat, cursing, and mosquito bites later I had everything I could discern added to the database.

As a side note, I am both fascinated and saddened by how quickly these cemeteries are overgrown and forgotten. The last burial there was 1950 yet it is all but totally lost today.

Then again, 71 years ago is not exactly 'just yesterday'.

Damn! I am OLD!

Third, well, this is a cemetery/genealogy mashup and requires some history to set things up.

TW's father transferred power of attorney to her for a family plot in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta some years back. For those not familiar with Oakland, it was initially founded in the mid 1800s and expanded several times. Being a Victorian Era cemetery, it has more than a few ornate monuments and mausoleums. And various people of note including Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell and golfing legend Bobby Jones.

TW's Great-Great-Grandfather purchased the lot in 1877 (remember that date - it will be important later) and the last burial was in 1963 when her Great-Grandmother (TW's father's mother) passed away. Her Grandmother had donned the mantel as her mother aged and grew ill, and her father, being an only child, was assigned the role when he own mother aged and grew ill. 

Well, as you might expect, this role came with a smattering of semi-random scraps and pages of paper giving various bits of history on the plot and those buried there.

There were three burials (two unmarked) where the relationship to the family was not obvious. Two of these James and Lillian (a child of only about a year in age) Hollis were rather easily linked. James had married Cora Ellen, daughter of the plot owner (W C McDade and his wife Lucy, TW's GGPs). They had daughter Lillian who died so tragically young. James passed just over a decade later. Cora Ellen lived another six plus decades, remarried, and is interred in Florida.

Easy, peasy.

Then there was Frankie. Frankie McDade.

Part of the documentation TW had was a map of the plot giving each burial, name, dates, etc. Well, mostly. Not every burial was equally documented. This page is a duplicate of what is on file with the Sexton at Oakland Cemetery. And that is all there is at the cemetery for the plot.

Problem is, there are no dates. Nor is there anything showing how Frankie is related to the family. Just an age. One year.

Now I will not detail everything I checked in my efforts to locate Frankie's details. Just know that I was pretty damned exhaustive. No Census record, no Birth or Death Certificate, nothing. I searched old newspapers on-line (no, I did not read decades of papers page by page, only on-line searches, again important info for later). I even went so far as to physically check every surviving burial permit for the cemetery at the area history center. 

There is a separate data element from the cemetery - a list of burials, one entry listing Frank A McDade, born about 1870 and buried 27 July 1875. But it gives no data as to where in the cemetery this burial took place.

The only person living who might have an idea who Frankie was is TW's father. And while his memories are vivid and expansive, he had no knowledge of Frankie.

I had resigned myself to the fact that Frankie would be one of those brink wall mysteries all genealogy researchers eventually hit.

Fast forward several years. TW is sorting though all her inherited papers and photographs. I am scanning them for electronic storage and sharing with the extended family and she is organizing them and identifying the individuals in photos. All this before the knowledge is lost to history.

One of the bits of ephemera is a kinda-sorta family tree series of pages. Well, not a Tree so such as Spaghetti. It was painful to read. And I am never trusting of random bits of undocumented history. Peoples' memories are .... fallible and hazy. And often totally wrong. So I had not really read any of the material during the scanning process.

TW, however, did read it. And swore she recognized the handwriting as her grandmother's. We started comparing it to what I had documented from other sources.

The first thing we found was that I had a Daughter-In-Law and several Grandchildren of W C and Lucy McDade on the tree as their children instead. In my defense this is because that is how they are enumerated on the 1900 Census! These not being direct ancestors for TW, I had not spend any time on them so did not catch the error. 

This finding gave good validation that the documents were fairly accurate.

Working further who should we find? Yup. Frankie! Frankie is listed as a child of W C and Lucy McDade. That would certainly explain his burial in their plot. But is this the only documentation? 

One of TW's distant cousins had also researched the family and had shared her data. So I checked to see if she had anything on Frankie. She did. And it included a newspaper clipping (not fully attributed) of a funeral announcement for Frankie which lists his parents as Mr and Mrs W C McDade. When was this published? 27 July 1875.

Son of a ....... We done found Frankie! The cousin has him born in 1873 while the burial record has his birth about 1870, yet the burial map has his age as 1. Go figure. Whether he was 1, 2, or 5 years old, he was a child with all the tragedy that any such death entails.

But wait a second. The pieces do not exactly fit. We have a problem. Or at least a question.

Frankie died in 1875. The family plot was not purchased until 1977. Where the hell was he for those two years?!

Dammit!

All is not despair, though. At least not year. There is a possible explanation. It makes a good story, anyway. And I have to go to the cemetery to research to see if it meets with any documented facts.

To explain - 

WC McDade's mother, Rebecca, is also buried in the same cemetery, but in another plot with one of her daughter's family. Also, someone has recorded an infant McDade buried in that same plot but without any dates. Now, this plot is in an older cemetery section than where W C McDade's plot lies. So it is entirely possible that Frankie was initially interred in his sister's plot then exhumed and re-interred in his plot later. I have to see if the dates support this theory and if, just maybe, there are any records for the sister's plot about an exhumation.

Can you imagine if I end up proving my theory? Finding proof of a child's burial, exhumation, and reburial almost a century and a half after the fact?

To answer you burning question, Yes. I do have better things to do with my time. But such as the wages of poor life choices.

Remind me again - Why am I here?

If you ever want elegant proof that standardized testing is utter bunk, you need only look to me. I have formally tested out as scoring in the top 1% of the population on an official, proctored IQ test. And that test stopped at the 99th percentile. The score itself probably probably score out closer to 99.9 percent given how many points it was above and beyond the 98% to 99% breakpoint. But they did not normalize the scores out that far on that test so I can only speculate.

The point being I am alleged to be "smarter than the average bear".

Alleged. Key word there. Clearly my actions belie my testing. Doing these cemetery excursions into the hinterlands clearly exhibits idiocy far more than intelligence. 

This latest trip definitely qualifies as further proof of my actual idiocy.

I posted previously about setting off cross-country to locate and photograph a never previously photographed cemetery, and how I was ill prepared for the excursion. Then I related getting lost in the woods finding another never before photographed cemetery - again, cross country,

Well moron me, I went for the Trifecta. Another one out in the woods that has never been photographed. Homes Cemetery.

I am an idiot.

At least the weather was not entirely against me. Warm, but not too hot and humid. In a matter of a couple of weeks that is certain to change. It will become a veritable sauna and the vegetation will be impenetrable.

This time I was back to the same area as the Patman Cemetery a couple of weeks back. I had noted this one 'around the corner' at that time and noted that I needed to return and research it. 

When I actually plan one of these excursions I try and do as much research as possible about the location. Satellite maps and Google Street View (where that is an available option) are great resources to plan an attack.

But they are far from perfect as I would learn. The hard way.

I am certain that everyone has seen an electric transmission tower tight of way at least once, if only in a movie. Picture those massive towers stationed at regular intervals with dozens of large cables stretching across the landscape. Recall how all the trees are removed for about 50 or 75 yards to either side of the towers leaving a swath of open space miles long. 

Got that image? Good.

Now visualize this. The coordinates for the cemetery are about 100 or so yards off one of these corridors somewhere around a third of a mile from the road. Looking at the satellite view it should be a relative snap to get to. Follow the tree line along the power line corridor until you get about even with the cemetery then turn into the woods and BINGO!

Oh, how wrong I was on that approach!

Turns out that there are a significant number of ravines blocking the way. And I mean ravine. Not some little wash or gully. Not a low point that you can't see until you are in it. No. I mean the kind of deep barrier that castles would envy as protection from an invading horde of barbarians. 10 plus fee deep and anywhere from 6 to 30 or 40 feet across, and running for hundreds of feet mostly perpendicular to my direction of travel.

I keep hearing Gandalf bellowing, "You shall not pass!"

I am forced to backtrack and go into the woods early to find safe passage around these obstacles. 30 years ago I might have tried crossing them. But at my age the last thing I need is to break a leg while solo out in the wilds. Contrary to all opinions I have managed to learn a little prudence over the years. I don't expect to live forever. But neither do I desire to die of stupidity.

Fortunately this is more deer hunting acreage and that means paths cut through the timber. And lucky for me they follow more or less the direction I am traveling.  

Somewhere about a quarter mile in I see a large open space ahead. This should mean a bit of easy progress.

"Should" seldom means "Does". You would think I would have learned that by now.

Yes, there is an open expanse ahead. But getting to it at this point would mean scaling down a minor cliff face about 15 feet straight down. Remembering that Down is easy and Up is really hard I start looking for a wiser point to traverse from. That means many yards perpendicular to my path further into the trees.

Great.

Once I do manage to get to the open expanse my alarms go off. I am about to enter an obvious flood plain. That could mean lots of mud and soft soft. Not the friends of anyone on foot.

Fortunately it has been long enough between rains that the ground is very firm. No problem crossing the space.

But problem proceeding further. Naturally.

Instead of a ravine this time I encounter a running creek. Not a lot of water, just a deep and wide creek bed. Way more than you can just step over. And the opposite bank is not flat. It immediately starts going steeply uphill. While it might be possible to take a run and jump the creek, there is nowhere remotely safe to land on the other side. Remembering that I don't want to break a bone out here on my lonesome, I start following the creek further into the woods looking for a safe place to ford.

Eventually I find a good spot, cross, and resume my trek (yeah - this is a trek by this point in the experience). That entails making my way up that steep slope on the opposite side of the creek and up about 100 feet in elevation. 

Yay. Fun. 

Yes, I am using all the appropriate techniques to make the slog as easy as possible - rather than climbing straight up I take an angled approach with switchbacks as the terrain allows and dictates. Now if you remember you grammar (grade?) school science then you will recall that using an inclined plane (essentially the path I am following up this hill) does reduce the effort required to move something to a higher point it does so my increasing the distance traveled so the overall energy expenditure is not reduced.  

So while each step I take is a little less taxing, I have to take a LOT more of them to reach my goal. More simply put, I am beat like a rented mule and leaking from every pore in my body. Still, as I have noted in the past, I am far more stubborn than smart. So on I go.

Eventually (and thankfully with no more ravines, creeks, gullies, or cliffs) I spot the unmistakable glint of galvanized chain link fence through the trees, and it is almost precisely on the coordinates given for the cemeteries.

Sadly, what I found is a severely neglected site with two large trees that have toppled over the area. And vines, briars, and undergrowth rule the day.

Surprisingly, the headstones themselves are in fairly good condition aside from some vegetation covering them. And more than a few limbs and saplings in the way. I managed to get good photos of everything visible. But one of the fallen trees effectively blocked access (At least blocked unless I was willing to crawl to get to it. I was not so willing) to the back third of the fenced in area. I could not see any obvious graves there, but doubtless there are some.

Naturally the actual number of graves I found did not match those recorded in Find A Grave. There are at least two more burials than are recorded. Probably more. I found at least five obvious field stone markers. These are clearly graves as they are deliberately placed in row and columns evenly set with the space necessary for a grave. The pattern is far to clear and obvious to be anything else. Factoring in the cemetery space I could not access I estimate there are spaces there for at least 8 more graves. Perhaps there are, perhaps not. It would take serious logging crew with heavy equipment to clear the fallen tree before the ground could be properly searched and logged. Anything else would simply result in more damage to the fencing and anything under the tree trunk. To be honest, though, that damage is all be inevitable as the tree rots and collapses over time because there is zero probability that anyone will take on the expense to preserve the site.

Looking back to Find A Grave there are three logged memorials for which I cannot find a stone. Perhaps these are among the field stones. Perhaps not. 

Correction. 6 field stone markers, not 5.

Great. I get to do a lot of research. And submit the resulting updates to Find A Grave. Keen eyed readers will already note one significant submission needed. 

Missed it? The cemetery is recorded as Homes Cemetery. The last name on all the markers save the shared obelisk is Holmes.

But that has to wait until I am back at the warren rested and washed. The immediate future my focus is on getting my old, fat, exhausted butt back out of the woods. Fortunately the return is easier than the entry.

Let me tell you. Air Conditioning is one of the greatest inventions in history! A few minutes cooling off and hydrating in the car and I was ready to head out again.

I will save the telling of the rest of the day's adventure for another time. There is still too much to go on this cemetery to venture off on other matters just yet.

Let the research begin!

Back home, rested, washed, and in front of the computer I began looking in to the people laid to rest in the cemetery. 

Three of the marked graves are for children. I have a particular itch to see that children's graves are linked to those of their parents in Find A Grave. This is of no real import in the grand scheme of things. But it is a thing with me nonetheless. 

I start with what appears to be a married couple and go from there. What I find only makes me crazy.

I mentioned earlier that there are three marked children's graves: Emma E. Sallie D, and William Holmes. All born between 1880 and 1896. Emma survived only 2 and a half months. Sallie a mere 8 months. And William the longest at two years and three months. All three are linked in Find A Grave to Thomas Henry Holmes and his wife Martha (Collins) Holmes. Thomas was born about 1849 and Martha in 1856, so the years these children were born absolutely 'fit' with their being Thomas and Martha's children.

But not so fast there, Skippy.

Looking at the 1900 US Census I find a problem. If you are not familiar with the various censuses, you should know that in certain census years additional questions are asked. In 1900, one of these was asking how many children a woman had born and how many survive as of the census enumeration. I have come across many cases in my research recording where a woman had lost several children prior to the 1900 census.

Well, damn! Martha is recorded as having born 6 children with 6 surviving. Houston, we have a problem. Either Martha lied on the census or these three children are not hers. And I cannot find where Thomas ever had another wife.

Hmmm.... Perhaps these are children of one or more of Thomas's five brothers? I flesh out as much as possible on their branches of the tree and cannot come up with anything definitive.

First brother Ira's wife, Susan failed to record child counts in 1900 even though there are children listed in the household the census.

Second brother Jeremiah has no record of marriage OR children. Indeed, he appears to vanish after the 1860 census.

Third brother Joseph's wife, Ruina, reports 4 children with 3 surviving in 1900. So one possibility there. BUT! As of 1880 they are living many mile away in another county. So highly unlikely any of these children would be theirs.

Fourth brother Carter lived until 1940 (not bad for someone born in rural Georgia in 1843!). His death certificate states he is married, but give nothing about who is wife might be. Nor can I find any other record of him in the preceding years. He died in the same county as brother Joseph was living, so it could be that is where he spent much of his adult life and where any wife and/or children would be buried. No way at this point to know.

Fifth brother Joshua's wife, Georgia, reports zero children born. They only married in 1897 so none of the three children in question would logically be theirs.

Thus endeth the list of brothers with nothing reasonably indicating whose children these might be.

I entertained the idea that they might be siblings of Thomas. For a few seconds. Their father was born in 1789 or 1790. And he appears to have died about 1880. So no. As Jerry Springer might say, "He is NOT the father!"

Damn. This is a mystery that is not going to be solved any time soon, if ever. 

Beyond the children, I am curious about the Collins couple I find in the cemetery. This appears to be Martha's Brother and his wife. Makes a certain amount of sense.

That leaves me with the questions of the people with Find A Grave memorials recorded in the cemetery but for whom I do not see a physical marker. These are:

Bessie Mae Holmes (1879-1932)

Joe Henry Holmes (1888-1919)

Mary E Holmes (1882-1882 - three days only)

Bessie appears to have died a spinster living in Decatur, Ga (right around the warren location!), Her death certificate gives her burial place as Lexington, Ga. This Holmes Cemetery is close to Lexington, so it fits that she is buried there. Perhaps in an unmarked grave, or perhaps in a marked grave in the inaccessible portion and the marker is not visible through the vegetation. 

Joe Henry appears o be a sad story. Little in the way of records exist for him. The truly revealing piece is his World War I draft card where he is deemed 'physically deficient' and an epileptic. That condition at that time and place was utterly life limiting. Little surprise that he died so young having never married. I cannot locate a death certificate. But he is last listed in the 1910 census still living in his father's household. So it is not a leap of logic to have him buried in this cemetery.

Mary E may as well be a ghost or a myth. If the dates in Find A Grave are accurate then she lived as mere three days in February of 1882. The only evidence of her ever living would be an entry in a family bible or a story handed down through the years. Or perhaps a notice in a local newspaper. I know from harsh experience that there were few newspapers in the area, that few of those survive, and the only copies available are in the bowels of the University of Georgia in Athens. None of them are available on-line, so if I want to pursue that line I have to travel and do the hours of research on-site. 

Not in the cards.

So what does all this sum up to? 

Three children whose parentage is unprovable.

Two adult offspring whose burial is probable though apparently unmarked.

One infant whose entire existence seems to be pure conjecture let alone its burial location and parentage.

All this in a cemetery that is exceedingly difficult to access at all, much less properly investigate and document. 

It appears there may be living relatives and/or descendants. I can only wonder if they even know about the site, much less give a flying leap at a rolling donut about what happens to it.

With that I can calling a lid on this escapade. On to more productive matters.

Reporting from Camp Granada

Smiths. Fecking Smiths. The bane of all genealogists. 

Smiths are ubiquitous. And like all families they use the same names generation after generation. And even multiple times within the same generation. Sussing out these familial relationships is like trying to work out identities of Irish Travelers. If you are 'in' the group then you know who everyone is. Otherwise you are faced with the prospect of working out which John Smith belongs where. It can be maddening.

Naturally this means that there are multiple Smith Cemeteries in any given county. There are some 10 cemeteries in Oglethorpe County, Georgia named or including the name Smith. You can imagine the joy of working through all that.

As I have told before, we 'inherited' a family cemetery in Oglethorpe County where at least two generations of my ancestors are buried. You guessed it. It is a Smith Cemetery, named for my paternal Great-Great-Grandfather's Father-in-Law, Arthur W Smith's line. Yay for me.

The cemetery was already recorded in Find A Grave long before I became aware of any of this. And as is all too often the case, much of the memorial data in it was incorrect. I have worked for years to correct as much of the mistakes as I can.

The last of these was a Smith who I could not find any way to link to my Smith line. There was no marked stone for him in the cemetery, nor is there any available record stating he was buried there. This was a case of someone speculating that this was the correct cemetery. There was nothing left to conclude but that he had to be buried elsewhere. Ostensibly in one of the other Smith or Smith-Adjacent cemeteries.

Knowing all this, it makes sense that I had on my Excursion List a Smith Cemetery that had long been recorded by the county historical society as containing at least two marked Smith graves. However it had never been photographed. Who knows? Perhaps there are additional marked graves there that, for whatever reason, were never recorded. It would not be the first time I encountered a partially recorded old cemetery.

Well, this was the day to find that cemetery! Of course it is far off the accessible path on what was once farmland accessed from a county road.

Note the operative word there. "Once"

Today the spot is hell and gone from anything remotely considered civilization. The land has reverted to timber and is clearly used for timber harvesting and deer hunting. Oh, and the county road? It is now closed off. So I was in for a cross country hike.

Lovely.

To add to the 'fun', there is zero cell service in the area. This meant my ability to use GPS on the phone to orient in on the exact spot was extremely limited. I had to work only with map data I already had on the phone. No new data was available due to no signal.

Now when I say no signal I mean no signal. None. Off the grid. I don't think even sending up a signal flare would communicate to anyone. This is the Boon-Fecking-Docks. 

But I am a Man. I know what I am doing. I have spent innumerable hours in the woods. So off - an in - I go.

Permit me to pause here and digress for a moment. Prior to this specific endeavor I had already audited another cemetery. This one containing the extended family of an individual who married into one of my lines back in the late 1800s. It was relatively easy to find as someone has been maintaining it. Though I did take time to log that there are clearly 9 additional children's graves and three adult graves with only field stones. Doing some research on the family led me to conclude who one of the graves almost certainly belongs to. So I updated the records accordingly. So I had already been tramping in the heat for a good hour before going after the Smith Cemetery. Fatigue level is not too high, but I have exerted myself for a bit at this point. Bear that in mind as we continue. 

I will share more on that front separately as there is more than a little something hinky in that place.

Now back to our current tale.

By and large the going was not too hard. The hunters have cut many tracks through the area to both access their stands and get their kills out. Sweet! Less pushing through the briars and bush (of which there was plenty). Still, all this entails stopping every few yards to reorient myself and stay on the general path to the recorded cemetery location. Add in to the mix that the ground is far from level and there are a few creeks and ravines or gullies to traverse. These mean finding a safe and wise place to cross each one. Often this means travelling wider afield than the straight line course then making my way back on track.

Given how remote and alone I am at the moment I made a greater than reasonable effort to not trip, fall, or otherwise have a mishap. If I go down there is no getting help and no one to find anything except my remains some months from now. Progress was slow.

Did I mention this is later in the afternoon? No? Well keep that in mind.

I did manage to locate the cemetery and photograph the two headstones. The cemetery itself though was much larger. Something on the size of the footprint of a small house. There are clearly dozens of graves here, though unmarked. And one is obviously from the 1920s to 1940s because it had a temporary marker with the burial details written on a paper card behind a glass plate.

Had. 

The glass was broken and the card long gone. Only the metal marker remained. And these markers date from about the 1920s on through the 1940s or 1950s. Alas, this person, like all those who lay about him or her, is lost to time. In theory there would be a record of the burial at the funeral home that handled the burial. In practical terms that is seldom the case as the funeral home may be out of business and/or the records in some long term off-site storage site and they are less than willing to pull them and identify the deceased.

Having done all I could do for the day I started making my way back to the car. Being who and what I am, I opted to take a parallel track out rather than trying to precisely retrace my steps. 

Something I had not reckoned on was that I did not have the GPS coordinates for my starting point nor did I have a way to retrieve them. Dead zone - no signal, remember?

No problem. I can make my way out, no sweat.

Correction. Lot's of sweat. It was warm and fat guys leak under such conditions. A lot we leak.

Somehow I managed to overshoot my major turn point by about a quarter mile. Fortunately this is almost all while following those hunting paths so the exertion was not as bad. Unfortunately this was in the last hours of daylight meaning that if I did not get to the car soon then I would be tramping in the woods after dark.

And I left the flashlight in the car.

Cue Alan Sherman singing about Camp Granada. "... where I might get eaten by a bear." Ok. There aren't bears in the area. But I AM rather thirsty. The water is in the car, and I would rather not spend the night in the woods. I came across a hunting camp consisting of three campers closed up for the year and resolve that worst case I shoot the lock off one and use it for shelter for the night.

Not gonna lie. When I first saw the campers I had visions of a Meth operation. Such was the seclusion of the site and the ... cultural ...  nature of the overall area that a Meth Lab would not be a surprise whatsoever.

But emergency shelter for the night was not necessary. I backtrack and follow a road-ish stretch out. A few hundred yards out I spot familiar landmarks and know precisely how to get back to the car from there. Without more woods or brush. 

Unfortunately there is a good half mile between me and the car at this point. 

Fortunately I had a LOT of cold water in the car to slake my thirst. It took a few minutes sitting in the car with the AC running, sipping water, before I was in fit shape to drive my sorry ass home.

Maybe a satellite phone would be a good investment......

Lost and Found

There is an old adage about being lost in a crowd. I had never thought about applying it to graves in a cemetery. 

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.

Not having time or the tools necessary, I reverted to kicking the encroaching grass off the marker in order to read the name and dates.

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.

I may just have to come back with the D/2 and work on this one. Bet it would be impressive once cleaned of almost a century of grime. 

It would take a lot of effort and the right heavy tools to reset her marker! That sucker is probably close to half a ton.

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.

Proof that I am more stubborn than I am smart

There are times when a body proves what a stubborn jackass he really is. 

Today was one such day.

First, a little background.

My father is guardian for one of his nephews (my cousin) since his father - my father's brother - passed away. He is an extreme case of  'special needs' and now lives at a care facility. My parents try to visit him weekly (yeah, Covid put THAT on hold for a while). As the parental units are not exactly Spring Chickens and I usually have the time I try to chauffeur them on these excursions. The facility is smack in the middle of their old stomping grounds and they take no small pleasure in sight-seeing (at what I cannot fathom) and telling tales from back in the day.

Both parents have a fair interest in visiting the old cemeteries in the area. Some have distant kinfolk in them, others family of people they knew, and some are just interesting. It is usually my task to locate new spots to visit.

Today was one such trip.

We arrived an hour early for the scheduled visit with the cousin so we looked into an old cemetery nearby. As with so many others, this one has been essentially abandoned. Everything is overgrown and a couple of markers have toppled. It would take specialized equipment to reset the stone and the site would have to be cleared first. Sadly we could only locate about 12 of the 15 listed memorials.

Efforts there concluded - for the moment - we were off to the scheduled visit after which there was more touring about the area.

During this portion of the day family history was discussed. This lead to mother wanting to see the house where my cousin's mother (my future aunt when she would marry my uncle, my father's brother) lived back decades ago. And where my uncle had written his name in the cement holding the chimney together.

Understand that this is a HOVEL. It is only slightly more upscale than the Clampett cabin from The Beverly Hillbillies. Slightly. And it is on what remains to this day a grave road.

We are out in the sticks, people.

That portion of the excursion done we head back to the nearest town to regroup and decide what to do next. I check Find A Grave and see a small family cemetery relatively nearby that has never had any of the graves photographed. So we decide to see if that can be rectified.

Usually when there are hinterland excursions planned I am prepared. Long pants, boots, long sleeves, tools, etc. As there was no such plan today I had left all that stuff at home and worn shorts.

Ok. You are now up to speed enough that the rest of the story will make a modicum of sense.

First off, I am already looking like a dolt. The cemetery is located further along the road we were already on earlier looking for the house and name on a chimney described above. This meant backtracking some 4 or 5 miles. Not the end of the world, but not great either. If I had only checked before we left THE FIRST TIME....

That aside, we pull up to the point where Google Maps indicates is the jumping off point to hike in to the cemetery. It is marked as some distance back off the road.

Now the area is NOT DEVELOPED. It is wild. Well, wildish. There has been timber harvesting in the past few years. This means few trees and a lot of scrub. At least that increases visibility.

I leave the Old Folks with the vehicle and set out cross country. Picture using a compass and a map, just electronic versions of both. Walk a distance in the indicated direction, pause, re-orient to insure travel is in the right direction, proceed. Repeat.

Sure wish I had worn long pants! The scrub and brush are ripping my shins to shreds.

A wise man would have abandoned the search for the day and returned another time.

I may be wise.

I may be intelligent.

But however wise and/or intelligent I may (or may not) be, I am far, FAR more stubborn. 

So I push on. And what do I find? An access road leading in my direction of travel as well as back to the road. 

Son of a .....!

If nothing else this makes progress easier.

A couple of hundred yards further along I spot a rock wall and the top of a monument peeking out above it.

Bingo!

Let the photos begin. There are only 5 graves in the cemetery and there is a Find A Grave photo request for every one. 

If I had the time, and had brought a set of pruning shears, I could have cleared the whole thing in about an hour. Alas, such was not to be. I settled for taking the photos, updating GPS locations, and getting the hell out of Dodge.

I did a good deed for the day, though. I doubt it did much to erase any of the evil I have gleefully committed over the years.

And I paid for my stupidly not being properly attired for the exercise later. A nice hot shower was waiting for me at home.

Want to guess what that felt like? Yeah. Literally salt in my wounds. I think the neighbors heard me screaming in pain. All for lack of long pants.....

Note to self: Put long pants in the bug-out bag! And always take the tool bag. Maybe then I will be less of a stubborn dumb-ass. Just a normal Stubborn Ass.