Tombstone Tuesday: Decorations and folkways

I was back visiting Mom who will be 95 this month and lives in Western Maryland in a little town called Frostburg. There had been some back and forth emails amongst the cousins about who was decorating Grandma's grave and it all got ironed out, once everyone was safely and well assured that someone was taking care of Grandma. Decorating the graves of ancestors is taken quite seriously in these hills: you can't have too many flowers on a grave but too few or none at all is a big problem!

There have been some mysterious disappearance of decorations and charges of thievery by an unknown assailant. It's not unheard of for grave floral decorations to go missing, especially if they are unusual or quite elaborate and beautiful, and not properly secured. Plus, they can blow away if not tied down. And because of the penchant for the weather to take a turn to ugly with a sudden freeze mid-summer or the like, most everyone uses plastic flowers. Here in SoCal, it's mostly real flowers or nothing at all. In Frostburg it wall-to-wall plastic flowers in cheery colors! Everywhere! So, on occasion, it's actually a treat for the eye to visit the cemetery and a nice drive through can be an afternoon's entertainment!

Decoration of graves has it's official kick-off on Memorial Day, which some of the older folks still call Decoration Day, especially when they are talking about getting graves ready. Frostburg is a place where the ancestors stuck around for a number of generations and then mostly moved on for better work opportunities. That said, a number of cousins live within close driving distance to the two major cemeteries where our people are buried, and Mom still lives in Frostburg, and Aunt Betty too.

My Sis-in-law likes decorating the grave and takes it on for our branch of the family.She is always on the lookout for suitable plastic flowers. Silk is too fragile so only plastic will cut it in this region's rugged weather. Throughout the year she purchases new flowers, keeps her stash, and then assembles them into a decoration using her personal knowledge of the person, to craft an appropriate and resplendent display. She wants the person whose grave she decorates to like it. Grandma Kelly's grave decorations are always pink because that was her favorite color. My Sis-in-law is exceptionally good at making up those decorations!

In the fall the flowers of summer are retired and a more modest fall arrangement in Autumnal colors takes its place, the better to withstand the changing weather. Christmas time sees poinsettias relieving the fall arrangements. Those stay for the winter, making a bright splash of red above the white of snow, and in Frostburg there's a lot of snow. There might be a spring bouquet about Easter time, but the "big guns" of grave decoration come out for Memorial Day and are on display all summer.

Grandpop Kelly got very upset at Mom when she researched and found that his own grandfather's grave, the location of which was once thought to be unknown, was in St Michael's cemetery after all. He insisted that if that was his grave, he and his father would have cut the grass, so it couldn't have been his grandfather's grave! Case closed! No further discussion needed. (Sorry, Grandpop, it is his grave.)

Decorating the graves of ancestors ties our family together. We take pride in knowing that no one is forgotten. We know that we're connected to each other because we share responsibility amongst the cousins and make sure that every grave is covered. It's just one other activity that makes us family.


Photo at top: Mom's brother Camey and his wife Rita's grave.

Dad's grave. Got style.

Grandma and Grandpop Kelly. Since Sis-in-law took over the decorating task the motif is all pink. Sorry Grandpop, but you know Grandma always got her way.

My great grandparents. Not forgotten.

In the way-back dark woods of West Virginia is a little cemetery at Magnolia. (See blog post about a visit to Magnolia here.)  When you find it you expect to see it all over-grown and unkempt. But it's not, and this Civil War vet and family member is still honored. He died in 1861 at the very start of the war. (For a story about him click here.)

 

 

This post uses a GeneaBlogger's blogging prompt called Wisdom Wednesdays . Check them out!

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/07/tombstone-tuesday-decorations-and.html

Tombstone Tuesday: She was buried in an unmarked grave

Recently I ran into two instances of female ancestors buried with husbands but there was no marker for the wife's grave. In my head, two is a cohort and deserves thinking about. Maybe in the future when I can find no obvious grave marker for the wife I'll first double check to see if she's buried next to the husband before I go looking far afield.

The first example is in St Micheal's Cemetery in Frostburg, Allegany, Maryland and the other is in the Comps Cemetery located next to the Comps Church in Comps Crossroad, Somerset, Pennsylvania. In both cases the husband died before the wife by about 20 years. A lovely stone was erected for the husband with full information on birth and death dates. In both cases no part of the main stone or any other stone indicated that the wife was also buried there, but she was.

Now I'm starting to suspect that there might be more of this going on than I originally thought. The problem of course is proving something that doesn't exist, in this case no stone marker. I took the lack of a stone at St. Michael's Cemetery as an indication that the wife wasn't buried there with the husband and thus began a year-long search of Western Maryland cemeteries for Bridget (Corcoran) Kelly that came up empty.

Now however, I'm thinking that the obvious place to look for the missing wife, especially for ancestors interred in church cemeteries, is right next to the husband... and in church records. If you can get to them.

My first thought based on the Kelly couple is that possibly by the time the wife passed, the funds to set a separate marker or even engrave the husbands marker were sparse. There could have been small satellite markers placed for the wife that are hidden under dirt and that is worth exploring. And then there could be a lot of other explanations too that I can only guess at.

So here are my two ladies without grave markers, "living" if you will, in the shadows of the husband's markers.

John Kelly (1829 - 1891), St. Michaels Cemetery, Frostburg, Allegany, Maryland.

Find A Grave # 107263732

Also buried there is his wife Bridget Corcoran (1830 - 1912)

Find A Grave # 107271558

Benjamin Franklin Troutman (1780 - 1856), Comps Cemetery, Comps Crossroads, Somerset, PA.

Find A Grave # 74544823

Also buried there is his wife Catherine Wolgerman (1765 - 1874)

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/06/tombstone-tuesday-she-was-buried-in.html

Tombstone Tuesday: Bridget is Found!

I'm not the kind of person to remain isolated for very long. Yes, it's true, I can sit quietly in a corner and think for quite a long time, or stick my nose in a book for an even longer period. Mom and I both like our alone time. But I love making connections too! Sometimes it just works out that a connection is made with a like-minded traveler and you start exchanging info and tree sections. And so it was recently.

Here's what I posted last Wednesday on my regular Wisdom Wednesday GeneaBloggers post:

Allegany County List Friends. I do like mailing lists for geographic areas! You can post idiosyncratic questions there and actually get answers. I recently posted a question asking when a manufacturing plant that my Dad worked at closed. Was surprised to find that it hadn't closed, it had just moved! Had no idea!
As with lists like this, eventually you start emailing back and forth sharing stuff and become friends. One of my friends there recently emailed a photo of a tombstone in St. Michael's Cemetery in Frostburg, Maryland. It's a beautiful old Irish Cross, and the name inscribed, which was just about the only thing that was readable, was John Kelly. Because this person knows I'm over here in the Kelly pile-o-ancestors, she relayed the photo to me... of my 2nd GGF's Irish Cross tombstone! I was able to supply all of the vital data that was worn off the stone so that correct info was now on FindAGrave.
But there's more!! Through her resources and contacts - wow, she's good and well connected - she was able to solve a long time mystery and that's where his wife, Bridget Cocoran Kelly is buried. Right there next to him!! Now we know where she lies and her date of death too. Next step: get a copy of the death certificate!

I was so blown away by what happened that I felt the need to write about it here again! What if I wasn't on that list and checking it all the time? She and I would never have started emailing back and forth. And what if I had left her emails sit in my inbox and not been sociable? What if I didn't tell her about this blog and post here about the Kellys a lot? And what if I didn't post this photo of the small-ish Irish cross tombstone for the final resting place of my 3rd great grand father, John P. Kelly (1829 - 1891)? Then it wouldn't have stuck in her mind so that she remembered and connected it up with my Kelly people. We might have eventually made the connection but I've got to think it would have taken a lot longer and perhaps even never happened.

I guess the most amazing and dumbfounding aspect of this is that she then contacted someone who looked at records and found that sweet Bridget Corcoran Kelly was resting right there beside strong John Patrick Kelly! (She's got to be "sweet" because she's a Bridget, and he's got to be "strong" because he probably worked on building the C&O Canal. Or is that just my imagination?) 

I couldn't wait to tell Mom. She's been looking for where Bridget Corcoran Kelly was buried for years. She's been right where she's supposed to be all the time! And last week I ordered Bridget's death certificate because I knew her death date. Got it yesterday!

Next time I'm visiting Mom we want to look all around the Irish cross stone searching for any trace of Bridget's marker. John died in 1891 and Bridget died in 1912 so it's quite possible that there is a small marker for her that has been covered over by dirt and grass. In this time and place, a satellite marker was often used for family that passed on later.

It's nice for me that I'm still not so jaded in the pursuit of genealogy (or life for that matter) such that I don't get all worked up by these events! Bet you can get all worked up too.

Top two photos: Marker for John Kelly (1829 - 1891) in St. Michael's Cemetery, Frostburg, Allegany County, Maryland.

The Historical site of Clonmacnoise near where John was born in Shannonbridge, Ireland.

 

This just in! Bridget's Death Certificate!

 

 



This post uses a GeneaBlogger's blogging prompt called Wisdom Wednesdays . Check them out!


The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/04/tombstone-tuesday-bridget-is-found.html

 

Wisdom Wednesday: Hurry Up, Now Slow Down!

Have learned so very much this week! Been watching RootsTech and taking that time away from my regular genea-life to sit in front of the live stream was one of the best things I could have done to further my genealogical education right now. Thank you, RootsTech! But that's not all. The DNA results and DNA contacts are humming along too, but I blogged about that on Monday. Plus, it's new cousins all over the place. Life is good! So now after the hectic pace and the ton of new information, it's time to slow down and digest, then follow up.

Google Search by Dave Barney. I can never know too much about Google search and how to dig even deeper so I was happy to spend some quality time watching this presentation by Dave Barney from Google who knew just how we like it. For some reason, and this coming from a gal who loves family and ancestor's photos, had not thought about all the wonderful ways to tweek the Image Search feature to dig deeper. I can now upload a photo from my file and have Google go look for a similar image. Using this tool to hunt for my mysterious Williams people who did that disappearing act in Upstate New York could be interesting and that's topping my list of things to do. (I learned of this tool a while back but forgot how to get there. Now I know all over again!)

Funny Boy, David Pogue. I like a good laugh so I really liked the presentation on the second day by well-known technology writer, David Pogue. OK, so there was no genealogy content and I don't care a fig. The man was that funny. Go watch for yourself! You deserve a treat:)

FamilySearch Family Tree by Ron Tanner. I came to a deeper and more thorough understanding of what FamilySearch Family Tree is all about due to this presentation. Must say, that if this works and it sure looks like it will, it is going to be the vehicle for building a single tree of common ancestors, with good research behind it. I recently wrote a blog post about the need I felt to stop from having every new genealogist build it all from the ground up. While that's a good way to learn it sure doesn't advance human knowledge. What I really like about Family Tree is this: you see the sources, and you seen who changed and updated the entry and when! And, there will be photos and stories and newspaper articles too. What's not to like in this wonderful way to stop research duplication?

New to me Cousins! I just love it when new cousins find me and we can share! Three recent contacts illustrate beautifully how it's all working when it's working at optimum because they came from three different sources: this blog, a local genealogy organization, and Ancestry Member Trees.
Cousin Karen#1 found me through this blog. Those posts do come up in Google searches!
Karen#2 found Mom because Mom is well known at a local genealogy library in Allegany County in Western Maryland, run by the Allegany County Genealgical Society, where the bulk of recent ancestors back three or four generations lived. Mom's even left a binder there containing a tree and Ahnentafel report and Karen#2 saw it, noted the shared ancestors, got Mom's phone number from the volunteers there, and called Mom. Mom took Karen#2's phone number with the intention of calling her back but I got to her first and yesterday we had a nice long chat. She shared the basics of her immediate and recent ancestors with me and that fills in some descendants down another line from our mutual ancestor, Samuel Albert House. I took copiuos nots and will type them up for Mom thus relieving her of the pick and shovel work. At 94 she deserves an assistant. Karen#2 didn't have a photo of Samuel Albert House and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Farrell, so I was tickled to share that with her!
Cousin Robert found me through Ancestry Member Trees. We share a common ancestor, Benjamin Thomas. There's so much sharing there to be done... as soon as he gets back to me. Hurry up, Robert!

Allegany County List Friends. I do like mailing lists for geographic areas! You can post idiosyncratic questions there and actually get answers. I recently posted a question asking when a manufacturing plant that my Dad worked at closed. Was surprised to find that it hadn't closed, it had just moved! Had no idea!
As with lists like this, eventually you start emailing back and forth sharing stuff and become friends. One of my friends there emailed a photo of a tombstone in St. Michael's Cemetery in Frostburg, Maryland. It's a beautiful old Irish Cross, and the name inscribed, which was just about the only thing that was readable, was John Kelly. Because this person knows I'm over here in the Kelly pile-o-ancestors, she relayed the photo to me... of my 2nd GGF's Irish Cross tombstone! I was able to supply all of the vital data that was worn off the stone.
But there's more!! Through her resources and contacts - wow, she's good and well connected - she was able to solve a long time mystery and that's where his wife, Bridget Cocoran Kelly is buried. Right there next to him!! Now we know where she lies and her date of death too. Next step: get a copy of the death certificate!

How did you find me? Have noticed quite recently that readers of this blog are now coming in some numbers from portable devices such as smart phones as well as social media like facebook and Pinterist. That's a big change from only being read by followers using a reading tool and email. Interesting. Tides are turning. But then change is the only constant these days.

Shout out to fellow bloggers! Just love my fellow blogger. They keep me connected and informed. They are quirky, irreverent, serious when need be, funny too. Don't stop posting! I need you:) Here's an e-hug to you!!

Here lies John Patrick Kelly 1829 - 1891

AND his wife Bridget Cockrane Kelly 1830 - 1912.

This post uses a GeneaBlogger's blogging prompt called Wisdom Wednesdays . Check them out!

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/03/wisdom-wednesday-hurry-up-now-slow-down.html

Tombstone Tuesday: Christiana and Frank P. Kelly

Was looking through Mom's tombstone photo file and ran into these two that I hadn't noticed before. They belong to my great grand parents and Dad's father's parents: Christiana Kelly (1861 - 1932) and Frank P. Kelly (1854 - 1923). Frank's full name was Francis Patrick Kelly but everyone called him Frank. He is just one of seven or eight Francis Patrick Kellys, including my Dad who everyone called Pat, on Mom's Big Tree. This couple rests in St. Michael's Catholic Cemetery in Frostburg, Allegany County, Maryland and here's a link to this cemetery on FindAGrave.

His wife was Christiana Eckhart Kelly, but here on the tombstone, as you can see, her name was spelled with two "n"s. Additionally, we have records with the surnames spelled both as Kelly and Kelley. Sounds about right, doesn't it? Just enough to drive our search a tad crazy:)

This couple holds a bit of special interest for me because they were the first big inter-religious marriage in this line: a Catholic groom and a Lutheran bride. And they had to work at it to get the blessing of the bride's family. Their strategy, and one taken by many a couple, was to have kids so as to put the pressure on. Here's a link to a recent post about it, "Treasure Chest Thursday: Secrets", and you can find it here.

Christiana Eckhart Kelly came from an old family in the area of Western Maryland and Eckhart (or Eckhart Mines as it's now named) going back to the Revolutionary War. Her great great grandfather was George Adam Eckhart who purchased military lots and combined them with the lots of Jacob Loar to form the large parcel he owned. Eventually his son's wife sold the most valuable parcels to a mining company. This bituminous coal-rich land came to be known as The Big Vein and made the coal barrons rediculously wealthy. And that, my friends is a whole other story for another day!

Uncle Delbert still tells of being a boy and visiting his grandmother Christiana on Sundays, walking down the hills to the old Kelly house, across from Kelly's pump, and having to sit at attention on the big leather chair and mind his manners. One gets the impression that he was on very best behavior, and totally out of character for one of the Kelly boys.

Dad as a school boy,

Francis Patrick Kelly (1916 - 2007)

Frank and Christiana's family, about 1913.

Please click on the image to read names and dates.
And yes, there's another Frank Kelly Jr. in this picture.

John Lee Kelly (1892 - 1969), Dad's Dad, and his mother,
Christiana Eckhart Kelly (1861 - 1932)

Christiana Eckhart Kelly's parents:

John Eckhart (1831 - 1917) and
 Mary Catherine Myers Eckhart (1837 - 1909)

 

 

Tombstone Tuesday is a weekly blogging prompt from GeneaBloggers. You can find the whole week's list of prompts here. Thanks, GeneaBloggers for inspiring genea bloggers!!

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/01/tombstone-tuesday-christiana-and-frank.html

Treasure Chest Thursday: He Came From Ireland

The blogging prompt for today is to look in the Treasure Chest and see what's there that might tickle a fancy. This is one is easy... and I really do need a prompt today to get me going after my trip back East to see Mom!

I always go for the photos. To me they are the most evocative bit of family history and beg a story if one can be had. So here's my treasure to share with you.

What you see here is the tombstone of my 2nd GGF, John Kelly. When Mom was just beginning the long 40-year task of constructing our family tree, this is one of the places she started. The family knew little about our John Kelly who was born in Ireland and died in Eckhart, Allegany County, Maryland. There was his tombstone, an Irish cross, for all the world to see up in St. Michaels Cemetery in Frostburg. Hard to read, it was, but Mom went again and again trying all the usual tricks of water and sunlight. Finally the rock revealed all it had and Mom recorded it.

John Kelly was born 22 June 1829 in Shannonbridge, Clonmacnoise (the parish name), Ireland. He died 28 June 1891. He married Bridget Cockrane, born Dec 1830 and died after 1910 but we have no good record of her death.

Shannonbridge is in Offaly County, Ireland. In 1854 Kelly was the 9th most common name in the county. And I'm willing to guess that there were more than one John Kellys about the countryside! Am just glad we're not Egans as they have 47 households in Offaly:)

Then in the 1980s Mom and Dad and I went to Ireland and visited Shannonbridge and the historical site of Clonmacnoise. They were just then putting the local parish records on computer and so we had to go see the priest for a permission note to view them. A long climb up a flight of stairs to the place were they were working on the files was paid off with our John Kelly's father's name: John Kelly born about 1800. He married Bridget Brown also born about 1800. And that's our brick wall because records back before that were burned in a fire. More's the pity.

The historical site of Clonmacnoise on the Shannon River.

I chose this as my treasure because it is the most tangible real object that connects me to Ireland. Without it I don't have any idea what I'd do on St Patrick's Day;)


The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/10/treasure-chest-thursday-he-came-from.html