Hunting for Headstones
View from Salt Lake City Cemetery
Perhaps one of the strangest things about genealogists, is that many of them are excited to make a trip to the cemetery, either to visit with their well-known beloved dead, or find new ones. My children grew up making visits with me to various cemeteries across the country, Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and most recently Utah. A few years ago, this odd cemetery visiting behavior included a Spring Break trip in the rain to a cemetery in Blairsville, Pennsylvania. Surprisingly, my daughters didn’t refuse on the spot. I threw in a ride on Pittsburgh’s Incline Railroad for some “excitement” for them, but really spent the majority of the week in libraries, visiting with the caretakers of the local historical society, and a trip to the cemetery to visit my great-great-great-grandfather James C. Day’s grave.
I learned my cemetery visiting behavior from my father. We made trips to visit cemeteries regularly while I was growing up, especially on Memorial Day, when we would deliver flowers to the gravesites of family members. As a result, I’ve been in many rural, pioneer cemeteries in Eastern Washington and Oregon, as well as city cemeteries in Washington, and Utah. Sadly, remembering that grandmother’s headstone is next to a tree or bush doesn’t help when its been years since the last visit, and the trees are a dozen feet taller. As a result, it frequently required the whole family to spread out and search the headstones for the family member we were looking for.
Blairsville, Pennsylvania cemetery plot map
Cemetery visits can be for a variety of reasons. For some, a cemetery is a place to grieve. While our cemetery trips have included a large number of children at times, we have tried to be quiet enough, and keep our distance, to allow those grieving visitors space for their sorrow. Often, a cemetery stop can provide an opportunity to stand in gratitude for a distant ancestor who paved the way for today’s living. For me this makes up most of my trips to the cemetery, whether its a grandparent, or a 4th great-grandfather. Those ancestors represent much of what makes me who I am today. Other cemetery visits can result in genealogical discovery. Sometimes it can result in finding missing family members, perhaps a child buried next to a parent, that doesn’t show up in birth or census records. For some kind visitors, a cemetery trip provides an opportunity for service, such as cleaning a headstone. In the case of my oldest daughter’s mother-in-law, she saw an old family cemetery in Mason, OH that was adjacent to a schoolyard. She wasn’t related to anyone in the cemetery, but as an expert genealogist, she saw a cemetery badly in need of repair, and decided to fix the falling sign, and otherwise clean up the small plot. Years later we were shocked to discover on the occasion of our third daughter’s wedding that the family cemetery belonged to the ancestors of her future husband!
A variety of websites are useful in preparing for a cemetery visit. The largest are Find-a-Grave and BillionGraves. Interment.net is also a good site to search for where ancestors might be buried. I have also found it important to utilize cemetery websites themselves to access plot maps to help find the location of a family member’s grave. Otherwise a trip to a cemetery might result in a lot of wandering through the rows.
Knight family plot at the Provo City Cemetery
On a recent visit to a grave in the Mountain View Memorial Estates Cemetery in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, we had GPS coordinates from my father’s last visit to my grandparents graves. But when we tried the GPS coordinates on our phone, we were not able to find the location. A phone call to my father also didn’t help, as cell reception in the cemetery was spotty. We quickly pulled up plot information from the Find-A-Grave website, and were able to find the site in a matter of minutes. That experience caused me to make sure I had plot maps, and plot information for future visits, which I’ve used in visits to cemeteries in Provo, Utah and Salt Lake City, Utah.
Great-great-great grandfather, Ira Jones Willes, in the Salt Lake City Cemetery
On the visit to the Provo City Cemetery, my wife, daughter and I had gone to find my great-grand parents, Leo James Knight, and Adleen Farley Knight. But having been taught to always look closeby for the possibility of other family names, I was surprised to find all my Knight family grandaunts and their husbands buried together with them in a family plot.
We similarly found many family plots in the Salt Lake City Cemetery that my daughter and I visited last Saturday. It turned out to be great exercise, as the cemetery reached up a steep hill, and our search for ancestors started at the bottom with my great-great-great grandfather Ira Jones Willis, and ended up near the top in a failed attempt to find my great-grandmother Celestia Eva Pettit Willis. In observing Ira Jones Willis’ grave, he was buried next to his wife, Melissa Lott, and many other Lott family members. Unfortunately for Celestia Eva Pettit Willis, Find-a-Grave didn’t have plot information, and our GPS attempts were unsuccessful again. The failed attempt just means another visit, since we ran out of time, and I need to return with my wife so that she can visit with her Gold family great-grandparents.
Asotin Cemetery’s “Plan of Perpetual Neglect”
The family plots had me thinking about what happens 40 or 50 years down the road when my wife and I pass away. My father has always talked about his desire to be buried next to pioneer ancestors in the Asotin Cemetery in Asotin Washington. He will always laughingly refer to the cemetery as having a burial “plan of perpetual neglect”. While the cemetery is incredibly scenic, perched on the top of a high hill overlooking the Snake River, weeds are more common than grass, and many headstones are difficult to find or see as a result. I asked my wife if she would be inclined to be buried in a Day family plot in Asotin, and she was decidedly against it. Though if she passes away first, she might find that she ends up there anyway.
A few weeks from now, my daughter and I need to plan a Saturday trip to Evanston, Wyoming where a few great-grandparents are buried. It might take all day, but its definitely worth the trip.
Asotin Cemetery overlooking the Snake River. Photo by Terence L. Day
Great-great-great grandfather James Stratton in the Provo City Cemetery