But I sure wished they did yesterday. After finding 98 obits at the Elkhart library on Friday, yesterday we went in search of the headstones of some of them. Some of the persons I had obits on, I already knew where they were buried but wanted some of the info that obits can give, others I needed burial locations for headstone photo's.
We went thru the obits and determined who we needed headstone photo's for. Sorted by cemeteries, we then mapped out our list of cemeteries. In the end we ended up making a huge circle around Elkhart County. The "bread crumbs" on our gps were quite interesting after yesterday's travels.
We set out about 10:30 and we visited 12 cemeteries. all in all we ended up with 120 photo's. Some are of the cemetery gates, some are close-ups so its hard to say exactly how many were actually off the obit referenced list. So not a bad day.
I will say that most of the cemeteries were very busy yesterday, lots of people working on planting & decorating graves. Made our day interesting. How you ask? We encountered two different families who when we went to photograph the headsone asked why we were photographing their loved ones stones. Two very good conversations with them, picking up more info and personal info on the persons who were on the stones. This certainly put a more "personal" spin on those two stones. I've already transcribed those notes for my files. One man on the GARMAN line, had just buried his wife last September. It was obvious in our conversation with him that he was still very much grieving her passing. The Garman line intermarries with one of the Boomershine girls. I had wonderful success documenting this line in headstone photo's yesterday. My heart went out to this man, he had been with her for 62 years. Does anyone today still stay together 62 years?
There were some stones that no amount of searching still could not be found. As a rule Studmuffin & I have no problems finding the stones we want, but yesterday it was as if it just wasn't meant to be. Either they had no stones or they just weren't ready to be found. Perhaps I'll see if I can find a volunteer from Find A Grave to check on them for me.
Today's great adventure is more headstone hunting. We'll be transferring our interest from my family lines to Mark's HURST family. Mark aka studmuffin, desecends from a man named John Mill Creek Hurst out of Virginia to Claiborne County, Tennessee. One of Mark's ancestors brothers migrated to Indiana and we are now working at documenting this line as well. Today as we head down to Tell City, Indiana we will be traveling thru quite a few counties just for the purpose of locating & photographing headstones.
Later today I hope to have dinner and spend the evening with my sister, Sheila who lives in the Tell City area. I've not see Sheila in quite a few years, so it will interesting to see her.
This is my last blog from Elkhart County, tomorrow I'll be blogging from our hotel in Tell City, Indiana.
No comments:
Post a Comment