Road Trip into History - Part 3

My family research in Richmond County proved rewarding. I felt pretty good after about having found the Old Northen Homestead and the Lewis graves at Oakland church. The one area in Richmond County, other than the historical society, that disappointed me was being able to find the Old Budweiser plant which, apparently has the grave of Peter Northen (one of the more prominent  family members), or a marker about him behind it.  Around 1 PM, then, I headed down to Northumberland County. 

            I was able to find the Northumberland Historical Society and walked in.  To my surprise, upon walking in, it looked like it had a fair amount of material, with their society magazine and many other books all spread out.  There was a ten dollar fee for researching.  I was met by Bootsy Burgess whose name I recognized from Lora’s and my previous trip there.  One of the things that she showed me was a large framed wall hanging the said Wicomico High School Honor Roll.  She said it had been hanging in one of the Methodist Churches, I think, and they were going to discard it so the society took it.  I found my father’s name on it along with John’s and Roberts, but not Dad’s sister Elizabeth. 

This was strange because neither John nor Robert went much beyond elementary school, but it also verified the story that all through high school Dad's last name was spelled with a second r.  After Looking at it, I realized what it was from one of the papers in the packet of documents about my father that my mother had send many years back.  It was not an academic honor roll, but a list of those from Wicomico school who had served in a branch of the armed forces.  I was also able to find Peyton’s and Calvin’s name listed under, Army.   I asked Ms. Burgess where the Wicomico High School had stood, knowing that it no longer existed.  She described the site to me on Brown’s Store Road saying that most of the original had been torn down and now there was an apartment building.  She also confirmed that the Northen’s had lived out on Bogey Neck road and was pretty sure that John Northen had run a crab shop from there.  She also said there were two churches out on Mila Rd., but, luckily, I had an address.  She invited me to come back and do some research that day if I had time; they closed at 4 PM.

            As with my search for Oakland Church, I had my trusty Google map with me.  Eli had helped confirm this for me the night before.  Once again it was a long ways down the road.  I pulled into a short dirt road and the church looked exactly as it did in a picture I discovered on line.   The cemetery was small so even from near the front, I was able to see two large markers that said Northern.  The first graves that I found were those of my Dad’s brother John and his wife Myrtlene. I had heard that John might be buried here, but even so this was a nice surprise.  James Hoffman had told me that my grandparents markers were small, not much more than a stone and might be illegible, but it was clear that, as with the Richmond County cemeteries these markers were pretty new.  It took very little time to find a large marker that said Northern at the bottom and then on the top the names of my grandparents. 

I was both delighted and disappointed.  Delighted because I had been searching for my grandparents burial site for a long time, but disappointed because there was one generic stone and neither of the original stone.  To me there is something about each person having his or her own marker that just seems more real to me, as though I can point to the spot and say that whatever remains of that person is buried there.  A couple things interested me about the marker, though.  First, it does not take a linguist to see that the stone was placed there by Crocker and Mattie’s children and that the inscription is an anachronism.  Knowing this also shows how oral tradition, even within a generation, can change things.  First of all, according to the E. E. Northen account of the family, written when my grandfather was still attending school in Emmerton, his name was Marcellus Crocker Northen.  My grandmother’s obituary and this grave marker, however make it clear that he was known as Crocker.  This latter also gels with my own memory from childhood when my mother would say that Dad’s fathers name was Crocker Marcellus and we would laugh at what a strange names that was.  Moreover, despite the spelling on his father’s and brother’s name in Calvary Cemetery, it was spelled Northern in Northumberland County.

While I was in the cemetery an electrical truck pulled up that was supposed to do some work on the church.  I asked if they were church members and might know anything about the grave yard, but they said they were just workers there and knew nothing about the church.  I did, copy the church address and name of the minister from the sign in front for future use.  My next stop was to just drive to Bogey Neck Road, the road where apparently the Northen clan was known to have lived.  It was not far and paralleled this one, leading out to the Wicomico River.