Having had luck in the first stop on my journey with the
likely discovery of “The Old Northen Homestead,” my next destination was Oakland
United Methodist
Church. Sometime last November, I had received an
email from a woman who was doing
research for a book on the church members who were buried in the
cemetery. She had seen my family on
ancestry.com and wondered if I knew anything about Robert Northern. I told her that, in fact, he had been my
father’s older brother. She said that he
was buried in the cemetery, but that no one knew much about him. With continuing emails, I also learned that
my great grandfather, John P. Lewis and his wife were also buried in the
cemetery. So that is where I was
headed.
Without having had this information, I would have never
thought to have gone to Oakland
church cemetery. It was very rural and
quite a ways off the highway 3, the main route through Richmond Country. The time was edging towards noon when I got there, and the temperature was
approaching the mid-nineties. What
caught my attention immediately when I entered the cemetery was that the name
Lewis was probably the most frequent name to appear on the head stones. I wandered back into the cemetery trying to
see if any of them were for John P. Lewis, and was having no luck when I came
across my uncle Robert’s grave marker.
One thing that strikes any of my family is the spelling of
the last name. My father always said
that growing up his last name was spelled with a second “r” in it and that his
brothers’ name still were spelled that way.
Near Robert’s grave I spotted another one that said Clara W.
Bryant. Bryant, like Lewis, is an
extremely common name in Richmond County,
but I recognized this as the married name of my Dad’s youngest sister
Peggy. (How she came to be nicknamed
Peggy has always been a bit of a mystery.)
The dates on her tombstone read 1924-2007, so she was the last of my
fathers siblings. Near her was the grave
of her husband and a stone that included both of their names.
I made my rounds through the cemetery – a fairly large one
for a church in a thinly populated area – inspecting all the Lewis stones with
no luck. I came back up to the church
and was about to leave when I looked at one last Lewis marker. Around it, I discovered my grandmother’s
family. There were John Pierce Lewis
and Katherine Edwards Lewis (my great-grandparents) as well as John Ball Lewis
and his wife Alice Ruic Lewis (my great-grand parents). There was also a Maggie Lewis who was either
my grandmother’s oldest sister or her aunt.
I can’t help but add that the “Ball” in my great-grandfather’s name was
after his great-grandmother, Sarah Ball, who was related to Mary Ball, George
Washington’s mother.
I was obviously excited about finding the site where my
dad’s brother and sister and my
grandmother Mattie Lewis’ family were buried.
My plan was to head back to the Richmond Historical Society now that it
was well past 11 AM. First, though, I
wanted to stop by the Calvary Baptist
church where I knew my great-grandfather W.F.L. Northen (see blog about the man
with many names) was buried. I’d been
there on the previous trip but it was on the way back to Warsaw
and I wanted to check in to see if anything new turned up (well, not
literally).
Rather than new discoveries, the visit back to Calvary
cemetery (a much smaller one than Oakland)
tended to deepen some understandings.
First of all, there is a joint stone saying “Northen and Bryant
Families.” After having seen my Aunt
Peggy’s (Clara’s) grave this just cemented for me the relationship between the
families. Moreover, there was a grave
there at Calvary that also said Clara Bryant. It was next her husband and I recognized that
this Clara was my father’s aunt. A 1910
census records my great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth Northen as having had five
children, only three of whom survived into adulthood. My grandfather Marcellus Crocker was the
oldest and his brother Robert was the third.
Those two I knew had lived. I
also knew that one brother Norman
had died at four years old from congenital birth defects. Norman’s
grave was also right there. Next to it
was also the grave of a girl, Ruth Mytrle, who died at two years old. This would have completed the list of the
five children, three who lived and two who didn’t: Marcellus, Norman, Robert,
Ruth and Clara. It helped me form a
better picture of my grandfather’s family.
From my experiences with looking in cemeteries in Richmond
County so far, it appears that
there has been some kind of Renaissance in an attempt to maintain
cemeteries. It doesn’t take too long to
realize that most of the stones that I have been looking at cannot possibly be
the original tombstones. From an
informational standpoint, I am grateful for this and commend the churches who
are involved in preserving family memories. It makes the difficult task of
seeking out barely readable old stones from a hundred or more years ago much
easier. At the same time, there is something about actually seeing and touching
the stones that were put their when that person was originally buried that
works on a deeper emotional connection and I wish that they had left the
original tombstones when they also put in the new ones.
One last comment before finishing up with Calvary
cemetery and heading on. Here is my
great grandmother’s grave marker (obviously new):
Newness aside, when compared to her grandson Robert’s grave
marker above, what is most obvious is the spelling of the last name – no second
R. Mary’s two children who died young
(Norman and Ruth) also have their last name spelled Northen. So obviously my
grandfather’s name was originally spelled Northen as well. What happened? One other rather eerie thing
is that there was a grave there that read:
James E. Northen (1848-1900). Of course, Dad was James E. Northen as
well, so this may be who he was named for.
I headed back to the Warsaw
and the Richmond Historical Society.
When I arrived back at the historical society, it was still closed
despite the fact that it was now 12:45
and the hours said 11-3. Thinking that
perhaps the person running it was out to lunch I went to a restaurant called The Daily News – named
for the newspaper office next to it – both to wait out the time and to get out
of the heat. The restaurant was a
bustling and lively place, so I had an ice tea at the counter, but, having only
one day for my research only stayed about 20 minutes. Once 1 PM
came, I headed I went back over to the historical society, only to find it
still closed. Lora and I had experienced
the same phenomenon on our previous trip down, closed when the schedule said it
should be open, so I cut my losses and decided to head on down to
Northumberland County for the next part of my trip.
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