Memorial Day

Being the oldest grandchild, I got to experience more with my grandparents than my sister or my cousins. Memorial day preparation was a ritual my grandmother, Reba, would spend a couple days getting ready for by attending to her grandparents graves as well as her parents. Her mother’s parents are buried in a small cemetery in Chester, Indiana that once was a Quaker meeting. My Allen ancestors had lived just north of this cemetery where they were in charge of the toll gate leading north on Arba Pike. She would bring soap and water and a scrub brush to remove the bird droppings and dirt that may have accumulated over the year. The next stop would be Goshen Cemetery (also a former Quaker meeting) on State Rd. 227 just south of the small town of Middleboro. This cemetery contains many Thomas relatives (my grandmother’s father’s family). Even though we only would clean her parents and grandparents graves, there were three more generations of her ancestors buried here. After the cleaning, she would return home, take tin cans, clean them thoroughly and wrap them in tin foil. She would then go out to her peony bushes and clip blooms to place into her “vases” to place on the graves.

The conversations we had while spending time cleaning and preparing the stones are long forgotten. But I do remember they were about stories of the family many of them fun memories or treasured moments of the past. I never knew my great grandparents, my grandmother was the only connection to the past. Two incidents involving the cemetery are ones I will never forget. The first is a story Grandma told of herself and her sister Hazel. They were looking at stones at Goshen after the decoration service and Hazel was backing up to read one. As she was doing this, she backed into a stone at knee level which caused her to tumble over backwards into a back flip. Grandma said she got up so fast worrying about if someone saw her. Of course they got to laughing over the situation. The next involved my grandmother and myself cutting down shrubs near the Allen tombstone. They had gotten to be to big and needed to be removed. So, we took garden shears and a blanket to place the branches in and set out to work. She placed her car as close as she could so we wouldn’t have far to drag the branches to her trunk. After we had cut the shrubs down to the root, we placed all the branches on the blanket and drug them to the car. The task of getting the blanket up into the trunk was more difficult than had planned. We then got tickled trying to move the large “body” like mass of blanket and branches. Anyone driving past the cemetery would have thought we had dug up a body and were trying to load it into the trunk. The more we struggled with loading the branches, the harder we laughed. We eventually got it all loaded and back to the farm to dispose of there.

So, this Memorial Day like many before, I grabbed a Mason jar, made sure it was clean, clipped some peony blooms from my bushes that came from starts of hers in from the farm, walked to the cemetery where her and Grandpa are buried. Her favorite flowers were yellow roses and my rose bush is just now putting out buds and blooms. So, I cut a couple and added it to the arrangement. I placed the vase on the flowers on their grave and thought of all who have come before me. Not many of our ancestors were famous or sometimes the greatest of persons, but without their lives, I wouldn’t be here. So, thank you, all of my ancestors for the gift of life. I will do my best to keep your stories alive in my family for generations to come.

Unexpected Surprises

Hard to believe that it has been almost 6 years since my last posting. Lots has happened: a divorce, I turned 50 last summer, my eldest son graduated college and then was married July of 2021, my daughter graduated college with her teaching degree and will be heading into the Peace Corps for two years in June, and the youngest got his own apartment last Fall and will graduate with with a business degree in about a week. For me personally, I tried a year of teaching special education (the paperwork turned me off right away) and now I am teaching choir full time in a nearby school about to wrap up my 5th year.

Some unexpected heirlooms have come along to be part of my children’s inheiritance that I didn’t know anything about. My dad’s family didn’t have much to pass down over the years. The Indiana Williams ancestors were modest living Quaker farmers until the early 1900’s when they began moving to different religions. So, many items were divided up and shared with many offspring, but my dad’s grandfather did not have items to pass on except a boot jack carved from the crotch of a tree.

Isn’t it interesing how people you’ve known for a while turn out to be a cousin descending from the same set of 3rd great grandparents? A friend from college, who lived in a neighboring town, happened to be one of those surprises. He gifted me the family bible belonging to John Williams, our common ancestor. No genealogy was included, but John and Elizabeth Williams’ are engraved on the front cover with a description of who owned the bible and how it ended up with cousin Brian. When cleaning out family pictures he also found some pics of my great grandfather, Milo, that I had never seen before.

Recently, a cousin who lives cat-e-cornered from the old Williams homestead ruins, alerted me to an 1839 Quaker Discipline book that belonged to the same 3rd great grandfather in his possession. He graciously gave me the book which has John’s signature in the front.

My dad’s extended side of the family has never really been close with one another or had anything to really pass down other than family stories. In fact, my own grandfather’s neices and nephews and their descendants do not show any interest in knowing any of their extended family except his youngest brother’s children. But somehow, I think these items returning to my family line may have been prompted by the ancestors to make their way to the family genealogist. My children may not appreciate this “stuff”, but I hope someone down the line cherishes these items or that they make their way to a depository or historical society.