Week 22: At the Cemetery #52Ancestors — Making Sense of it All

At the genealogy conferences I have been to, there are usually a bunch of merchants selling everything from clothing to books to any kind of genealogy-related knickknack you can think of. I almost got a bumper sticker which said “Caution: I brake for cemeteries.” LOL, but true. When my family and I were vacationing last year, we drove by a cemetery connected to St. Michael’s Catholic Church, in Leenane, County Galway, Ireland. Located on the “Connemara Loop,” the church and cemetery are on the edge of the Killary Fjord (the only fjord in all of Ireland – so we were told). It was our last day in Ireland and we had just been to the Killary Sheep Farm for a sheep-shearing lesson, demonstrations with their sheep dogs, and bottle feeding of the lambs.[1] On our way back to our rental house, I made my husband stop in front of St. Michael’s so I could wander a bit in the graveyard. The eye-rolls I got from my companions were so intense, I thought they’d never see straight again. If you travel with a genealogist you need to get used to these sorts of things.

Sorry - I do get side-tracked when I am writing these blog posts. Back to “ancestors.”

Cemeteries can offer a great deal of information on our ancestors, but you have to be very careful as not all of it is accurate. Just because it is written in stone does not make it true. I’ve seen headstones with the wrong date of birth, the wrong date of death, some with no dates at all. One of the strangest cemeteries I’ve been to is Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens, New York. My sister and I went there several years ago to find the headstones for our 2nd great-grandparents. According to Findagrave.com, this cemetery is the largest in the U.S. with about 3 million burials.[2] Several Mafia members are buried there along with many Senators and Congressmen (I’m resisting the temptation to suggest that they were the same people).

The person in the Calvary office confirmed where our family members were buried, but when we got to the lot location, there were no headstones. And that’s why this is a strange cemetery. It appears that some brilliant monument builder decades ago decided that it would be a good idea to make the headstones out of welded metal. Metal crosses and other markers - sitting out there in the elements between the Long Island Expressway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. What a great idea. Not many of metal markers were left and those that remained were nearly all rusted through. I am assuming that may be why our ancestors did not have any headstones.

Sometimes, you don’t even need to go to the cemetery to discover information about ancestors. Last year, I was at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and looking at the digital copies of the burial cards for the Holy Sepluchre Cemetery in East Orange, New Jersey, where many of my Maier/Spencer ancestors are buried. Because the library was about to close, I didn’t have time to study all of the cards. I madly took screenshots of all the “Maier” cards I could find and planned to study them when I got home. I thought I knew a lot about Holy Sepluchre because it was another cemetery my sister and I visited. [Poor girl, I drag her along on these “adventures” – or more to the point, I make her drive me.]

Back at home with all of my screenshots, I start to analyze what I have and I come across a burial card with my grandfather’s name on it.[3] But I knew it couldn’t be him as he died in Montreal. Who was this Charles Maier? A cousin? An uncle? Completely unrelated? As I researched it further, it all came together. This was the first child born to my great-grandparents and he died of diphtheria in April of 1892 when he was only 20 months old. Heartbreaking. I cannot even. I had never heard of him and can imagine the pain of his loss would cause his parents to not ever mention him again.

My great-grandparents’ second child (my grandfather) was born in 1893. Because he was also a boy, they did what many families did back in the day (the genealogists in the crowd know what’s coming): they gave him the exact same name.

The facts that help me put this puzzle together were: first, I recognized that the address on the burial card for the baby was the same address shown for his father in the Newark City Directory for 1892.[4] Second, the burial card for my great-grandfather showed that he was buried in this same grave over fifty-eight years later.[5] Because there was no headstone for this baby and we didn’t even know to ask the cemetery office about him. The burial cards became our only evidence of his existence.

Sad, but also kinda great.

[1]If you ever get to this part of Ireland, you MUST GO to the Killary Sheep Farm. One of the most fun experiences you will ever have. https://killarysheepfarm.com

[2]“Calvary Cemetery,” Find A Grave (https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/64107 : accessed 3 June 2019).

[3]Holy Sepulchre Cemetery (East Orange, New Jersey), "Cemetery records, 1859-1977," Charles Maier burial card, 6 April 1892; digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/search/film/007900333?cat=230108 : viewed 24 Jan. 2018) image 3946; imaged from FHL microfilm 7,900,333.

[4]Newark City Directory, 1892 (original viewed by author at Maplewood, New Jersey, Public Library), p. 792, “Maier, Charles, tailor, 211 Bergen.”

[5]Holy Sepulchre Cemetery (East Orange, New Jersey), "Cemetery records, 1859-1977," Charles Maier burial card, 8 November 1934; digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/search/film/007900333?cat=230108 : viewed 24 Jan. 2018) image 3947; imaged from FHL microfilm 7,900,333.

Burial Card for Charles Maier (1890-1892)

Burial Card for Charle Maier (1866-1934)