On The Verge of Another Autumn

We are on the verge of another Autumn here in New England - that place synonymous with the season.  Just last week I caught a glimpse of a bright fiery red tree off to the side of the road behind a line of pine trees.  I had to break suddenly much as I do when I see a cemetery (no one was behind me) and turn off to see if I could get an angle on it. 

No luck.  

It was well protected by pine and oak as well as smaller bushes growing around it on the edge of a swamp.  Soon though, as I see other trees with branches tipped in red are starting their transformation, I know Autumn will be in full blaze. I have seen over 50 Autumns.  I had not thought of my life in seasons before and that number does not seem nearly a large enough number of times to view the brilliant color changes.  I grew up in the Midwest and felt an early draw to New England.  I am pretty sure I was the only teenage girl in my town who had copies of Yankee Magazine mixed in with my Tiger Beat issues.  (And I am talking about the original, small format Yankee - the best!).  

Autumn in the Midwest is quite stunning.  It is full of golden shades that glow in the sun.  New England draws more folks to visit and "leaf peep", I believe, because there are more of the amazing reds and blushy oranges as well as the golden yellows. 

I love cemeteries in Autumn!  How can I not?  As a nature photographer, I find many of my best subjects in Cemeteries (ponds full of frogs, moss full of mushrooms).  In the Autumn at a garden cemetery, the trees are simply stunning and generally do not have the issue of power lines and other things getting in the way of a great image.  

This image from Mount Vernon Cemetery in West Boylston, MA was taken in mid-morning on a sunny October day in 2018.  This tree is one of my favorites.  There is no time of year that this tree fails to present its glory as it stands guardian over the surrounding graves and monuments that date from the 1800's to the present.  

You will hear me downplay my photographs and my abilities.  I use a "point and shoot" Sony camera which I love in spite of its heft. I do get wonderful results when I am calm, patient and thoughtful about the composition.  Don't rush yourselves when taking photos of anything.  Take your time and take a lot of options from a lot of angles.  I am ecstatic when I get one great image out of a hundred.   Am I the only one that remembers the old days when you had to pay for processing?  Digital cameras and now phone cameras becoming so sophisticated can make anyone a great photographer. 

The following three photos were taken in 2012 during my statuary obsession.  All three of these are from cemeteries in Worcester, MA and show how amazing Fall color can provide a stunning backdrop to a subject.  To the right is a detail from the "zinkie" or white bronze monument  of the LaFontaine family.  Isn't that face beautiful?  I have found at least one but sometimes as many as four zinkies in most larger New England garden cemeteries.  Some even have the footstones still in tact.  It's become a gift to me, to see one and generally I see their blue green finish from a distance (even when driving by).

 

2012 was a great year for color in the Autumn.  Every year isn't always what we hope in terms of Fall color. Every year of our lives isn't always what we hope, now is it?  If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that we have to roll with the punches or "pivot" as is the popular term now.  Being a bit of a loner, I found that quarantine did not prohibit me from going to cemeteries (except for Mount Auburn in Boston which did close to visitors except for family members).   Some walking areas were also closed but it's a big place out there and I found many trails I could continue to wander.  I even found some new cemeteries to visit.   

 

I am looking forward to seeing what this fall has to share with us.  Will it be full of bright reds?  Will it devastate us with orange?  Will the trees hold their colors or will they change and suddenly fall?  I realize there is a lot of science involved - temperature, precipitation levels from the previous Spring, etc.  but I wait and I drive out and check my favorite spots.  I know there is a spot along the Ware River where the white birches seem to be the first to change.  They create a startlingly beautiful reflection in the river that lasts only a day or two.  Timing is important and we don't always have it, do we? 

Go outside.  Enjoy yourself, whether in a cemetery or not.  You can acquire a nice sense of peace in nature. Even if you don't have a photo in your camera to represent the day, you have the image in your memory.  I expect an Autumn full of potential and discovery.

If you are new to my blog I hope you will consider sharing it with like minded, cemetery obsessed people. 

Where Have I Been?

 I am returning to this blog from spending time on a corresponding social media page.  That social media site (whose name shall not be spoken)

is changing their format once again and I am tired of it so, that page will be closed and reopened here with photos, stories of my cemetery stalking, etc. 

After a couple injuries last year (one dislocated elbow - ow!  seriously! and one damaged knee) I am using cemeteries as many others are these days, for exercise as well as studying the stones, symbols and stories behind them.   With the vast number of cemeteries in my area it is very easy to select a rotating workout of 30 minutes in each, after which I permit myself to stroll with the camera and take pictures. 

Over the past few years there has been an evolution in my observations in cemeteries.  Basically, I go through phases.  Initially I was quite drawn to statuary.  Suddenly one day I noticed a "zinkie" and there was no turning back from that!  As always I am drawn to the early American slate stones prevalent in almost every little town cemetery here in Massachusetts.  Every so often I come upon a stone with an interesting story - such as the one of the woman who died from burns suffered in a fire.  She refused to leave her home until the last of her five children was saved.  By saving five children, imagine the generations after that she also saved and the possibilities of their individual achievements. 

Since I last wrote I believe I have had a couple computer crashes.  One of them lead me to reorganize all of my cemetery photos by state, town, cemetery and also a fun file of themes that I hope to share with you.  

I am remaining with a presence on Instagram as HeadstoneHaven.  Please feel free to follow me there for random photos. 

Books & Their Owners, Part 2

Burton Howard Peake's parents were John Howard & Ella L. Peake.  John's employment was listed on the 1910 and 1920 census as Motorman on a trolley car.  

Being also a bit drawn to trains, I wanted to see what I could find out about trolley cars in Cleveland in the early 1900's.  This site, Cleveland Transit System Through The Years, has some great images that date from 1904 forward. The ones from the time period 1910 to 1920's are in the first row.  The Motorman on the trolley car was the driver.  There was likely a conductor on the car as well, handling the flow of human traffic, etc.  Lots out there on the internet on strikes during the early 1900's involving the employees of the Railway systems. 

 More history on Cleveland transportation at case.edu.  Streetcar lines in Cleveland in 1910 (according to a Wikipedia article) were operated by the Cleveland Railway, but date back as far as 1834 - when the first wood rail lines were created in the city - see LakeshoreRailMaps.com for some more wonderful images, maps and information from the time period.  

John Howard Peake was born in 1868 (approx) in Louisville, Kentucky. His and Ella's Marriage Record gives us a lot of additional information.   What a wonderful record! I now know Ella's maiden name and that she was previously married.  But we'll get to her later.  According to this document,

John Howard or J. Howard, as he signs his name, was a Conductor in 1901 when they applied for marriage.  He was born in Louisville, Kentucky to George J. Peake and Lucretia Cotton.  This was his first marriage.  The document is certified by the Rev. Harris R. Cooley that the couple were married on the 23rd day of February 1901. 

Aren't old documents a wonderful thing?  What new levels of this family's history this opens up to me. Maiden names, parents and their information.  It opens up the past.   Thanks to the hands who maintained them, microfilmed them and made them online accessible.

More to read, more to compile. 

An Obsession with Old Books and Their Owners

Many years ago when I lived outside of Akron and was going to the University of Akron I would stop on my way home at the old book stores.  One was located in an old school turned into shops, mostly full of various genre of old books.  I found a book there (in the 80's) that I still have.  Through every move, I've obsessively held on to it.

I am not a particularly religious person, so it was odd for me to even pick up a Bible, but it was a very small "S.S. Scholars Edition" of The Holy Bible Containing The Old And New Testaments: Translated out of the Original Tongues; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by His Majesty's Special Command (as reads the title page).  "Appointed to be read in churches" it went on, published by Oxford University Press, American Branch, New York, printed by Eaton & Mains, New York, U.S.A.  In the back of the book is a Table of Contents that indicates the Copyright was 1904.

On the first blank page inside below the penciled-in price of 9.95, reduced to the $6.00 I paid, it says "Burton Howard Peake Dec. 25, 1910" in beautiful cursive writing (for you young folks that the connected lettering you might use for a signature if you write a check...) clearly done with a quill and ink.  It's fading and I worry someday I won't be able to see it.

Just on the other side of that inscription were these words:

"Remember Dear who gave thee this
When other days shall come
When she who had thine earliest kiss
Sleeps in her narrow home.
Remember t'was a mother gave
The gift to one she'd die to save."

It was the same handwriting with a beautiful flourish to the capital letters at the beginning of each row.  My mind immediately began to picture this woman in 1910 giving this to her son and how special a Christmas present it was to her.  The odd thing is I wasn't nearly as sentimental in the 80's as I am  now and yet, I had to have it.  I had to own it. I could not put it down.  Who was Burton Howard Peake.  Who was his mother?

I know over the years I would pick it up and hold it, flip through it carefully.  The cloth binding is just holding on to the inside.  I would pause over the glossy paged images here and there - they seemed out of place to me.  At the back was a Sunday School Primer section and maps of the holy lands in the Middle East.

I actually had it for years before I discovered more writing inside the back cover on a blank page.  And it made me think even more about Burton Howard Peake's mother and what had become of him.
In very small print but the same handwriting and quill pen it reads:

Howard -
"Do you know that your soul
Is of my soul, such a part
That you seem to be fiber
and core of my heart.
None other can pain me
As you Son can do.
None other can please me
or praise me as you.
Remember the world will be
Quick with its blame
Should shadow or stain
Ever darken your name.
"Like Mother Like Son"
is a saying so true
That the world will judge
Mother, largely by you.
Be this then your task
If task it shall be
To face this proud world
To do homage to me.
Be sure it will say
When its verdict you've won
She reaps as she sowed,
This man is her Son!"
              Mamma.


So I did a little looking on Ancestry.com today.  Why had I not done that earlier?  Burton Howard Peak was born in Ohio Dec. 16, 1901 to John H. & Ella L Peake (that's Mamma!).  Just turned nine years old when bestowed with this Bible. In 1910 (according to the 1910 United States Census) he was living with his parents and his younger sister Esther in Middleburg, Cuyahoga County, Ohio.  His father, originally from Kentucky, was a Motorman on a Streetcar.  They lived in a rented home on Seminary Street (if I am reading the handwritten census correctly).

In 1920, they were living on 3rd Avenue in Middleburg, Cuyahoga County, Ohio.  His father was still a Motorman on a streetcar, but at this time, his mother was now working as a Public School Teacher.  By 1930, Burton was married to his wife Doris and living in Akron at 131 Brown Street.  His profession:  Public School Teacher!  By 1940, Burton and his wife and growing family (two daughters - Patricia, age 5, and Janet, age 1) had moved back to the Cleveland area (Euclid, Ohio) where he continued to work as a Teacher in the Public Schools.

At what point did this little book return to Akron?  Or while a teacher in Akron, had he given it to a student there? How appropriate that it ended up in a shop in an old school!

To Be Continued...

Genealogy and the Challenge of Sanitizing Family History

I inherited my family's genealogy from my mom.  The really tough stuff had already been done and it was more a matter of maintenance.  At least that is what I thought.  But then I realized that some "sanitizing" had been done.  Early on it was pointed out that a "cousin" was really an uncle and the anecdote that surrounded that one was very commonplace for the time.

My maternal grandfather's first wife and two of his three children died in the flu epidemic in 1919. 

Here was a young man of 26 left with an infant son.  His son was 'given' to his sister who was married, to raise.  I would have assumed this was a temporary arrangement until he got married again.  However, the woman he married a year later came from a very Catholic family and having met (and been raised in that situation) them likely did not approve of the previous marriage even though it did not end in divorce (oh my, imagine what that would have brought on).  So my Uncle Worthington, whom I have only seen in a single photo from his WWII military service, was always mentioned as a cousin, until I was old enough to ask questions. Then that little discrepancy was cleared up.  Why such a need to hide the truth?  There was no scandal.

When I started working on the history in my twenties and supplementing it with the census records and documents that I could find, I discovered that my Great Uncle John who we had been told as children was a wanderer, who loved to travel and he went off and did not return from his adventures...was not at all a wanderer.  He had been placed in a mental asylum in Michigan where he lived until he died. Apparently in this very same strict Catholic family not only could you not be a widower, but it was also frowned upon to be depressed or mentally ill.

No one could tell me where or when he died or what name he had been there under.  And at the time I was searching that lead in 2002, Michigan records were a tough nut to crack. It is probably time to try that again.  All I really want to know is where the location of his grave is.  They were adamant that no information about his health could be released due to privacy laws.  He's dead?  And I don't want to know about his health record.

Thanks to Ancestry.com I did locate a copy of his World War I registration card which indicated that he was in a hospital in Ohio as early as the age of 20.  That was an interesting experience, finding that document and the eye strain to read the fading scan.  When the words ("unemployed patient at Massillon State Hospital") appeared before my eyes I felt like I had another piece of the puzzle after all this time.  It was a sad piece, but still a piece.  I have no idea when he was shipped off to Michigan, though there is a substantial amount of info on the asylums located there online.

Not long ago, spurred on by the information from draft card and legal documents, I kept digging on relatives and had a surprising find.  I discovered that my father's sister had been married before being married to the uncle I knew growing up.  I saw in the court documents that her mother had gone to the court and authorized her underage marriage to a young man leaving for War in 1944.  I had this wonderful romantic story of the quickie marriage and tragic loss of her husband in battle.  Not quite.  This one was a divorce.  That and the Protestant background of my father were two strikes in the eyes of my Mother's large Catholic family.

I've been working on a friend's genealogy and have hit an interesting somewhat related brick wall.  When his paternal grandmother died, at nearly the same time as my grandfather's first wife, though I suspect of complications of childbirth, the other children were not as lucky as my Uncle Worthington.  They were not placed with a relative.  They were place in an orphanage run by Catholic Nuns in Western Massachusetts called Brightside.

Knowing that it was a Catholic run facility, I knew up front that it would be difficult to locate "facts" no matter how you define the word.  The stories related from my friend were not glowing, warm fuzzy tales of loving care that you read in the history of the facility posted on the church sites in the area.  The facility still exists today though not in the same location or with the same purpose.  Two of the four boys were adopted out, one died in care and my friends father was returned to his home after his father remarried.  At a very young age, he had to care for his sick brother in the facility until the older brother died.

I found just one article in a mental health journal that referenced an overwhelming number of babies during the time period (1920's) that died in care due to failure to thrive specifically mentioning Brightside.  The article also outlined the difficulties of those researchers to find anyone willing to say that the generous nuns had not given all they could in taking in these children and how the closed mouths hindered their research.  No one wants to say bad things about a Nun.  (My Great-Aunt was a Nun....and believe me....I know that she essentially gave her life to a cause, but I never understood how what I saw as a child in her behavior squared with the near royal treatment that Nuns and Priests received).

My confusion lies in the fact that there was not one message board to be found that had adult children looking for family members or relaying stories of their care or lack of care.  I am guessing that the internet came late for the communication.  I am hoping that I can find where my friend's uncle is buried. It would be great also to locate the adopted brothers, but one needle in a haystack at a time.

If anyone who researches cemeteries in Western Mass knows of a cemetery associated with Brightside Orphanage, I would be very grateful for the name and address of it. 


From here on out, I think family members should just be honest with each other.  It makes doing a genealogy challenging when stories are told that are sanitized - which can be fun for someone like me, but it can also leave holes in people's hearts too. 


#brightsideorphanage #orphanage #genealogy #familyhistory


UPDATES:   I was able to locate my friend's uncle who died at age eleven.  He had been shipped from the Brightside orphanage to a hospital in eastern Massachusetts where he died.  I have not found the grave yet (in North Adams, far northwestern Mass. - he really criss-crossed the state).  My friend expressed a lot of gratitude for this knowledge.  Each piece of knowledge is a gift.

Old Center Cemetery, Suffield, CT

This past weekend had the pleasure of attending the Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS) Western Massachusetts Chapter Meeting held on the campus of the Suffield Academy in Suffield, CT.  There were some very interesting presentations that re-invigorated my interest in headstones.  I got busy with work this year and somehow got distanced from my passion. 

Here are a few of the images from the afternoon exploration of the stunning Old Center Cemetery abutting the school.  Thanks to Bill Sullivan (https://twitter.com/bsullivan35) for hosting.

Here are some of the great views and stones:

 I had not seen red/brown sandstone.  This is believed to be from a quarry near Springfield, MA though there are also sources of it in Connecticut as well.  This stone (below) was attributed to the work of Ezra Stebbins (#ezrastebbins) known for the profile and lettering style.  I am awed by members' knowledge of the stone cutters. 

 

(below) Two more Stebbins. 

 

(above) note the mention of the college degree attained. 

The Receiving Vault

For More information on AGS - Click here:   https://www.gravestonestudies.org/

To see more of my pictures from that meeting - Click here:  https://www.facebook.com/HeadstoneHaven


#AGS  #oldcentercemetery #suffieldct #ezrastebbins #headstones #gravestoneart #cemeteryart