Ancestor Hunting at the Graveyard
by Mighty Mouse on 07/21/08 at 8:45 pm
At five, Layla’s napping days are pretty much over, but she fell asleep the other day after an outing and I pulled off to park in a wide space beside the road. I always try to have a book with me for times like this and had a nice 40 minutes to read before she woke up.
I write a genealogy newsletter and since we were sitting next to a cemetery I suggested we take a walk to see if there were any Howards buried there. This was the first time I have ever actually stopped at a cemetery to hunt Howards, though I have thought about it every time I have passed one.
Fisher’s Cemetery is Clark County’s oldest established cemetery, and is located just east of the 164th Street turnoff on Evergreen Highway, which is the road closest to the Columbia River. Several of the headstones have been replaced, likely by descendents. It is becoming popular for descendents to try to find where their ancestors were buried and honor them with new headstones, but I think it happens more frequently in the eastern states.
Our walk through the graveyard was sad, seeing as many as three infants dying in their first year of life in one family alone. Or even strange, such as the four year old twins who also died on the same day. It makes you wonder about the stories behind their lives, or whether there were other children who survived.
Then there was the tree, which was perhaps planted as a memorial (the interesting part about this is that your mind tends to make up stories to fit the situations) then outgrew its place and began to consume the headstone.
I didn’t really expect to find any Howards buried here, but there was a baby and likely her mother. I might try to find out more information about them, especially since three surnames are listed for the mother.
I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would take rubbings of headstones when you could just take a picture. Today I found out; some of the headstones are so badly eroded that you can’t see the letters but you can trace them with your fingers. I’ve decided headstone hunting isn’t for me, unless it happens to be my own ancestors.
