Nathan Gulick was born 10 April 1777 and died 02 October 1826. He married Elizabeth Erb on or about 24 May 1800.

The stone shown here is in the Pioneer Graveyard in Maysville, Kentucky.

My great-grandmother Louise Grant Smith transcribed the inscription on her great-grandfather’s tombstone as follows:

To  the memory of
NATHAN GULICK
who departed this life
October 2nd, 1826
aged 49 years, 5 months
and 22 days.

His languishing head is at rest,
Its thinking and aching are o’er.
His quiet and immovable breast
is heaved by affliction no more.
His heart is no longer the seat
of trouble and torturing pain.
It ceases to flutter and beat,
It never shall flutter again.

The image shown here was posted to Find A Grave by user Debbie J on October 29, 2009. It’s listed there as memorial #43690720.

D’Linton Greenfield, a Rome, Oneida, New York book seller and stationer, was the son of Joseph and Cynthia M. Hubbard Greenfield. According to his obituary (found in a scrapbook at the Rome Historical Society and likely clipped from the Rome Sentinel), he was born in Trenton, Oneida, New York on 25 Jun 1846. D’Linton married Georgianna Schryver in Rhinebeck, Dutchess, New York on 2 April 1885 (again, from a newspaper clipping found in a scrapbook at the Rome Historical Society) and they had one daughter. D’Linton died in 1919 and is buried in Rome Cemetery.

D’Linton is a fascinating name and it doesn’t appear to Google. If you’ve heard it before or know where it might have originated, please let me know.

Walter Ferdinand Knapp was born on 16 October 1872 in Easton, Aroostook County, Maine. He was the son of Hiram Loring Preston Knapp and Mary E. Gilbert.

Walter married Rosamond Fannie Guilford on 24 April 1897 in Worcester, Worcester County, Massachusetts.

Rosamond was born in June of 1874 in Williamsburg, Hampshire County, Massachusetts to Andrew Guilford and Harriet Amanda Fisk(e).

Walter died of typhoid fever on 4 December 1906 in Worcester, Worcester County, Massachusetts. Rosamond died in 1942 in Westfield, Union County, New Jersey. They are both buried in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Florence, Hampshire County, Massachusetts.

The image shown here was added to Find A Grave by P.K. Magruder on 21 January 2010. It is listed there under Memorial #46943655.

In 1841, Richard Owens, a weaver, and his wife Jane, a yarn spinner, lived in Newtown, Montgomery, Wales but sometime between the birth of my 2nd great grandfather, John B. Owens in March 1846 in Wales and the birth of his sister, Susan M. Owens in December 1849 in the United States, the family settled in Oriskany, Oneida, New York.

The 1850 census shows John as a factory watch who could neither read nor write. Three years later he died leaving Jane with four children under the age of 15 and in the 1855 Whitestown, Oneida, New York census Jane has taken in a boarder and is supporting her family as a washwoman.

A letter I found some years ago in a file at the Oneida County Surrogate’s Court led me to believe Richard was killed in a railroad-related accident and that Jane may have received money from a railroad company related to Richard’s death but I haven’t investigated it further.

The Owens stone is large, clearly not something the family could have purchased at the time of Richard’s death. Perhaps their children placed it in the cemetery after their mother died.

Looking back through our cemetery photos, this one from a trip to the Woodlawn Cemetery in McHenry County, Illinois caught my eye.

Jennie E. Salisbury. Her name barely fits the width of the stone and the dates, just years, seem to tell her story in the barest sort of way. We took this photo in the fall, but even in the summer it seems as though the concrete base would keep the grass from softening the marker’s edges. And yet, there’s something strong, solid, and appealing about this marker.

Jennie was the daughter of Julius Munson and his wife, Antoinette Maria Smith, a sister of Dean’s ancestor, James Ayer Smith. My notes suggest that she was married to an Edward P. Salisbury and that he died about 8 Feb 1868. Jennie Salisbury was enumerated with her parents in 1870 and with her sister in 1880 but in 1900, she was a patient at the state hospital in Elgin Kane, Illinois.

As I worked on this post, I found myself wanting to know more about Jennie. I logged into my Genlighten account (of course!) and requested her death certificate from Molly Kennedy, a friend and fellow lookup provider  from Springfield, Illinois. It turns out that Jennie died from lobar pneumonia and pyelonephritis at the state hospital. The death certificate doesn’t say much of anything else about her except that her occupation at one time might have been “canvasser.”

The curious thing is that Jennie, who would have been about 12 or 13 at the time,  doesn’t seem to have been enumerated with her family in the 1850 census unless . . .. Is it possible that the Jane E. Munson I see in both the 1850 and the 1860 census records is actually Jennie? I love a good mystery!

If you’re connected to the Munson family from Oneida County, New York, I’d love to exchange notes.

My Bielby ancestor, Thomas A. Bielby, is buried in the Oriskany Cemetery in Oriskany, Oneida County, New York, but his brother, Robert P. Bielby, moved to the Chicago area about 1850 and is buried in the Lyonsville Cemetery, Lyons, Cook, Illinois. (We made the same upstate New York to Illinois move about ten years ago.)

I thought it would be enjoyable to focus on the Bielby line today and so I looked back through the photos we had taken on a Sunday afternoon cemetery trip to Lyons some years ago and chose one to post—Wm Bielby, died Feb. 28, 1869. Then I went searching to find out how he fits into the family.

Checking Ancestry.com for “william bielby” with a death date of “1869″ and a death place of “cook, illinois, usa” I found nothing. Too specific. But searching without a place of death gave me a number of family tree results.

From a OneWorldTree entry at Ancestry, I learned that he was probably William Reilly Bielby, born 15 January 1807 in New Malton, Yorkshire England, died 28 February 1869 in Downers Grove, DuPage, Illinois. From the birthplaces of the children listed on that tree, it appeared that he, too, had lived in Oriskany, arriving between 1830 and 1832 and remaining in New York until at least 1850. Likely a relative of some sort. Then I located an Ancestry public member tree by GaPeachFlaGator that suggests he was a brother to my ancestor, born between Thomas and Robert.

So two of my ancestor’s brothers came to Illinois. How had I missed that before? It’s a find of sorts and a delightful reminder of how many discoveries there are waiting to be found among our notes and photocopies and photos if we take the time to go back and look.

My wife and I have a tradition of visiting nearby cemeteries on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Several years back, our Christmas adventure took us due west of Chicago to the Shabbona Grove Cemetery in Shabbona, DeKalb County, Illinois.

We were looking for my wife’s fifth-great-grandmother, Polly Green GREENFIELD.

This was before we had a GPS system in our car, so we were relying on paper maps and the address my wife had dug up from somewhere. As dusk approached, we were going in circles and not finding any hint of the cemetery itself.

Our kids, who were fairly used to their wacky parents dragging them on these sorts of outings, were beginning to get restless.

We stopped at a farmhouse to ask directions. The family who answered the door was willing to help, but could only give hints on roads to try and potential landmarks to look for. About half an hour later, with a light snow swirling in the air, we finally stumbled on the cemetery.

Our kids scrambled out to search for headstones with the appropriate surnames. It was a tiny cemetery, so we quickly found the right one. It was badly worn, and the picture we hurriedly took in the fading light doesn’t show the inscription (or much of anything) clearly.

Here’s what we think we know about Polly (courtesy of a Greenfield cousin):

Polly GREEN was born about 1791 in Rensselaer County, New York. She married Joseph Rogers GREENFIELD. She died on 9 October 1875.

If you know anything more about Polly, we’d love to hear from you.

Benjamin L. TRAFFORD was born on 05 August 1835 in New York City, NY. He was the son of Abraham Trafford and Basilea Harmer.

On 15 April 1857 he married Cecelia Merritt INGERSOLL in New York City, New York.

Cecelia was born 05 August 1837 in New York City, New York to Roswell R. Ingersoll and Caroline Merritt.

Benjamin died on 23 December 1883 and Cecelia died on 12 February 1915. They are both buried in the First Presbyterian Churchyard in Shrewsbury, Monmouth County New Jersey.