Shakin' the Family Tree

One can tell the morals of a culture by the way they treat their dead.
Benjamin Franklin

Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, Shelby Co., TN


Ford Cemetery, Appleton, Pope Co., AR


Mount Holly Cemetery, Little Rock, Pulaski Co., AR


St. Joe Cemetery, Pope Co., AR


Crooked Bayou Cemetery, McGehee, Desha Co., AR


Pinecrest Cemetery, Bryant, Saline Co., AR


Rockport Cemetery, Malvern, Hot Spring Co., AR


Old Baptist Cemetery, Center Valley, Pope Co., AR


Collegeville Cemetery, Bryant, Saline Co., AR


Oakland Cemetery, Little Rock, Pulaski Co., AR

I drove 175 miles today on what I was convinced was a sure bet.

I set out to match up a distinctive gravestone with the person whose remains lay beneath it.

It's a turn-of-the-century photo - another unlabeled one from the Williams family photo album.

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I was just sure the grave had to be in Oakland Cemetery in Russellville.

Several of my Williamses, including Maxie and Jo's two daughters, Mildred Imognene, and Katherine Leah are buried there.

Why would we have such a large photo - the photo itself measures about 6" by 6" not including its black cardboard mount - unless this was the grave of someone in the family?

Mercifully, our temp stayed under 100 today - it was only 99.

So my first pass through the cemetery was in the car. And none of the tall monuments matched.

So I got out of the car in selected locations and started looking for a monument that could have been broken off, with other stones around it as in the photo. With a raised concrete border around the plot. Or concrete overgrown with grass.

I looked for the fence surrounding the plot in front of the monument.

Or evidence there had been one at one time.

Nothing. Zip, nada, zilch.

But it wasn't a wash...

Because I found Grace Electra Shinn's grave. She was the daughter of my great grandaunt, Mildred Carlton "Minnie" Williams and Josiah Hazen Shinn.

Grace's grave is with her paternal grandmother's, and her uncle's. Her grandma - Josiah's mother - was Elizabeth Frances Gilpin. After she divorced Josiah's dad, she married Samuel Reed Judd. The stone for the family plot says Shinn on one side, and Judd on the other.

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But the question still remains...

Whose grave is it?

So I went by Roselawn today as I was in town taking cemetery photos.

And I drove by this grave.

Chapin.

Now how could they not be related? But I didn't recognize the name.

I took the shot anyway.


Chester C and Mary Ruth Chapin

And came home and dug around.

Yep. Cousins.

I wonder if Chester and his eighth cousin, Hattie Belle, ever knew each other. They lived in Little Rock at the same time - for years.

And if they did, I wonder if they were ever able to puzzle through exactly how they were related?

C C McDaniel, 10 Mar 1913 - 30 May 1913
Opal Irene McDaniel, 19 Oct 1911 - 10 Dec 1911
Jewel Blankenship, 10 Feb 1909 - 13 Apr 1911

These children are not related to me.

Still...

Just makes me want to cry.

This is one of the churches and cemeteries my cousin and I visited on one of the hottest days last summer in Logan County, AR.

Her dad's family settled there in Logan County the last quarter of the 19th century.









To see other photos of that trip, click here to see Subiaco Abbey.

These are the gravestones of my great-great grandparents, Thomas Jefferson Wharton, II and his wife, Rutha Evaline Coleman.

Thomas was the son of Thomas Jefferson Wharton and Sarah Sally Duncan, born on 27 Feb 1832 in Alta Vista, Gainesville, Co., GA. Rutha was the daughter of John Henry Harrison Coleman and Cynthia Cochran, born on 1 Oct 1837 in Caroll County, GA.

They married on 26 Jul 1855 in St. Clair County, AL and were the parents of 9 children I have been able to document.



Thomas J Wharton


Rutha E Wharton

Thomas died on 16 Mar 1908, and Rutha on 19 May 1911. They are buried in St. Joe Cemetery, Pope Co., AR.

There are only the two photos in my collection of Madgie. In each, she is shown with one or both of her children.

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Madgie had a twin sister, Maggie. They were one of three sets of twins in their extended McBrayer/Herrington family, and older half sisters of my grandmother, Addie Louise Herrington.

I don't know which sister was born first, but they arrived on a hot summer day in late July 1898 in Clark County, daughters of Julia Ann Callaway and Robert Bruce McBrayer.

Maggie died in 1965. Madgie barely made it out of her teens.

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Madgie McBrayer married Homer Buck on 10 Jul 1913, just a couple of weeks short of her 15th birthday.

I don't know the names of either of Madgie's children, the youngest of whom died in 1918 also, and whose gravestone in DeGray Cemetery simply says "Baby Buck."



Madgie's stone was equally simple.



Her obituary appeared in the Southern Standard on 24 Oct 1918.

Mrs. Homer Buck died at her home in this city on Wednesday night of last week with pneumonia. The deceased was 20 years of age and leaves a husband and two children, besides father, mother, three sisters and three brothers. Funeral services were held Tuesday afternoon and the remains were buried at DeGray Cemetery.

Madgie McBrayer died on 17 Oct 1918.

This one was sitting off by itself when I went hunting one of my distant cousin's stones.

There are other people buried around him, but none share his surname.





William R Noonkester, 24 May 1905-24 Dec 1918

Photo taken at Sandlin Cemetery, Ola, Yell Co., AR.

I have a list in one of the genealogy folders on my computer.

It contains the names and burial locations of some of my relatives whose graves are unmarked.

That list bothers me. I'm doing my best to get rid of all the names on it.

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Two of the names fell off the list today.

Nathaniel C Callaway - my g-g-g-grandfather, and Levi A Callaway, his cousin.

They are buried in Confederate Soldiers Rest in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.

My Callaway cousin, Joe, went with me to deliver the stones and watch them being set.







Todd Fox, the cemetery superintendent who set the stones for us, gave me the tops of the 125 year-old numbered concrete markers from the graves. Nathaniel's was 102, Levi's 140.

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Two down - four to go.

Unless I find more...

Can't reconcile these.

One has to be a cenotaph.

Josiah Hazen Shinn is buried beside his wife, Mildred Carleton Williams Shinn, in Roselawn Memorial Park in Little Rock, Pulaski County, AR.

Isn't he?

I mean, I photographed their graves. Personally.

It wasn't an hallucination.

I can prove it.

The stone for the family plot...


Josiah's marker, at the foot of his grave...


Minnie's marker, at the foot of her grave...


So what is this?

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It looks like a gravestone for Josiah Hazen Shinn to me.

In another cemetery.

A devoted husband and loving father. He has entered into the fullness of life. He lived a peaceful, constructive and an honorable life and such a life smiles at death. He lived no inglorious life and came to a peaceful and glorious death. He was the bough broken under the load of ripened fruit and such as he have passed into God's acre, the christian's home.

And the earth is mounded up behind the stone. There's a footstone there. Like a fairly recent grave.

Next to a retaining wall very similar to the one that surrounds the (former) Williams family plot in Oakland Cemetery, Russellville, AR. Where Katharine Leah Williams is buried. She was Minnie's niece.

And who is that little girl bearing flowers...