The Passing Of Time

Time goes by so quickly...personal issues have prevented me from doing any cemetery research for quite some time.  When I was finally able to continue, I forgot to update this blog.  It is not my intention to be so neglectful.  All I can say is that I will try harder in the future.

And so I will begin anew by admitting to a gravestone no-no that I actually did today.  I saw the fragmented pieces of a young child's marker, all but one piece separated by a few inches.  I carefully picked the three smaller pieces up and moved them to fit near the larger two.  Yes, I risked breaking the pieces even further, but I felt in this case it had to be done.  Chunks of the stone had slid down the hill.  Some had shattered; thankfully, the most important parts of the stone were still in tact.  I was careful to not move the pieces from the area where the child's name was found.  The name was next to a relative who I assume was the mother of the child.  As I bunched some grass up below the stones to help prevent them from sliding again, I imagined that the mother would have felt very sad to know that her young daughter's gravestone has almost been lost to time.

Here is the gravestone of young Violet M. Shouse (1910-1923)

Photography will remember what

mother nature will eventually destroy.

The Use of Shaving Cream

Life has been busy.  I apologize for not posting sooner....

So a couple of months back I was doing some work at Find A Grave, when I stumbled upon a biography of one of the volunteers there.  She was dead set against spraying shaving cream on tombstones.  Now I thought to myself, "Well, I am too!  That's just wrong to go around defacing tombstones with shaving cream", not realizing that this is not done as an act of vandalism but as a way of reading the inscription on decaying old tombstones.  In fact, it took me some time for this naive rabbit to find out that many people use shaving cream as a tool to help with transcription.

My initial reaction was, "Well, how silly.  Shaving cream isn't going to hurt anything", but then I got to thinking that I really don't know that for certain.  And so I began to do some online reading on the subject.

I have concluded that neither those for or against the use of shaving cream really have any kind of proof as to its effects. I like to err on caution though and so I will probably not pack shaving cream along on my next visit to a cemetery.

If you'd like to read up on the subject, here are two articles that represent both views:

Shaving Cream: Genealogist’s Friend or Cemetery Conservator’s Foe?
Shaving Cream on Tombstones

And a before and after photo of a gravestone that was cleaned with shaving cream (both pictures taken from Hoggatt-family.com).

A Room With A View

Okay, so the title is tacky, but when I pranced around in the mud looking for a grave of an ancestor at Sunrise Memorial Cemetery, I wasn't expecting to find such views.  It's not like I haven't been to Sunrise before; in fact, I've been out there more times than I can count.  So why am I just seeing it this way for the first time?  I just don't know!

I guess perhaps it was in the way I treated this visit that changed my perception of the cemetery.  What I normally do is look throughout a cemetery and capture a picture or two of a gravestone that is ornate.  Perhaps the person lived a very long time, or maybe not long at all.  There may be a large family buried together, or one solitary stone crying out for attention.  Whatever it is that stands out, I take a photo.

Two days ago, it was the peacefulness of the cemetery that stood out.  It was a quiet day, cool and windy.  I was alone at the cemetery, besides the countless souls buried beneath my feet, and a squirrel or two that ran along the side of the road.  I didn't hear any people or cars.  I didn't see any trash or debris.  It was just me and nature.

I was searching for a particular grave, but I began to click my camera-phone, not paying much attention to the usual things so much.  I saw some interesting things, like...

A wooden door.  How eerie!  It looks like I can push this door down easily.

A Day of the Dead tribute??  All I know is that I wasn't going to get

any closer.

Gravestones are sinking!  I thought the Newcomb stone looked like

it was sliding.  I didn't notice the stone on the left until I looked 

at the picture.

Many, many squirrels.  I stopped counting at 70.

The office hasn't been open to the public in at least a year, and I never did find a particular grave I was searching.  That means I'll be back out here soon to search again.  I just hope the stones will still be standing.

Please support the funding of your local cemeteries.

A Return To Sunset

Part of my goal for going out to Sunset View Cemetery the last time was to see if I could find the grave of my mother's great aunt, Evelyn Law.  I never met Evelyn, and I had surmised from the stories I had heard about her and her siblings that perhaps she was the quiet one.  After a lengthy couple of passes down Row 20 of the Pine Lawn portion of the cemetery, Mike inadvertently discovered that Evelyn was in fact not buried in Row 20, but in Row 19- alongside her second husband and her only daughter, Mae.

One thing that I did not know until the cemetery returned my husband's phone call, was that the marker was made of bronze.  Now I have seen markers like this all the time.  Not in the habit of bending down to touch or disturb the marker, I now know that markers such as these are made of the fine material.  This is important (to me anyway) because bronze will last for a very long time.

Sunset View Cemetery

At the end of a very busy little street in El Cerrito sits Sunset View Cemetery.  Mike and I found out the hard way that the cemetery is deceptively large.  No chance of just stumbling across someone here.  Come prepared by calling the office first.

From the top of the hill one can see from Sausalito in the North Bay to San Francisco.  All but the side that overlooks the bay is surrounded by tall, beautiful trees.  Birds and squirrels were everywhere.  The only audible sound was the wind.

I thought I'd do this post a little differently and just show a few pictures of the cemetery.

Calvary Cemetery Burial- The KELSEY Family

As Mike and I were about to return to the car after our visit to Calvary Cemetery, I spotted the grave marker for the KELSEY family.  I noted several things that were atypical of the grave marker:

1.  Four young people were listed on the marker.

2.  Three of the four decedents passed away in Nevada City, several hundred miles from this cemetery.

3.  The grave marker appears newer than the date of the last death craved on it (1904).

4.  On the left side of the marker was listed one Mr. Richard KELSEY, born in England in 1833 and having passed away in 1889.  He was likely the father of the children on the marker, but where is the mother?

And so my interest in the KELSEY family began.  I started my search with Nevada City by finding the KELSEY family in the 1870 Federal Census.  Richard, his wife, Mary, and two young children, Eddie and Richard Jr., were living in this popular mining community.  A decade, and several children later, the KELSEY family was located in the little township of Vallejo just a few miles south of Petaluma in Sonoma County (not to be confused with the city of Vallejo in nearby Solano County).  Instead of mining, Richard Sr. was now working a farm.  Research confirmed that Richard Sr. died in 1889. 

Having not been able to locate the Widow Mary after the 1900 Federal Census, I began to dig deeper into the KELSEY family history.  Fortunately, a couple of biographies had been written on the family.  The first biography told of Richard's youth and how he and his family had moved from England the state of Illinois when he was a young boy.  It also gave Richard's marriage date and the maiden name of Mary (MCCARTHY) as well as mentioned the seven children the couple had, including the two that had died.

The second biography was that of one Mr. John SKIFFINGTON, who married the Widow KELSEY.  This biography mentioned Mary's parents (Patrick and Honora MCCARTHY, nee CAIN).  The biography also discussed a bit about Richard KELSEY, telling how he had been a successful miner in Nevada City and that he owned 300 acres of good land in Sonoma County at the time of his death.

John SKIFFINGTON died in 1920.  Mary died two years later on March 17th.  I learned that both of them are also buried at Calvary Cemetery.

My guess is that the mysterious grave marker was erected by the children of Richard and Mary KELSEY between 1904 (the date of death on the marker for Daniel KELSEY) and 1922, when the youngest of the children, Alice, passed away in Sonoma County.  The family, wealthy from those early mining days in Nevada City, could afford such a beautiful tribute to their dearly departed family.

Calvary Cemetery- An Artistic View

While in Petaluma today for a day of Christmas shopping, Mike and I stopped by the Calvary Catholic Cemetery.  We found everything from Astro Turf to open [empty] tombs.  It was really a neat cemetery, and we were definitely not alone in thinking that.  There were lots of people visiting the cemetery today just having a look around.

Mike and I have two separate viewpoints of cemeteries- I am there to gather information, but Mike looks at the gravestones from an artistic point of view.  For my hubby, who is always so caring and patient and kind to me, I present his beautiful photography:

Mike took this creepy, but really cool picture

in the older part of the cemetery. 

I love it!

This cemetery sits in a lush green area of town,

but I really like how this picture looks as if 

the cemetery is in a desert.

Here is the real Calvary Cemetery.

Mike captured a spot which reminds me 

of pictures of Italy.

I'm just a point-and-click kind of gal so

I'm always impressed with how Mike

captures light in a photograph.

Mike is also really good at showing

the scale and grandeur of a grave.

Okay, so obviously Mike did not take this

picture since he is in it.  I just had to show

the great artist at work!

Thank you, honey, for being you.