May 20-26
I should just ahead and delete the “dates” on these posts, don’t you think?
In my defense, and I DO realize that I say that a lot lately, I have been busy working on genealogy projects, just not my blog.
I have gathered all the relevant documents for the NSDAR application for Pierre Buteau, to both prove my descent from him and to prove his Revolutionary War service. I spent the better part of two full afternoons filling out the application on my computer, making sure that the dates, places, and names were all correct. In addition, and this is what makes a NSDAR application such a complicated and intense process, is that one MUST, and I repeat MUST, enter the information in the exact form required by the society.
Get your dates in the wrong format, and the application will be sent back to you. If you don’t have the place names in the exact format, it is returned. If you don’t have the correct documentation, including its citation, to link one generation to the next, you will get the dreaded AIR (Additional information Requested) letter.
For example, 12.31.1756 is not accepted. Neither is Dec. 31, 1756. Neither is 31 December 1756. It MUST be “31 Dec 1756”.
For place names, it MUST be “Detroit Wayne Co MI”. Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan. Nope. Detroit City, Michigan. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
And, frankly, I completely understand. The genealogists at the National Headquarters must read through hundreds of applications. These applications go back anywhere between six to nine generations and can be extremely complicated. I can not imagine the headache brought on by trying to decipher how this applicant chose to enter dates, which is different from the next application, and was different from the one before it. Standardization makes the genealogists’ work process so much less headache-inducing, and that means that they can be more efficient and process more applications.
I have had lots of help from others to get to this place in the process, and I’m not quite done yet, so there will be more help requested before I am finished! My lovely cousin, Peter, who should really write a blog himself, dug deep into the French Canadian archives and found a few of the missing documents. My chapter regent, Jenice, and our former registrar, Sharon, helped me to figure out some Canadian details that made this application a little different than normal.
I now need to make sure that I mark my accompanying supporting documents correctly. Each piece of relevant information on the birth, death, or marriage record, for example, must be underlined in red pencil. Each relevant detail must correspond exactly to the application. And, then comes the printing, on very specifically sized paper of a specific content, mailed in a specific envelope. Whew…
So, what has all this to do with “Tombstone”? Nothing at all.
So, shall we begin?
I see dead people.
My family photographed a lot a funerals. It isn’t unusual to see a photograph of a beloved family member in their casket at the funeral. Growing up, I thought everyone did this. I thought all albums were like ours.
Don’t worry; I will spare you those pictures.
The photograph below is of my grandfather’s funeral, my mother’s father. I was only five when he died, so I have very fleeting and hazy memories of him. That’s me in the blue dress on the right hand side, next to my next-oldest brother and my mother. My oldest sister is in the flowered dress behind the casket. It’s hard to tell, but it might be my next-oldest sister over the shoulder of the man, who I don’t recognize. I think I see my younger brother’s hands near the bottom edge of my dress. It looks as if we are all holding a flower.
The funeral was held at Rose Hills Memorial Park, in Whittier, which is where most of our family’s funerals and burials took place.
In this area of Rose Hills, there are no less than 14 grave sites of family members:
- Great-grandparents Willis and Eva Gard
- Grandparents Perpetue and Charles Keene
- Grandparents Vida and Lawrence Wells
- Great Aunt Dola and her husband, Frank
- Aunt Virginia and her husband, George
- Aunt Bea and her husband, Roger
- Aunt Betsy and her husband, Jake
- and possibly several cousins
I distinctly remember, while at the funeral of my Uncle Jake, walking among the headstones and seeing name after name of my family. I honestly think that there had been funerals here so often, ever since I was a child, that it had just never dawned on me how many there were.
All these graves sites are along the outer edge of the cemetery, and there is a train track behind the bushes and the wall at the back of the photo above. It wasn’t unusual to have to pause in a grave-side service and wait until a train passed.
The headstone of my grandfather.
And, my grandmother.
This photograph is from the last funeral our family held at Rose Hills, for my Aunt Betsy, sister of my father.
And, sure enough, we had to wait until a train passed by…
Til next time.
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