The topic for week 22 of the #52Ancestor Challenge is At the Cemetery. This is timely as Memorial Day is only a couple days away. I was brought up by grandparents who took me around to all the cemeteries during the Memorial Day Weekend. I’ve long loved to walk through them. My mother is buried close to the house where she and I grew up. Her parents are next to her.

I spent a lot of time there during my teen years. The cemetery sits surrounded by fields, alternating corn, and cabbage yearly. There is a well, with an old-fashioned pump handle on it. It makes it easy to get water for the flowers, and tastes good to drink.

This past Mother’s Day, I had the honor of walking through a cemetery helping one of my best friends to locate the grave of her step-grandmother. The woman was not well-liked by her father and his siblings. For a long time, my friend also did not have a high opinion of this woman. As an adult, she realized her feelings were driven by the stories of others. In researching this woman’s family tree, I found her father died when she was a young woman. She outlived four husbands and is buried next to the first one.  With no children of her own, she considered my friend’s uncle her son, but did not the other three siblings.

Researching the facts of her life highlights why I truly love what I do. This woman had no biological children, and challenging relationships with the family members of her second husband (who was not an easy man, either). She will never be forgotten because her story is now told. I’ve uploaded a picture of the headstone to Find-A-Grave and added all her married names.

As I write this, I’m preparing to go the National Genealogical Society Conference, being held in Richmond, Virginia. I’m looking forward to my first large in-person conference, meeting some of the people I’ve only talked to via Zoom, and learning along with, and from my peers. I’ll share my experiences with you in the coming weeks.  Have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend. And I encourage you to take a walk through some cemeteries.