A Walk with the Dead

I decided to get out and take a little trip to my home cemetery today.  It had been awhile since I had been there and I wanted to take some pictures of a couple of my ancestors headstones.  Plus I have become a bit lazy since I have been off work and needed the walk.  There isn’t a lot of story here just me spending a bit of time with the peaceful departed.

The ground was a bit wetter than I thought it would be today.  I forgot about it raining yesterday, still it was pleasant out.  A bit windy but still nice to be out.  I first went in search of my great grandfather Moses Alberson.  He was born in the mid 1850’s.  His tombstone says he was born in 1863 but his father died in 1862 in the Civil War and Moses is listed in the 1860 census.  the stone is very hard to read it is very badly weathered.  His name is inscribed as M.W. Alberson.  His middle name was Washington.  Washington is used frequently in my family.  My father’s middle name is Washington and so was his uncle’s.  Moses’s fathers middle initial was W and it is thought but not certain that his middle name was Washington too.  

No one knows where Moses’s wives are buried.  The cometary where she is supposedly buried has few stones left, many of them are unmarked.  Apparently vandals have stolen a lot of the stones to use in home construction.

I also visited grandmothers parents, Theodore and Tishia.  Both Theodore and Tishia’s fathers served in the American Civil War.  Theodore was descended from a Irish indentured servant who ran away shortly after coming to America.  I haven’t been able to track Tishia past her parents William Wilbanks and Francis West.

After I went by these graves I just wandered around.  It’s peaceful in cemeteries, in stark contrast to how many of the inhabitants took up residence in them.  Those who died peacefully in their sleep lie side by side with those who fell in combat and those who died in car accidents and victims of crime.  Still as peaceful as it can be, a cemetery is always a bit sad too.  There are way to many graves of children.  being a rural cemetery in an area that is still way behind the rest of America the cometary is full of babies and children who have died over the last century.  Many children never make it this far.  At least one of my uncles is buried somewhere near my house.  He died not long after he was born and the weather had been bad for several days.  The roads were too bad to get the wagon to the cemetery.  My grandmother lost at least 3 children at young ages.  One was still born and the other two died shortly after birth.  Only one of her children are still living today.

The engraving here shows what people around here think of farming.  Its more than a job or a way to  raise food, it is everything.  The people here loved farming, it was their pastime and as back breaking as it was, it was their pride and joy.

There are a few Civil War soldiers buried here.  The markers are old and worn but mostly readable on most like this one.

I saw this inscription on several stones.  I have never noticed it before.

The grave of a teenager, decorated by his younger brothers and family

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