Yesterday afternoon I had a very neat opportunity. My Uncle was just leaving to go somewhere and I asked him where he was going. He said that he was going to a cemetery to look at some old garve sights of some of our ancestors from the mid-1800's and early 1900. Saturday night he found out that they were buried on the other side of our county.
I asked if I could go with him and he said "Yea", so him, two of my cousins and I went there. It was about a 40 min. drive and we passed through a small town that was very old but still functioning. It had an old 50's diner and old tall brick buildings right next to each other that reminded me of the old western frontier days. I would have loved to stop and take pictures.
Soon after that we came to the cemetery by driving along side an old rail road track. There was a ranch with horses right across the cemetery.
When we got there we then had to look for the grave markers of the people we were looking for. Their last name was Lennox, and they were my great-granfather's cousins. I have never been to a cemetery like this before - it was very old. Many of the grave markers were up right and half-oval slabs of grey stone like classic grave markers. Quite a few of them were difficlut to read becuase the engraved writing was weather worn or they were partially broken.
One I passed had nothing written on it at all (at least, not any more), but was a very small, about 5 in. high, grave marker made of wood. I thought that perhaps that family was very poor and could afford nothing else.
A family I passed had about five children or so, that had all died in the very early 1900's. One of them was less than a year old and was not named yet, but called 'Baby'. The children were ages something like four, seven, ten, and twelve, and then the infant baby. The parents lived longer. I suspect that perhaps they died of an epidemic or perhaps fire or something. It was very sad and solemn to look at.
Eventually we found the Lennox parents, then I found their second oldest son, then lastly, after we had probably read every other grave marker in the cemetery, we found the three other sons and one of their sons who had recieved a Purple Heart from World War II. He was 22 when he served in the war.
We left at dusk. It was a very solemn and reverent time. Each of us were speaking in quieter tones and making no jokes; I was in a respectful mood, wanting to somehow honor those many, many grave markers that had no flowers on them.
