“Honey, where should we go on our next family road trip?”
“Let’s go out east. There are so many old cemeteries we can visit!”
Being the child of amateur genealogists, I spent a significant amount of time in cemeteries when I was young. How morbid!
No, I don’t have disturbed parents. (Well, it depends on if you consider obsessive genealogical research disturbing.) They were just trying to find our ancestors.
My parents became hooked on genealogy when I was about six. One of their first big finds was in a cemetery. They found a tombstone in Gurnee, Illinois with “Dilley” scrolled across it. I can still remember how excited they were! We had, almost literally, stumbled upon the graves of my great-great-great and great-great-great-great grandfathers.
From then on it became a family pastime to go cemetery hunting, meaning we were looking for our ancestors’ tombstones. My younger brother thought cemeteries were creepy. He usually sat in the car when we stopped at one. Me? I found them peaceful and interesting. I loved looking at the stones to see how old people were when they died, and I got a thrill out of finding one that belonged to someone who lived past 100. How amazing that someone lived so long!
It turns out, I was also good at spotting the surnames that my parents were looking for. As a result, they took advantage of my sharp eyes. Turned loose with a specific surname they’d given me, I’d wander the cemeteries scanning stones on my own. Over half the time I’d be the one to find the stone, and it made me so proud to help with the family tree.
Since I was wandering cemeteries somewhat alone, I was also taught cemetery etiquette. Be quiet, no shouting across rows of graves. Be respectful of mourners. I even remember my mom telling me to walk around the graves, not over them. She said that it was out of respect for the dead. I think she was actually worried that I’d fall in! Not all the cemeteries were well kept and some of the graves had pretty deep “dips” in the ground.
Cemetery Hunting for Genealogy Gems
Tombstones can give a person quite a bit of genealogy information. Birth and death dates are there, of course, but sometimes the stone will tell you who the person’s spouse or parents were. Looking at the surrounding stones, you can also find possible relatives with similar surnames or known relatives. In fact, the location of the cemetery itself can tell you something about where your ancestor lived or what parish they were a part of.
Once in a while, you will find a stone that gives you a genealogy gem. For example, how the person died or a favorite saying or prayer.
Sometimes we’d go to a cemetery not expecting to find anything at all. The people we were looking for were too old. We assumed the stones had sunk into the earth or crumbled. Then, to our surprise, we’d find it there! Intact and legible.
This was the case with the tombstone pictured above, another one of my parents’ prized genealogy finds. It was the stone of my 5x great-grandmother, Jane Dally Dilley, who died in 1849. The stone was in the old, overgrown Oak Hill Cemetery in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. I remember my parents were over-the-moon when they found it. They took this picture of my brother and me next to Jane.
The Missing Tombstone Dilemma
While it’s exciting to find the tombstone of a long lost ancestor, the reverse is gut-wrenching. It’s frustrating to discover a stone is not where you think it should be. In our years of family cemetery hunting, we’ve had plenty of these missing stones. Tombstones don’t last forever. The living need to take care of them, or often they sink or break off.
One possible solution? I remember my mother bringing an old kitchen knife along when we went cemetery hunting. She would stab the ground where she thought an old stone would be to see if she hit something hard. If she did, she would try to cut away the sod to uncover the buried stone. I doubt she asked permission from the cemetery to dig up tombstones. These days if you wanted to try this, I’d recommend getting permission from the cemetery first. And if you hear someone yell “Ow!”, well, look behind you and you’ll probably see my husband standing there. He thinks he’s funny.
Poor cemetery upkeep isn’t the only reason for missing stones. Sometimes the grave is resold. Sometimes the whole cemetery has moved in favor of some construction project. Also, not every ancestor could afford a tombstone. Their graves may have had a wooden cross, a simple rock, or some other temporary marker that’s now long gone.
45 years since our first cemetery hunting excursion, we now have the luxury of the internet. I looked up the Oak Hill Cemetery on Find A Grave to see if great-great-great-great-great grandma’s tombstone was still there. Based on the picture of the cemetery, the upkeep of the grounds looks much better now. But, Jane’s name is no longer in the listing. Bummer. Her son Joseph Dilley’s stone is still there, however, so I know it’s the right place. Good thing we took the picture!
Image credit: Photo by Gerald Dilley
Wonderful site daughter !