GERMANNA_COLONIES-L Archives

From: Garnet Murphey <>
Subject: Re: Cemeteries & Serendipity
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 08:38:39 -0700

wrote:
>
> Serendipity, or just common sense? Well, I'll have to share my own cemetery
> experience--all of it from one cemetery in St. Louis County called Fee Fee
> Cemetery (yes, that is the actual name--so many of our local place names here
> are butchered French):
>
> 1. My mothers's great grand-parents from Germany who elude all
> identification prior to their arrival in the U.S. Buried next to them in the
> same plot was the inexplicable "Conrad Bachhaus" and his wife Elizabeth.
> Hmmm. One day at the cemetary with my mother, we were taking rubbings on
> some other stones and observed a couple near this site. By the time we got
> over there, the mysterious couple had disappeared and there were fresh
> flowers on the Bachhaus stone--how curious.
>
> As it turned out, Mrs. Bachhaus was the mother of Minnie Branneky buried
> right next door--but had remarried. We solved a huge genealogical problem
> and found cousins we didn't even know we had.
>
> 2. Same cemetery. Stone of James E. Avery, born in Nottoway County VA in
> 1824. Well, I knew who that was and didn't pay much attention to the stones
> around him. Until I decided to find his four sisters. After much work at
> the probate court, I sorted it out. Then I revisited the cemetery--lo and
> behold, all those stones around his were his sisters and their children.
> (Their's was a fascinating story of river-boat captains and violent deaths on
> the river, but that is taking us off subject).
>
> 3. Same cemetery. Blackwell family. Once I had unearthed the probate files
> for this line, it all fell into place again. The "weird" part about this
> story is that many years later, I was going through an old house that had
> recently been bequeathed to one of my mother's distant cousins through this
> family by an old spinster who had come into possession of it many, many years
> ago....and on top of the piano in this spooky, falling down house that had
> sat vacant for at least ten years was an old family bible which had everyone
> entered into it and explained what otherwise would have been completely
> unexplainable. Thank goodness I looked at it, for otherwise it would have
> been thrown in the trash can.
>
> So I guess the moral of this story is: always check out who is buried next
> to your ancestors, always check ALL of their probate files, and ALWAYS keep
> your eye for old bibles in old houses.
>
> Craig Kilby
> St. Louis, MO
>
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Have you gone to the LDS Library or the St Louis Library on Lindberg
across from the mall? where did your Blackwells come from? VA? my
stepmother is a Blackwell.
Garnet

This thread:

• Re: Cemeteries & Serendipity by Garnet Murphey <>