Old cemeteries and graves

I've been fascinated by old cemeteries and old graves since I was little. Every Memorial Day, we'd visit the local cemetery to put flowers on our dad's grave, since he died very close to Memorial Day on May 29, 1961. While our mom was cleaning the grave and putting the flowers on it sent by our paternal grandparents, we kids would run and explore various parts of the cemetery. Of particular interest was the section next door to where our dad was buried that is known as St. Patrick's Cemetery, the Catholic section of sanctified ground that only Catholics in good standing may be buried in. Having grown up Catholic, naturally we knew all of the local Italian and Polish families whose kin were buried there, so we especially loved traipsing through that part of the cemetery since many of the graves had photos of the dearly departed on them. The headstone pictured was one that caught our attention one sunny Memorial Day. That the writing was so badly worn and hard to read made it of particular fascination to us, because peering out from the stone were haunting images of two little boys named Antonio and Giuseppe. There was something particularly poignant about this grave that immediately caught our attention and year after year, we made a point to find and visit it and pay our respects to these two poor little boys. Eventually, curious about who they were and what their story must have been, we did a rubbing of the gravestone, only to find, much to our chagrin, that it was in Italian, which none of us could read. Fortunately, we knew enough people who spoke the language that we were able to have the rubbing translated. It would seem that these two little boys drowned in the river that runs behind the cemetery. Antonio was 10 and Giuseppe was 12 when they died.

So here's the story of how they perished, from what I have heard: As most of us who grew up on or near the Cuyahoga River know, March is when the river is at its most dangerous. Snow melt and spring rains tend to make the river run extremely high and incredibly fast. Apparently, four boys had a taste for adventure on a March day in 1924, so they built a raft to venture out on to the river and take advantage of its running high and fast. Sadly, it capsized, and the Mittiga boys were pulled into the current while the other two were able to make it safely to shore and raise the alarm. A search for their bodies was mounted and they were found, I believe, a day or so later a ways down from where their raft capsized. They were buried at St. Patrick's Cemetery and the above photo is their grave. It's such a sad tale and I vividly remember another drowning in the river that took place about the time I was probably 10 years old or so. What was particularly awful about that one was that a photo of the body of the drowned girl was on the front page of the local paper and many of us kids found that to be very disturbing. We also used to visit her grave on our regular cemetery visits and it always looked so sad and neglected, so we paid our respects to that one as well so that at least it looked like somebody cared enough to do so.

I love visiting old cemeteries where perhaps the last burial was over a century ago. Sadly, many of the graves are hard to read because they are worn by wind and water and I can't help but think, well, these are some folks ancestors who may or may not care about that. There is a lot of history that one can learn from visiting these old places. We have several very ancient cemeteries in my area that I must take time to go visit someday. One of them I did try to visit, and it involved climbing up a steep hill through a lot of brush and bramble, only to find the cemetery inaccessible. After such a climb, I was quite disappointed. Others I have driven by and can find nowhere to park my car, so I don't know how one would visit such places. One fascinating old cemetery that I visited some years ago is in Palmyra in southern Portage County. What caught my eye was the name, "Welsh Cemetery". Being of Welsh descent on both sides of my family, I could not help but pull over and explore this cemetery filled with good Welsh names like Evans, Davis, Williams, Thomas and more. Perhaps the most fascinating grave was that of two brothers surnamed Evans who died in different battles of the Civil War, one fighting for the 139th Pennsylvania Regiment, the other with the famed 125th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, the famed "Opdyke's Tigers". That brother died in the first battle of Franklin, Tennessee in 1863 at the tender age of 18, and the other who fought for the Pennsylvania regiment perished at Cold Harbor in Virginia in 1864 at age 26. Turns out that the brother who died in Tennessee isn't even buried in Ohio, but at Stones River National Cemetery at the Stones River National Battlefield site near Franklin, TN. I've been to the Stones River battlefield and had I known then about this particular Welsh soldier from Palmyra, I would have sought out his grave to pay my respects.

Turns out that the reason that Welsh names could be found in that cemetery was that southern Portage County was once a hotbed of coal mining and many Welsh families settled there as a result. I remembered in college when I was participating in an archaeological survey of Portage County that sometimes when we wanted to go through a freshly plowed field to look for turned up arrowheads and other prehistoric remnants, some of the farmers out there would warn us to watch for old coal shafts. I remember wondering about how extensive coal mining was in Portage County and it turns out that there was a good sized seam once upon a time that was heavily mined. I suspect that it was tapped out or some such thing and that mining ended when it did. I don't remember the exact reason that mining for coal stopped in that part of our County, but once upon a time, it was the main source of jobs in that otherwise very rural part of Portage County,

Old cemeteries are some of the best places to learn history. I know that it sounds weird, but I really love to visit them. I remember a visit many years ago to cemeteries in tiny villages in Southeast Ohio where my father's ancestors came to settle from a Revolutionary War land grant in Meigs County. I visited all of the cemeteries where my ancestors were buried, including our Revolutionary War ancestor David Sayre, who fought in the Essex Rifles, First New Jersey Militia. He died one week after Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in 1826 and is buried in tiny Letart Falls, OH. I learned a great deal from that visit to those tiny villages where my paternal kinsmen lived and died over the space of many generations. It was deeply moving to walk among the tombstones and to realize that these were my ancestors, whose blood runs through my veins now. I felt the first real sense of connection to my late father's family and a sense of coming full circle at last. I know names and dates of many ancestors, now I would love to know stories of who they were and what their lives were about. That's going to require further research.

For now, though, I'd like to continue visiting forgotten old cemeteries and seeing who is buried in them and finding out something of the early history of this area through the names on the tombstones. That's a fascinating way to spend a few hours when one has the time to do so. You never know what surprises you will find when you visit an old cemetery!