Wednesday's Website/New York Gravestones

     

     I've been working on filling in my Vincent family tree, working back in time.  I've always been led to believe that no gravestone exists for Sarah Cowan Wells whose granddaughter and namesake Sarah Charlotte Fowler married John Taylor Vincent around 1850 in Wayne County, New York.  So I was quite surprised to see a family tree on Ancestry.com which had a supposed photo of her stone.  The thing is, the picture is so small and blurry it could be anyone's stone.  Find a Grave has no image of Sarah's stone though it does have several of her husband Austin Wells'.  I know she's there with Austin, I have a list of burials from the cemetery office which lists Sarah Wells, wife of Austin with the appropriate dates.  Both are in Section C, row 13, of Old Turnpike Cemetery in Cambridge, New York .

      I looked around for more sites that might have a photo of Sarah's stone and ran across this site, New York Gravestones .  They didn't have a pic of Sarah's marker either, though they too had one of Austin's.  What this site did have was actual photographs of tombstones with no unsourced assertions as to the deceased's family connections nor undocumented burials with no picture of the stone-- like that other site.  While it's great to see those possible family facts, and sometimes they are correct, I'm concerned casual researchers may believe the data on Find a Grave comes from cemetery records; too often it doesn't.

     Personally? I have my doubts there is a marker for Sarah Cowan Wells, or a readable one at any rate.  She must be buried next to her husband Austin, why take a photo of his grave and neglect hers?  New York Gravestones doesn't have as many burials as Find a Grave, but they are growing.  I'll be sending my photos to them in the future.