The Demise of Big Ed McCabe

     

     The year was 1914. While the pretty lakeside village of Canandaigua in upstate New York was strung with garlands and lights twinkled in shop windows enticing Christmas shoppers, Edward McCabe and his roommate Thomas Burns were busily downing drinks in a village saloon. Later the two men caught a train to Holcomb, the small hamlet where they resided. Edward, the son of my second great-grandfather James O’Hora’s sister, was born in Auburn, New York to Irish immigrants Patrick and Mary O’Hora McCabe. Now at age 55, Edward was a large man, over 200 pounds, and in top shape from the physical labor he performed on area farms. A news article described his physique as magnificent, using his nickname, "Big Ed". Edward possessed a long arrest record, begun in his teenage years for petty robberies and assaults. His friend Thomas Burns was an Irish immigrant and at age 33, a younger and much smaller man than Edward. Both were farm laborers and bachelors who enjoyed their liquor, and they brought with them on the train that day a jug of whiskey.

     Witnesses would later testify that after disembarking at the station in Holcomb, the men were overheard arguing loudly over who contributed more to their living expenses. The two eventually returned to their shanty a short distance away where they resumed drinking. The argument continued off and on throughout the evening as the liquor flowed. No doubt weary after the day’s exertions, Edward McCabe stretched out on his bed. Burns, still angry, took that opportunity to attack, unexpectedly striking Edward with a shovel using such force that the blow cut Edward’s nose and lips in two vertically, and left a jagged wound down his forehead. He fell from his bed, or was pulled from it depending on which news account one reads, and lay helpless on the floor as Burns continued his assault, stomping and kicking Edward, breaking his ribs and inflicting internal injuries.

     Early the next morning, December 10th, Edward was found by two hunters, who upon hearing moans emanating from the shanty entered and found his bloodied form still lying on the floor next to the shovel. He was rushed to Memorial Hospital in Canandaigua  where he gave a deathbed statement detailing the attack and naming Thomas Burns as his assailant. Edward died of his injuries in the early morning hours of December 11th. His death certificate gave his cause of death as, "Hemorrhage and shock due to lacerations of head, fracture of ribs and other injuries, probably homicidal”...

     I wrote the above in 2013 and that was where the story ended for many years. Edward's family buried him in Auburn and Burns disappeared into the New York correctional system.  I tried to find what had become of Thomas Burns but had no success. Until that is, Ancestry added prison records to their collection. I knew Burns had been allowed to plead guilty to first degree manslaughter and had been sentenced to 6 to 19 years at hard labor in Auburn Prison, coincidentally in Edward's hometown, but nothing more. Now, in a database called New York, Auburn Prison Records 1816-1942, I found him being admitted there on March 11, 1915.  In another section, I found his discharge on March 27, 1918.  He only served three years for manslaughter?  That was disturbing.  But after staring at the page for a few moments I noticed something else.  Written in red in the left margin was, "To Gr. Meadows". What was Gr. Meadows?  Green Meadows?  Maybe another prison?  Perhaps he wasn't released after all, just transferred.

     I tried a Google search but nothing of note came up except, there were a few hits for a place called Great Meadow Correctional Facility, maybe that was what Gr. stood for.  Referring back to Ancestry I found a database called Great Meadow Prison Parole Register 1911-1929; and there I discovered Thomas Burn's parole on May 7, 1920. 

      I still don't think five years was enough time for such a vicious attack. I'd love to know what became of Burns after his release and one would think there would be mug shots. Various records and news articles reveal he was born about 1882, served in the British Army, immigrated around 1904 from Ireland, lived in Syracuse for a time after his arrival and seems to have known Edward in Auburn before they lived together in Holcomb. That may not be enough information to follow up on him, but it's worth a try.

Records Across the Sea

    

      Working on my tree today I came across a very useful fact pertaining to my White family from Queens County Ireland, now known as County Laois. My newest find is a small article, just a few lines, noting that James White of Marion, New York was notified of the death of his cousin Judith Flynn Durkin. It doesn't seem to offer much, but oh my goodness, it in fact bears out my theory that the Whites of Palmyra, where my James lived, and the younger group of Whites living in nearby Marion, were related to each other. The White family has been among the most challenging I've traced. The root of the problem lies not only in the destruction of Irish census records, but also the loss of church records in their Parish of Rathdowney, covering exactly the years when famine era immigrants would have been being baptized and their parents married.

     Fortunately, upon arriving in America, the Whites clustered around the town of Palmyra, New York. The records they created at St. Anne's Catholic Church in that place survive and are actually more useful than the Irish version would have been. Almost all of them contain parent's names, even the burial records for men and single women. With few exceptions, married women's burial records tended to include their husband's names rather than their father's. Try finding the burial record of a Catholic in Ireland in the mid 1800's.

    One thing I've been interested in, was the relationship between my second-great-grandfather James White and the younger James White who lived in Marion. Both were born in Ireland, but married in Palmyra. James the younger's church marriage record identified his parents as William White and Anastacia Delahunty. My James' parents, (again from marriage records), were James White and Margaret Keyes. As it turned out, James the younger's birth in 1850 came late enough that his baptism was recorded in Rathdowney, it confirmed his parent's names as found in his marriage record.

     I had pieced together a tree for the Irish born Whites, but a good part of it was guesswork. Educated guesses, but with the Irish records gone, there was nothing in black and white connecting them all. Using parent's names found in those Palmyra records, that I had spent hours in the church office copying, I was able to identify several groups of Whites in the parish. I searched for those families in Rathdowney records with minimal success, only a few later born siblings turned up, but it was progress.

 

In St. Anne's Cemetery, Palmyra, New York

     The article reporting the death of Palmyra born Judith Durkin tied her and young James White of Marion together in a very real way.  Why does that matter?  Because Judith was the child of Michael Flynn and Mary Fitzpatrick, whose mother was Julia White and her father Andrew Fitzpatrick, as seen in Mary's marriage record.  I was 99 percent sure Mary Fitzpatrick was a close relative of  my James White, as upon her arrival from Ireland she resided in Palmyra with Catherine White Ryan, my James' sister.  She also acted as sponsor to one of Catherine's children, with Catherine returning the favor after Mary's first child was born.  Mary's husband Michael Flynn was born in County Leitrim, well over one hundred miles from Rathdowney, it seemed doubtful they knew each other in Ireland.  That meant the only way the deceased Judith Durkin could be a cousin of James the younger, was through her grandmother Julia White and his father William White.  

     Church and census records in Palmyra and naming patterns suggest Mary Fitzpatrick's mother Julia White along with William White, Catherine White, and my James White were all siblings, children of James and Margaret Keyes White.  William who remained in Ireland named his first son and second daughter James and Margaret, as did my James in America; he also named his fourth daughter Julia and fifth son William, while Catherine named her first and only daughter Margaret.  I couldn't find baptisms for the elder Julia's children in Ireland, their names are unknown except for Mary Fitzpatrick, but that one I'm sure of.  In addition to Mary's marriage record, the St. Anne's baptismal register reveals the priest there originally wrote Mary's maiden name as White when recording the baptism of one of her children, later crossing that out and writing Fitzpatrick instead.  It seems in his mind she was closely associated with the Whites.

     While I'd give my eye teeth for those Rathdowney parish records, or even better, the census records, I'm ready to say this whole group were relatives from Rathdowney Parish, and my second-great-grandfather was known to Mary Fitzpatrick and young James in Marion as Uncle Jim.

     

Is It Julia? Or, Label Your Darn Photos

     Last week I wrote about Julia Whalen from New York City who spent part of four summers at the farm of my great-grandmother Ellen O'Hora, under the auspices of the Fresh Air program.  Since writing that blog, I've spent some time building a tree for Julia in the hope I could definitively say that the person I believe to be her in census records, in fact is.  As I carefully considered all the evidence at hand, two photographs from among the collection I inherited from my great-aunt suddenly came to mind.  I was able to identify a married couple featured in one of those pictures, maybe I could do it again.

     The majority of the photos are not labeled.  I can recognize my great-aunt, grandmother and great-grandmother in many of them and several were identified by other relatives, but I'm left with some that have no identity.  The two that occurred to me as I pondered Julia are among the unlabeled.  One is of a young girl posed with my great-aunt, in the other she is with my grandmother and great-grandmother.  It dawned on me, this girl could conceivably be Julia.

Great-Aunt Alice O'Hora Shannon is on the right

Great-Grandmother is on the left, Grandma on the far right

     I have no doubt it's the same girl in both photographs, the question is, is she Julia?  I know the time period is right and the girl's age appears also to be right.  The photo with Grandma looks like it was taken at an earlier date than the top photo but that gets me no closer to figuring out who she is.  The fact that I don't recognize this young lady does tell me something however.  Most of the people in my aunt's photos look familiar.  There are three or four I've no idea who they are, but for the most part I know them.  This girl appears only in these two photographs.

     I'd love to know if it really is Julia Whalen. I've written to the owners of two family trees on Ancestry in which Julia appears, but I've had no response.  One tree had a picture of Catherine Whalen, a sister of the Julia Whalen who I suppose from my research to be the correct Julia.  It could be nothing more than wishful thinking on my part, but do you see a resemblance?

Catherine Whalen

    In the end I cannot say the two top photos are of Julia.  They well may be, but I can't prove it.  I'm still hopeful I'll hear from one of the tree owners, or perhaps  someday a picture of Julia will appear on Ancestry.  How cool would that be?

 

Like a Breath of Fresh Air

 

Shortsville Train Station 1920's

     

     One summer afternoon in 1926, readers of The Shortsville Enterprise picked up their newspaper and saw this on the front page-- "Shortsville and Manchester have completely surrendered to the Fresh Air children from New York City, sent out through the New York Tribune's Fresh Air Fund".  The article's early date surprised me, I had believed the Fresh Air program to be a more recent invention but after some online reading, I found it actually began in 1877.  That year the Rev. Willard Parson, a former resident of New York City himself, asked members of his small congregation in Sherman, Pennsylvania to provide a country vacation for some of New York City's neediest children.  As a former New Yorker, Rev. Parsons personally knew social workers and missionaries in the city who could help him in selecting the children.  His efforts were so successful, the New York Tribune offered their support as sponsors and would go on to underwrite the construction of summer camps.  By the year 1895, over 100,000 of these disadvantaged children had visited, "Friendly Towns".

Ellen O'Hora

     Another surprise, was to read that among the crowd waiting for a child at the train station that July day, was my great-grandmother Ellen O'Hora.  Ellen, a widow by that time, lived on the family farm with her three children and her brother-in-law Michael O'Hora.  Her daughter Mary, my grandmother, would have been thirteen years old that summer, her older daughter Alice fifteen and her son Edward ten.  Their guest was Julia Whalen who would spend two weeks in her new environment, surrounded by trees, chickens, horses and pigs.

     An unnamed host offered his opinion regarding the visitors, "The farm is a happier place because of them and it does us old folks as much good as it does the children to have them here".  Julia must have agreed with that sentiment because the following July she was once again sojourning at the O'Hora farm as she would in 1928 and 1929.  Every July the Enterprise published a list of local families hosting children, so after finding Great-Grandmother's name missing in 1930, I wondered why Julia had not returned?  The Great Depression had begun when the stock market crashed in the fall of 1929, but the Fresh Air program was still up and running; other local families were hosting children in 1930.  It's a little known fact that the stock market rallied in early 1930 only to crash again in April beginning a decline that would drag on for years, but the worst was still ahead in 1930.  Unless Julia had found a job in New York, I doubted the economy had ended her visits.

     Perhaps the reason Julia did not return after 1929 was that she had simply grown out of the program. There were age limits, but unfortunately none of the newspaper articles I found mentioned Julia's age.  If that was the case, it must have been a sad parting in 1929.  I would love to know if Julia and Great-Grandmother or any of the O'Hora children kept in touch, which gave me the bright idea to see if I could trace her. I wasn't overly optimistic I would find Julia in teeming New York City, there were well over five million people residing there in 1920, but I decided to give it a go.

   I started at Ancestry with a search of the 1920 census using the birth year 1914 plus or minus five years, figuring it was likely Great-Grandmother would have requested a child around the same age as her own children.  Surprisingly, only three possibilities came up, even when I increased the age range to ten years.  One little girl caught my eye right away, Julia Whalen born in New York on 7 July 1911; that put her right in between my grandmother born in 1912 and her sister Alice born in 1910.  

     In 1920 Julia was living in Brooklyn with her mother and stepfather, Annie and Bernard Laughlin, both of whom were natives of Ireland.  Julia's two sisters, Nora and Catherine, were also part of the household.  In 1925 I couldn't locate Bernard or Annie, but Nora and Catherine resided with their older sister Mary and Mary's husband John Reilly; fourteen year old Julia was not with them.  I found her living with David Douglas and his wife Kate in the Bronx.  Kate Douglas, fifty-six, was from Ireland, perhaps she was a relative?  Indeed, after consulting NYC marriage records, I later found she was the sister of Julia's father.  By 1930, eighteen-year-old Julia had been reunited with her sisters in the Reilly household.  At that age Julia would definitely have been ineligible to participate in the Fresh Air program any longer.

      In an attempt to find Julia's father, I checked Family Search which has a database of births in New York City for the years1846-1909, Julia wouldn't be included, but her older sister Nora Whalen should be.  After a search for Nora, daughter of Annie, there she was-- born 19 October 1907, which fit nicely with her birth date in census records.  The parents were Patrick Whalen and Annie Molloy.   Having Patrick's name, I could more easily go back further in census records.  In New York's 1915 census, Annie was already a widow with five children, including Julia.  Going back to 1910 I saw Patrick (gardener) and Annie living in Brooklyn with their children.  Earlier still, the 1900 census listed Patrick (day laborer) and Annie still in Brooklyn with their first child Mary, the one who later gave her younger sisters a home. The NYC death index at the Italian Genealogical Group site shows two Patrick Whalen's died in Brooklyn between 1910 and 1915, one in 1912 and one in early 1915. The Patrick who passed away in 1915 must be my man, the youngest child in this family, Catherine Whalen, was born in 1915. Poor Annie was pregnant when she lost her husband!

     There were of course two other possibilities for the Fresh Air child; Julia Whalen born in 1919 and another one born in 1916.  Both of these girls however, were living in families with two parents present and their fathers were working steady jobs, making the first Julia seem the neediest of the three by far.  I lost track of Julia after 1930.  New York didn't take a census in 1935 and by 1940 she was probably married.  Perhaps someday I'll learn the rest of her story...

  

A May December Romance

     Many hours have been devoted to uncovering the identity of the second wife of my fourth-great-grandfather Thomas Garner.  I’m descended from Thomas and his first wife Prudence Lamphere, so why do I why spend so much time on number two?  Several reasons: for one, you never know what will turn up in the records of your ancestor's associates and secondly, I enjoy a challenge. Some people like to solve crossword puzzles, I like to solve genealogy puzzles.

     Back in 2019 I wrote a blog about Thomas in which I questioned who that Laney Garner person living with Grandpa Thomas was, and if she was really his wife or had the census taker made a mistake?  She was a good twenty years younger than Thomas, who was an elderly, chronically ill man without much money, though he did have a War of 1812 pension which may have made him more attractive to Laney.  Today I decided to find all I could about her, which when you’re taking about a female in the early to mid-1800’s is indeed a challenge.

      I already had the 1855 New York State census of Summerhill in Cayuga County showing Thomas Garner age 84, born in Massachusetts and his wife Laney Garner age 59, born in Canada.  Thomas was really 82, but still much older than Laney.  Immediately above them in the census was David Robertson 50 and his wife Catherine 34, both born in New York.

      I knew Thomas had passed away in the spring of 1857 but Laney being twenty years his junior was likely still alive for the next census.  Ancestry has an annoying habit of sending hints for something called, “NY Compiled Census and Census Substitutes…”, containing scant information with no image, when they could just as easily show you the 1860 census.  I have no idea why they do this, but when you see it, it’s time to open another window and do a search of the 1860 census at Family Search.  Which is what I did when they sent me a hint for "Lana" Garner in that odd database.  I found Lana Garner living alone in 1860, still right next to David and Catherine Robertson/Robinson.  In fact, she seemed to be living with them at that point.

1859 map of Summerhill, Mrs. Garner is the 4th name down on the far left D. Robinson is right below her.

     The next logical step was the 1850 census but that presented a problem.  There was no Lana or Laney Garner listed, nor a Thomas Garner for that matter.  He was in Summerhill in 1840 with his first wife but seemed to have vanished by 1850.  Prudence died in 1848 so perhaps Thomas hadn’t yet remarried in 1850?  Since I didn’t know Laney’s surname before her marriage to Thomas, I tried looking up David Robertson to see who was living next to him in Summerhill that year.  His neighbor was Laura Wallace, age 54, born in Canada!  The age was right, the birthplace was right, and the name was very close, could it be that Laney Garner was the former Laura Wallace?

     Going further back in census records was not productive. There were many Wallace families in the area, but only heads of households were named in 1840 and Laney wasn’t one of them, so I struck out there.  Ditto with newspapers and cemetery records.  Reading through Thomas’ pension documents I found that his original pension certificate was destroyed in 1856 by a fire at the establishment where he had left it for safekeeping, forcing him to apply for a replacement.  One of the witnesses to his signature, actually his X, on that application was Laney Garner but it contained no further information about her.  There were still New York land records to be checked at Family Search, if I could find Thomas in 1850 that might hold a clue.  After forty-five minutes of finding nothing for Thomas Garner or Thomas Gardner or other variations I was about to give up.  Discouraged, on a whim I typed “Laney Wallace” into the search box. Bingo!  In 1840 Seth Runnells “demised”, (leased), twenty-two acres in the town of Summerhill to Laney Wallace for the remainder of her life…adjacent to Catherine Robertson!  Laura Wallace was Laney Wallace was Laney Garner.

Seth Runnells to Laney Wallace, Lot 16 Summerhill

     I’m still not sure of Laney’s maiden name, it may or may not have been Wallace.  A marriage record would probably clear this up, but Summerhill was located behind the back of beyond and there were several nearby villages where her marriage to Thomas could have taken place, none of which have online records.  Nonetheless, I'm getting closer all the time...

What Can Be Found in Old Newspapers

      

     Each week I check the genealogy news for Ireland, and each week I'm disappointed. No new records means no new discoveries, so no new blogs. I'm currently considering purchasing a month's subscription to a newspaper site in the hopes something interesting may turn up, but in the meantime I'm posting an excerpt from the narrative I wrote long ago about my family in Counties Carlow and Kildare, the McGarrs and O'Horas; drawn in part from contemporary newspaper accounts to show what wonderful stories can be found even if one's ancestors didn't make it into print by name...

     Although Ireland was overwhelmingly Catholic everyone who worked the land was required by law to pay a tithe to the protestant Church of Ireland. This presented a real hardship for tenant farmers already hard pressed to clothe and feed their families. To add insult to injury, protestant landlords who did not farm the land but instead devoted it to pasture for livestock were exempt. After winning emancipation, an organized campaign of resistance to the tithe began and spread rapidly. In 1831 a list of tithe defaulters was drawn up by the government with orders to seize their goods and chattel. With the signing of that order, the opening salvo of the Tithe War had been fired. Over the following years robberies, murders, cattle maiming, riots and arsons became commonplace.

     The defaulter lists for Ricketstown and Ballyraggan no longer exist, so it is impossible to say if Michael Hore and Daniel McGarr refused to pay their tithes, but resistance in their area was high. In County Carlow, the protestant minister Rev. John Whitty, who was the beneficiary of the tithes collected locally was especially disliked by Rathvilly Catholics. Years earlier he had ordered the seizure and sale of the cattle of a tithe defaulter, so enraging Catholics that 5,000 of them stormed the sale and carried off the cattle.

     This time around, the residents of Rathvilly Parish were no less determined to protect their property. The following excerpt from The Pilot, a Dublin newspaper, details how they outwitted the troops sent to distrain the livestock of defaulters--

August 1834-- Mr. Whitty has a tremendous force at present…they have been out every day this week and were not able to effect a single seizure in the entire parish. The moment the troops are drawn out in marching order, a person on top of a hill lights a faggot of furze, and two minutes after, every person in the parish is out and not a four-footed animal is to be found in it by the time the troops arrive. When the troops come up, they are always received with, ‘three cheers for the King and the British Army.

     The situation had not changed a great deal when two years later this headline appeared in a less sympathetic newspaper, The Wexford Conservative—

Desperate Attack On Sheriff Police And Military At Rathvilly By Mob

Yesterday, the Sub-Sheriff, chief constables Fitzgibbon and Traunt, forty of the constabulary and twenty of the 23rd Fusileers proceeded to post tithe notices on church and chapel doors. At Rathvilly, large masses of men lined the walls enclosing the chapel yard, armed with pitchforks, scythes, bludgeons and stones while the women had a plentiful supply of boiling water. Finding the gates locked the sheriff proceeded to the house of Priest Gahan for the key, but he was not to be found. The Sheriff next ordered the police to scale the walls to post the notices on the chapel, upon which the party were assailed by a general volley of stones and missiles.

     Both Rathvilly and Baltinglass parishes were blessed with what would today be termed activist priests. Father Gahan in Rathvilly, as we have seen, made himself unavailable when the British came looking for the churchyard key, and Father Lalor in Baltinglass was just as supportive of his parishioners. When Daniel O’Connell came to Baltinglass in 1843 for one of his public anti-tithe meetings, it was Father Lalor’s curate Rev. John Nolan himself who helped arrange the details.

     In 1836 Father Gahan delivered a report to the local Poor Law Commissioners declaring it unrealistic to expect disturbances related to the tithe to halt as long as such was demanded. He added his belief that the condition of the “poorer classes” had greatly deteriorated over the past two decades as to their food and raiment, with most of his parishioners being poor farmers who lived in houses of mud or sod. In about twenty instances in the parish two or more families shared a cabin.

     When it was finally realized that the costs associated with collecting the tithe were far greater than the benefits it brought -- one officer noting, “It cost a shilling to collect tuppence” -- the collection was suspended. From then on, the rate was reduced and included in rent payments, bringing at least partial relief to the long-suffering Catholic population.

A Tale of Two Cemeteries

     

Entrance to Saint Anne's in Palmyra, NY

     Thursday afternoon the Rochester, New York area broke the record with a daytime temperature of 65 balmy degrees!  It's doubtful we'll see that sort of warmth again for a very long time, so I took advantage of the day to visit the Catholic cemetery in Palmyra.  Besides being good exercise, it's enjoyable to get out of the house and visit some old, (deceased), relatives.  I recently read a blog by Irish genealogist John Grenholm in which he observed, in speaking of the Irish, "Apparently we find it very hard to let go. Maybe that’s the reason we have such a thing about graveyards. Because we certainly do have a thing about graveyards".  If I'm any yardstick, that is an indisputable truism. 

     Being such a nice day, I was loathe to leave after making my usual rounds so I decided to take a stroll through the much larger village cemetery that abuts Saint Anne's as well.  The village cemetery has some very old and unique graves while Saint Anne's cemetery, being created sometime after 1850, lacks really old burials.  Come take a walk with me...

   

     Entering Saint Anne's, one is greeted by a life-sized angel.  The gravestone behind her left wing is that of my 2nd great-aunt Ellen Power from County Waterford and her husband Thomas Mahoney born in County Kerry. 

     The shot below is no man's land, the road dividing the Catholics from everyone else. Saint Anne's is on the left.

     As I left Saint Anne's and walked on into the village cemetery, I saw on a rise what looked from a distance to be palm trees on the side of a large monument.  That was odd, palm trees are definitely not native to New York but there they were.  On viewing the front of the marker, the explanation for the presence of palm trees became clear.  It read, "Dr. Henry Pebbine born Brooklyn 1797 Killed by the Seminole Indians at the massacre of Indian Key Fla. Aug 7 1840 Aged 43".  I had never heard of this massacre nor the doctor before, and I was somewhat doubtful he had been brought from Florida to New York for burial, (in August yet), so I googled it.  One website that came up contained an article written in 1912 that described the terrible events of that summer's day and mentioned a Dr. Henry, but his last name was Perrine.  A closer look at the picture I had taken of the stone showed it was indeed Perrine, not Pebbine as I had first thought.  The article concluded by noting Dr. Perrine's remains were recovered from Florida many years after the tragedy and interred in the family plot at Palmyra.  Another site claims the doctor's remains could not be located in Florida, making the monument in Palmyra a cenotaph.  I tend to believe the second site.

     In the photo below is one of the several zinc markers that dot the village cemetery.  Erected in 1886 this monument looks as though it could have been put up yesterday, the inscription is that clear.  I wish all my ancestor's markers were made of this blueish grey metal.  Their production began in 1875 and being hollow, they were actually an inexpensive option.  Unfortunately, they never gained in popularity with some cemeteries banning zinc markers on the grounds maintaining them would be costly and they might not hold up... the opposite has proven true.

     

Charles H. Kingman M.D.

     

     The marker on the right below is exactly what it looks like, a boulder set on a base memorializing the Chase family.  The other is erected entirely from cobblestones for the De Chard family.

Left, De Chard - Albert 1842-1933 and Cordelia 1842-1923

     The small oval stone below struck me as unusual, I haven't seen many of these but there are a few in the village cemetery; none are found in Saint Anne's. This one was placed in remembrance of Little Cornelia who passed away in 1836 at the age of three.

 

     While Saint Anne's Cemetery is all on level ground, the village cemetery behind it contains both level and hilly sections. One prominence is pictured below.  There are some uneven, timeworn steps placed at intervals on the hillside, but it's still steeper than it appears in the photo.  From the top it does offer a panoramic view of the two cemeteries though...

     

     Looking down from the top of the hill, Saint Anne's cemetery is the farthest section seen in the above photo.

     Three hours have slipped by, the temperature is beginning to drop now and the clouds are lowering; rain is expected before sunset.  It's time to get back to my car parked at the end of that far road.  I hope you enjoyed this brief look at Palmyra where I spend a good deal of my free time.  To be continued...  

(In May)