Did You Really Search That Cemetery?

By Sue Ward~

Through the course of research, how often is it that you find a lone ranger in a cemetery buried with no other relatives?  Not very often.  There are unmarked graves we will never be able identify.  But if you look carefully and consider all headstones and the married names of the women, you can find a treasure trove.  Don’t find yourself caught in a particular time period; consider that everyone buried there has potential.

Recently, we were in pursuit of a woman I will refer to as “Jane Doe.”  We knew her maiden name but did not know the identity of her parents.  We knew she left North Carolina for Tennessee.  We found the newly-married couple in the 1830 census.  (Their marriage was confirmed through their child’s death certificate.)  Jane’s headstone was found in Tennessee, but then we recognized not just a few, but several others with familiar names!  We found this odd since they didn’t appear to have traveled with a large wagon train of people from North Carolina.  The headstones with the name “Doe” appear in the early 1800’s until about 1930.   Those who died most recently revealed an unusual naming pattern that we knew existed in the 1830 census.  Jane Doe had a brother “John” and it was his descendants who continued to use his name.  Tracing that name back in time three generations gave us the name of John Doe’s parents.  Those names were later found on a death certificate of his son in 1901.   These people lived in one state but acquired land in a bordering county in a new state.  It was there that probate records were found naming virtually every person we knew to be family in that Tennessee cemetery.  Identifying the parents allowed us to go back another three generations in the 1700’s.

In the process of learning the above, two other surnames became known to us and we were able to explore those lines as well.  Plus, we began to see naming cross-overs within these families which was more confirmation.  Jackpot x 4!

Yes, this was very awkward, out-of-the box research, but it worked!  When answers don’t come easy, you find another path.

It is highly unusual to go forward in time over 120 years in order to go back in time another generation from where you started to prove the identity of the parents. 

Lesson:  Take time to look at all the various familiar names.  When you find new names, go back and look again.  Really search that cemetery! It may be worthwhile.