Cemetery Quest

 

Preface: This is a genealogical post with nothing about roses in it. I know a lot of my subscribers are rosarians, so I thought I should warn you right up front.

My grandfather was a descendant of colonists. All of his ancestral lines had come to Pennsylvania before the Revolution. In the cemetery where he is buried, Faggs Manor, there are 7 generations of my family. The earliest ancestors were the Quakers, of course, some of them coming with William Penn’s fleet. Later, there were Lutherans from Germany, Scottish from Northern Ireland, and Baptists from Wales. When I have the chance to visit that part of the country, I like to rent a car and travel around finding the cemeteries where these ancestors of mine are buried. In late June this year, I went to a Heritage Rose Foundation gathering in Hartford, Conn. That was the excuse for taking a trip East. Afterwards, I drove with friends to New Jersey and spent time visiting longtime friends in Princeton. I had all day to drive from Princeton to Swarthmore where my third cousin Mimi lives. She has also researched our common genealogy and we have a lot of fun discussing our research. So, in preparation for the trip, I looked through my ancestral charts for ancestors whose graves I had not found on previous trips. Then I got on findagrave.com. Their search engine is limited, but if you have the county or village, and first & last names, you have a pretty good chance of finding the right ancestor. For quite a few of the early Quakers, there are no headstones, just a record that they were indeed buried in that particular cemetery. I ended up with a list for this trip of 5 cemeteries to visit and stored maps on my iPad and printed out other helpful information about each of the ancestors I was looking for. Findagrave.com often has photographs of headstones, and I copied some of those to the iPad as well.

I set my Google maps to first take me to Buckingham Friends meeting House. In l708, David Kinsey, son of Welsh Quaker immigrants, married Sarah Ogborn, whose mother and paternal grandparents had emigrated from England with William Penn, were married in Woodbridge, New Jersey, another area with many Quakers even before the founding of Pennsylvania. They moved to Buckingham, PA. At that time there was a log meeting house in part of what is now the cemetery, but originally burials were not marked with headstones. Edmund died in 1759, and his whereabouts are unknown. In 1768, a large stone meetinghouse was built adjacent to the cemetery. It became a model for the design of Quaker meeting houses throughout the region. By the time Sarah died in 1787, at the age of 96, they were beginning to mark burials. I knew from findagrave that I was looking for a small, rounded brown stone marked only with “S. Kinsey”. I wandered around the oldest looking part of the cemetery a couple of times before spotting it. It was smaller than I was expecting. Sarah and Edmund Kinsey were my seventh-great- grandparents. I did the math. I have 512 seventh-great-grandparents (as do we all, unless some ancestors married cousins) and each contributed about 0.2% of my DNA. That is probably less than Ancestry DNA can detect. It’s an interesting thought: there is almost none of her in me, but without her, I wouldn’t exist.

Buckingham Friends Cemetery. There is still the old, very long stone wall around it.

Buckingham Friends Meeting House

Plaque at the Meeting House (click on it to enlarge if you want to read it.)

Sarah Kinsey’s headstone

I cleared off some of the soil at the base. the date is still visible.

On to Chalfont. I went to the Chalfont upper cemetery by the Baptist church two years ago where my 4th great grandparents Philip and Margaret (Lewis) Miller are buried. Baptists practiced their full-immersion baptism in secret in Wales. The town is now a World Heritage site. The practice was outlawed by the Church of England. These Welsh were welcomed by the Quakers, and they attended Quaker meetings when they first arrived in the early 1700 s until they built their own churches. I had known that my Miller ancestors 5 generations back were Baptists, and had seen where William G Miller (born 1789) and his family are buried at Beulah Baptist Church in Russellville, PA, but finding his ancestors was elusive until Ancestry got hold of SAR (Sons of the American Revolution) records. William’s mother (Margaret Lewis Miller) had a brother in the Revolutionary war, and one of his descendants traced his ancestry in order to join SAR. From his work, I found Philip and Margaret, and her parents Henry & Margaret (James) Lewis. From findagrave I found out that the Lewises were buried at the lower cemetery at Chalfont. Google maps had a problem, in that a road was closed for repaving. I eventually was able to get around it from another direction. There is no church near this cemetery- it is in a small town neighborhood. Finding the right Lewis headstones took me quite awhile. There were a lot of Lewises there.

Hilltown Lower Cemetery, Chalfont

Margaret James Lewis’ headstone. I needed to look at the photo on findagrave and match the staining pattern on this headstone. The name is still legible, but not a lot else.

Neither of the stones flanking Margaret are legible beyond the last name being Lewis. The photo on findagrave didn’t help. I just have to assume one of them is Henry Lewis.

The weather was getting hot. It was time for a lunch and cold coffee drink break. I found a lovely local coffee shop in the next town I came to. Then it was on to Limerick. I’d been to this cemetery two years ago to find the monument to one of my Quaker ancestors, William Brooke, who, along with his brother, donated 2 acres for use as a public burial ground. There is also a monument to his brother’s son. Both monuments are large granite blocks with a brass plaque and their original grave marker. This time I was looking for Henry Coulston and his wife Rebecca Braun (Brown) Coulston. It took quite a while to find the headstones because the photo on findagrave showed the graves in the shadow of a tree. It turns out the tree has been cut down. I eventually looked for the shape of the top of Henry’s headstone, realizing that most headstones were more elaborate. I found them very close to the Brooke monuments. The Coulstons were also Quakers, which I hadn’t realized because their daughter, Margaret, married a Presbyterian, and they are buried at Faggs Manor. The Coulstons and Brookes are on different branches of my family tree so it surprised me to find them so close together. They are 6^th and 7^th great-grandparents, respectively, and the two lines weren’t joined until my grandfather’s parents married around 200 years later. Very little can still be read on the top half of Henry’s headstone. A bit more is visible in the photo on findagrave. Rebecca’s headstone has fallen and broken, but on findagrave there is an older photo, showing the initials R C on it. (Photo credit Andrew Likins). To their left is their other daughter, Grace, whose stone is now illegible although you can see there was a lot written on it. In the older photo on findagrave her name could still be read.

Plaque and original marker on the monument to Matthew Brooke.

The Coulston’s graves showing the stump of the tree that used to shade them.

Front view of the Coulston’s headstones. The monument to William Brooke is in the upper right corner.

Henry Coulston’s headstone. The upper part seems to have eroded away, but the lower part can still be read.

Andrew Likins photo from findagrave. You could read the initials R.C and the date.

The fourth cemetery of the day was in Pottstown by The Zion Reformed church, built in 1796. The headstones have been removed from their original locations and have been repurposed as stepping stones leading to a memorial wall. The wall has brass plaques listing the names and dates of the people who were buried in the area. On The plaque are the names Philip Yost 1718- 1804, and Veronica Yost 1725-1798, 5^th great-grandparents of mine, along with a daughter, Salome. The church is the oldest house of worship in Pottstown. The land was donated by John Potts to the early German Reformed and Lutheran settlers. Their daughter Rachel, my 4^th great-grandmother, married a Presbyterian, Andrew Ortlip. They are at Faggs Manor. Back in the 1980s my family and I visited Faggs Manor and wondered about an illegible stone next to Andrew and Rachel Ortlip’s headstones. At the church, the deacon and his wife (who turned out to be a third cousin of mine) told us that a Mrs. Lights had a chart of the graves, and gave us directions to her house. On that chart, next to Rachel’s name, was a penciled note saying “Dau. of Yost”. It was that lucky chance that led (with help from Mimi) to my finding of her parents’ cemetery. I have been trying to find out what happened to that chart, but had no luck so far.

Zions Reformed Church, Pottstown

Side view of the church

Next to the door

The walkway to the memorial, made of repurposed headstones.

The memorial to those buried in the area.

Floor of the momorial, made of headstones

Memorial Plaque

Right side list of those buried in the Burial Ground

Closeup showing Philip and Veronica Yost with their birth and death dates.

The last cemetery for the day was southeast of Pottstown in Spring City at Zion Lutheran Church. This is the last resting place of Andreas/Andrew Ortlip, father of the Andrew Ortlip at Faggs Manor. He is buried with his second wife. I have no idea where Andrew’s mother is buried. After the trouble I had finding the right headstones in Chalfont and Limerick, I was surprised how easily I found Andreas.

Zion Cemetery in Spring City with the Ortlip headstones in the front

Andrew Ortlip headstone

Closeup. You can still read this one.

The next day, I stopped in at Faggs Manor to visit a number of family members I used to know, some ancestors I know through photographs, and others about whom I only have stories. It’s sad to see the deterioration of the headstones. Some I could read in the 1980s that are now illegible. I met the groundskeeper, a very nice man. He said his wife works in the church office. I gave him my card in the hope that his wife would contact me so I could ask about a couple ancestors who are known to be buried there, but haven’t been found, and if she has any idea where Mrs. Lights chart is now. Still waiting. Maybe I’ll have to take another trip to the East. Here are a few of my family headstones there.

My mother and sister.

Great grandparents

Great great grandparents.

4th and 5th great grandparents. In the 1980s these were still just barely legible, and the SAR hadn’t put the Revolutionary War headstone in front of the wrong Samuel Bechtel.  (It should be three stones to the right.) 2nd stone to the right of the SAR stone is Margaret Coulston Bachtell, mentioned a few paragraphs back. Fortunately, Wwe have good photos from the trip in 1987.