where2look4ancestors

Category: Tombstone Tourist

  • A Cemetery Paved with Good Intentions

    It was a little disconcerting, but I was impressed. While I was photographing headstones for Find A Grave at Riverside Cemetery in Black River Falls Wisconsin, I was being watched. Not from afar, mind you. The same pickup truck meandered through the very sections I was in at least a dozen times…

  • Cemeteries are Coming Back to Life

    Winter dragged on forever here in the Midwest. I hadn’t been to Lakewood since January when the cemetery looked like this: For months I suffered headstone withdrawal, especially after Mother Nature’s 70 degree tease in late March. But yesterday, after a visit to the dentist, I rewarded myself with a cemetery…

  • Looks Can Be Deceiving

    You know what they say about assumptions, right? Guilty as charged. In July of last year I was in Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery taking headstone photos for Find A Grave, when I stumbled upon this: Of course I assumed the overturned headstone belonged to Scott M. Jones. After all, written in…

  • Thoroughly Modern Memorial

    We tend to assume, do we not, that headstones are erected soon after the deceased is laid to rest. In some cases however, a descendant has a headstone put in place long after the death occurred. And this dear readers, is a wonderful clue that another family historian may be lurking about. So when a headstone looks…

  • Mary A wife of Phil Runser

    Mary Runser’s headstone stands among a number of old memorials in Riverside Cemetery in Black River Falls Wisconsin.  

  • Sisters of Mercy

    Ordinarily I share photos of multiple headstones on Taphophile Thursday. Those pictures tend to focus more on the cemetery as a whole and less on individual markers. But this grouping of headstones in Janesville Wisconsin’s Mount Olivet Cemetery presented the individuals as a single entity. Which is what moved me to take a picture.

  • Mother and Son

    What happened in January of 1890 to cause the deaths of both Claudine and her son Henrik Fjelde? Could it have been the flu pandemic that killed nearly a million people worldwide in little more than a year?  

  • Hexagon Headstone in Wisconsin

    This beautiful hexagon headstone is in Forest Hill Cemetery and Mausoleum in Madison Wisconsin. Six members of the extended Whitaker family are interred here. Mary Whitaker Sandford 1910-1952 Bessie Sayles Whitaker 1880-1951 Henry Charles Whitaker 1874-1930 Robert Charles Ellis Sr. 1895-1981 Dorothy Whitaker Ellis 1907-1957 and Henry Whitaker Ellis 1939-1990. All…

  • I Leave My Blessing to Everybody

    In October I visited Calvary Cemetery in Evanston Illinois. It was my first trip to the predominantly Irish Catholic cemetery which was consecrated in 1859. It was also the first time I saw a bas-relief of the deceased on a headstone. Meet Grace O’Dwyer Ryan who was born in Ireland in 1824. Grace died in…

  • Wednesday’s Child: The Ryan Children

    The loss of a child must have been devastating to our ancestors. I can only imagine the anguish of parents who lost several children. Like James and Bridget, the parents of Margaret, Michael and Mary Ryan. State registration of births in Minnesota began in 1900, but the rules weren’t really followed statewide until after 1915.…