Days 6-7 Genealogy Scramble

I will forewarn you that this post is more for family and journaling purposes. Since we were going to be in the area where my maternal grandparents were born and raised, we thought it would be fun to do a little exploring of cemeteries. I know it sounds boring, but we did have quite a few crazy moments (and I am serious about the crazy part) in our Family History Adventure.

This is the house where my great great Grandmother Margaret May Mitch lived (Columbus, Ohio). This is also the house where my Grandpa and Grandma Fish first came to live after they got married. It is part of a historical district where all the houses have been kept up in the styles of the time. They still have the cobblestone streets and charm of the early 1920's.

My great grandfather Joseph Pierce

My great great great grandfather Henry Stith

My great great grandmother Margaret May Mitch

This was an unexpected find. Edward Thurman Pierce is my great great grandfather's (Pierce) cousin.

Middleport Ohio Cemetery

This place was one crazy adventure. First of all just to get here we had to try to find a series of unmarked roads and 4 X4 in our Honda. It was in the middle of the wilderness on a road that really could not be called a road-just a series of huge ruts and holes in some dirt and mud uphill. We were a little nervous to say the least.
This is the hill we hiked to get to the cemetery. It is bigger and steeper than it looks here -trust me! We get to the top and the cemetery is completely overgrown. We are talking weeds the size of trees, brambles(I can know personally attest to the difficulty and pain of thick thorny brambles), thorns, briars, snakes, mosquitos. I would have given any amount of money for a machete. We made our way through the craziness without finding anything. We were a little disappointed considering we had spent over an hour trying to make our way through the forest of scariness. Dan has Maddie on his shoulders for most of the time and he noticed something at the back of the cemetery in the distance. The cemetery didn't end where we thought it would. The first forest was just a teaser and back in the darkness there were more headstones. I was already pretty banged up, stung by a bee, blood running down my legs from various cuts, (yes I was wearing a skirt and sandals) and had run from a slithering snake-what else could possibly happen? We set off and I searched with no results until I heard Dan yell from the deepest, dankest part of the forest that he had found the headstones.
He had seen the Summerfield family plot. It was at this point that Dan put Maddie down and swishing her "sword" (a feather) she looked around and yelled, "I need a real prince to save me." She was done with crazy parents dragging her around crazy places and had realized that Daddy was not a real prince after all. Surely, Prince Charming would save her as he had saved Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

We pulled and tugged out a lot of the overgrowth and found six different headstones.

My great great aunt Ruth G Summerfield (great grandma Shirley's sister)

My great great aunt Maymie Barker Summerfield (great grandma Shirley's sister)

There was also two headstones that simply said mother and father within the Summerfield plot next to the ladies. We think than that those are the headstones for my great great grandparents Lewis Henry Summerfield and Cynthia Jane Collins.

It was an amazing adventure that morning and it made me feel so very close to my ancestors. I loved getting to know more about their lives and the places where they lived and died.

The last place that we went to visit was Dunlap Chapel in the wilds of West Virginia. It was another crazy trek through twisty mountain passes, gravel and dirt roads, unnamed roads, and back country. This time however we encountered a very small and well kept cemetery. It only had about 30 headstones and half of them belonged to my Fish family ancestors.

This is the headstone of William and Mary Fish. They are my great great great grandparents.

This is Thomas D. Fish, who is the brother of Clarence Fish my great grandfather. He died before reaching his first birthday and he was great great Uncle John's twin.

This is Mabel Fish. She was born second right after my great grandfather Clarence and also lived less than a year before she died.

We think this was an older relative as well but don't have any real documentation yet.

This is John Clemard Fish. He is My great great grandfather and was married to Addie Henson. I am very grateful to my wonderful husband who inspired this trip and did all the work and research. I thought he was a little crazy for putting all this effort in for my family line but as usual he was right. I still get emotional when I think of the knowledge and connections I now feel for these people that I could have cared less about before. I feel blessed to know more about their lives and to have had this wonderful adventure.