Tuesday, February 5, 2013
I hope all of you have followed through on the ACE credit registry. I was able to get my transcript and am hoping to add to these credits this summer or next with courses at BU. This post is an update to my November 2012 trip to Worcester and Palmer Massachusetts graveyards. I met with two wonderfully informative clerks at St. John's Cemetery in Worcester who told me of a practice of reusing gravesites for current and future burials as long as the family holds the deed to those gravesites. I guess New England is running out of room and if your ancestors have been buried long enough it is possible for you to be buried on the same site which means we must be vigilant with graveyard databases and hope the future will hold all the occupants for our genealogical searches. The disappointment for me here at St. John's Cemetery was that the grave stones were no longer in place for my ancestors. I need to contact the clerks and ask if there ever was an attempt at transcription or imaging of grave stones that were deteriorating or removed. The ground is clear; no other markers are there so the deed is still owned by someone in the Corey line who may not know that this is theirs to resurrect or occupy, sotospeak. Well, after this disappointment I hopped back in my rental car and drove to Palmer where I got lost trying to find the ancient Old Palmer Center Cemetery which is reputed to be haunted. Since the daylight was fading I needed to get there post haste so had to stop several times to locate myself with my iPhone GPS. I eventually did find the cemetery and raced from stone to stone to locate John Corey. I had my can of shave cream to use to spray on his tombstone and then with a straight edge ruler go across the stone surface wiping off excess foam revealing the almost faded letters and numbers beneath. This process works but I need to go back to Palmer in a season with more daylight to triangulate to John Corey's tombstone by locating the more readable stones before and after his in the early 1900 transcriptions done by a fellow who feared all records would be lost from these ancient tombstones. I believe he misread a "1" for a "4" making 3-year-old John Corey buried in 1816 just a few short years after the birth of his mother, Nancy. Since that is unlikely the more accurate transcription should be 1846. After returning the car to the rental agency they dropped me off at the Worcester Union train station which is a monumental building full of grandeur. I took the Framingham commuter back to Back Bay and ended my day with dinner in the Eastern Standard. I'll be doing this again in summer so if anyone wants to join me, feel welcome.
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