This family plot is located at the far end of the cemetery. Cemetery Road runs right behind the stones. Of course, it was the last part of the cemetery that I walked through.
Below is a separate listing of each stone.
Located at the left of the above photo, this stone reads:
John Woodside
Born June 5, 1782
Died Dec. 29, 1855
The lower half of stone is quite worn and hard to read, but I believe the above dates are correct.
The second stone from the left is for John's wife:
Nancy F.
Wife of John Woodside
Born Apr. 2, 1796
Died Nov. 29, 1869
Second stone from the right:
Robt. P. Woodside
Born Sep. 26, 1838
Died Jan. 31, 1864
There is a rifle at the top of the stone. At the bottom I was only able to read Co. F. However, Randolph County Cemetery Records state Co. F. 10 MO Inf-CW.
This stone is on the far right:
Josiah K. Woodside
Born Aug. 1, 1835
Died May 30, 1898
(All census records give this son's name as Joshua K.)
This pillar gravestone has the name Woodside engraved on the lower front, and engravings on three sides of the upper pillar. The stone leaning against the side of the pillar is for Sarah M. Woodside and is described in my previous posting.
The pillar stone has deteriorated quite a bit and is difficult to read. However, I believe I have captured most of the engraving properly.
The right-hand side of the pillar has the following engraving:
Sarah, Wife of R. H. Woodside
Died July 25, 1902
Aged 79Y 8M 28Ds
The rear of the pillar is engraved:
Woodside
Died June 25, 1898
Aged 80Y 2M 16(?)Ds.
(I could not read the beginning of the engraving, but believe this to be Robert H., husband of Sarah.)
The third, or left-hand side of the pillar reads:
Woodside, Died Oct 2, 1855, Aged 21 Days.
I could not get the first name, however, it appears to be for Robert and Sarah's daughter, Sarah M., as the death information is the same as on the white stone that is leaning against the pillar.
This map of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery was received from the cemetery office in 1998. The cemetery is located on Cheltenham Avenue between Waverly and Easton Roads, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
At that time you could write to them or go in to the office with a list of the names you were interested in locating graves for. In addition to the map, they printed out a sheet from their computer which gave the owner of the grave site, the section-range-lot-grave numbers, the names of the deceased buried there and the interment dates.
With the map and list in hand it is rather easy to locate the graves you are interested in. It will still require some walking and looking, but is a lot less time consuming than working without this information.
Since my recent genealogy research trip took me to some older cemeteries, I thought I would share with you some things I learned.
First of all, be prepared to spend a LOT of time (read that as hours) at EACH cemetery. Older cemeteries do not have offices you can visit to ask questions, therefore cannot provide maps of the lot or grave layouts.
Second, the stones are not laid out in even rows and all stones do not face the same direction. This makes it very difficult to walk the rows to read stones.
Third, many of the older stones have deteriorated a great deal and are unreadable, are broken and incomplete, or they are just plain missing.
For one of the cemeteries I was visiting I had found a listing on-line at the County page. It gave the row or section of the cemetery where my ancestors were buried. However, when I got there I discovered the problems listed above, plus there was no way to distinguish the sections. So my daughter and I had to walk the whole cemetery to try and find my ancestors. We found some, but not all that were supposed to be there.
The second cemetery we visited was pretty much the same experience, except I did not have a listing that showed rows or sections, only names. This time I played it smarter and only headed toward the older looking stones. It still involved a great deal of walking and looking. I was about ready to give up finding anything when I practically fell over what I was looking for.
We had planned on visiting 4 cemeteries that day - only made it to 2 of them. We also had planned on spending 3 days visiting 7 to 8 cemeteries, never made it past the first day. The weather was horrible - severe wind and rain kept us in the hotel the other 2 days. Not a completely wasted trip but disappointing just the same.
So Number Four on the list would be to check the weather for the area you are going to before you finalize your plans. If the weatherman say storms are heading that way in a few days, stay home. We had beautiful sunny days driving out to the cemeteries and again driving home. Sometimes you just can't count on the weather staying nice!
The following two gravestones are at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery (see previous postings) and are for my husband's family.
This stone is in Section 12, Range 10, Lot 44
Mother: K. Stolzer 1890-1918Father: A. Stolzer 1863-1934(Note: The Stolzers were my husband's great grandparents - Katherine (Kern)& Andrew)
This stone is flat in the ground in Section 1, Range 5, Lot 38. I do not know the person engraved on the stone (Isabella Friel) but there are 3 burials in the cemetery's records: William Carroll 12/28/1900 age 11 yrs.; William Carroll 1/28/1908 age 3 yrs.; Nora Walsh 11/18/07.
This family plot is located at the far end of the cemetery. Cemetery Road runs right behind the stones. Of course, it was the last part of the cemetery that I walked through.
Located at the left of the above photo, this stone reads:
The second stone from the left is for John's wife:
Second stone from the right:
This stone is on the far right:
