Burial Location Found through Social Media: Gersham Smith and Sarah Ann Garvey-Smith

 When I ran into a dead end, no pun intended, looking for the burial location of my 3rd great grandparents; Gersham Smith (about 1848 - 6 November 1905) and Sarah Ann Garvey-Smith (about 1851 - 31 December 1893), I turned to social media. 

I belong to a FaceBook group called Long Island History and I had recently seen a post there about small abandoned family cemeteries around Long Island. One man had posted a photo of cemetery he had stumbled across. Having no success in finding my couple buried at the well known cemeteries in the area, I replied to that post asking if anyone knew of small cemeteries around the North Bellmore area. One man replied that there was a small, old cemetery behind the Christ Alive Church on East Meadow Avenue in East Meadow.

The Christ Alive Church was once the area's Methodist Church. The Methodists constructed a new building across the street and slightly north of their old church but the cemetery behind the Christ Alive Church has a sign that reads: United Methodist Church Cemetery Est, 1859. 

Hmm. My grandpa was raise a Methodist and converted to Catholicism after he married my grandma. Religion is very fluid in my family history. Could it be grandpa's great grandparents were still Methodists back then? Hmm. Maybe.

Place names change over time. That is certainly true here on Long Island. Many of my early Long Island ancestors were settled in Freeport. Freeport has been known by a couple of names including Raynor South and Raynortown. The European credited with settling the area in 1659 was my 10th great grandfather, Edward Raynor, thus the former names of Freeport. 

I don't live in Freeport but my family has resided in the community and surrounding towns for over 350 years; towns including Baldwin, Bellmore, East Meadow, Hempstead, Merrick, and Roosevelt. All those places, at one time, had a different name. The area in which my Smiths lived was once known as Smithville South. Yeah, they have a couple of people named Smith living there. That area is now North Bellmore and part of East Meadow. So maybe Gersham and Sarah Ann were Methodists buried in East Meadow.

I visited the churchyard on Sunday, January 31, 2021. There were very few legible headstones but there were two for Smiths; Vera May Smith (about 1899 - 6 November 1918) and, in another section, Henry E. Smith (1877 - 1917).

I went home and found an email address for the Methodist Church across the street. A very nice woman named Marcella emailed me back that she would take a look at the Church's records as soon as she was in the office. With the current COVID pandemic, I don't expect anyone to be working full-time in any office anywhere everyday. If you are, God bless you.

Yesterday I received an email back with wonderful scans showing documentation that lot 73 of the cemetery belonged to a Gersham Smith; most likely my Gersham Smith.

Marcella is going to look to see if she can confirm the couple is buried there by checking other record books to see if services were held for either of their deaths. In the meantime I have learned that Henry E. Smith for whom there is a headstone in Lot 73 is likely the son of Gersham and Sarah who I have recorded in my research as Harry. So I am pretty confident that I have been to where my third great grandparents, Gersham and Sarah Ann Smith are buried.

CHECK.