We did it! Cousin Pete and I did my cemetery marathon this past Saturday, April 24, 2021. We hit 6 cemeteries, and ate a lengthy lunch, in a total of 6 hours 17 minutes. A bit wacky but we did it.
Our first stop was St. Michael's Cemetery in East Elmhurst, Queens which is just a hop, skip, and a jump from where Peter lives. Cousin Pete actually lives in walking distance of where my grandma grew up - my grandma on my mom's side, not Pete's grandma. Pete and I are related through our father's lineage. Anyway, Pete was kind enough to accompany to graves of my mother's side as well.
I have a history with St. Michael's. Many years ago when I first went looking for the burial location of my great-great grandparents, Johan Nepom Prinz (2 May 1854 - 21 April 1929) and Sabina "Lena" Krantzel-Prinz (17 June 1860 - 25 April 1926), I was told I had to pay them for that information. Outraged, I wandered that cemetery looking for a potential burial location; unsuccessfully of course. It is a big cemetery!
This time around when I called for a plot location, they kindly gave me that information over the phone. However, I didn't know my way around the cemetery despite all the time I spent walking around in there in the past. When we entered the cemetery, we didn't see a sign with a map on it, so we went to the cemetery's office. We were helped by a very nice woman who provided us with a paper map and showed the route to take to get to Grave 11 - Range 85 - Plot 6.
Johan and Lena are interred in this grave with their daughter Margaret Prinz-Kamm (5 October 1886 - 14 December 1915) who died in childbirth when she was just 29 years old.
When Peter and I were wandering around Plot 6, a cemetery worker driving an excavator noticed us and asked if we needed help. He came down from his machine and measured out where the actually plot would be, stating that their graves are 30" wide.
So this is them. Look familiar? Yeah, my people almost never have a headstone.
Looking at this patch of earth the worker commented that he had been working for the cemetery for 35 years. When he first started out some of the old time employees had told him that sometime in the 1970s, some of the headstones were buried. Occasionally, they still get requests to dig up the interred stones. Frequently those stones are broken in the process.
Is this the first time you are hearing of this?
I wish I could say I have never heard of this before but in fact, I have. There is a "park" in Hempstead, New York in which my 6th great grandparents are interred; Jacob and Rebecca Raynor. The Hempstead Old Town Burial Ground had fallen into such disrepair that the Town decided to level it. A few headstones stand in a far off corner of the Old Town "Park" but it is not at all a park, its a cemetery. The Town buried the old headstones over the graves and now it's a pretty lawn.
Lovely, just freakin' lovely.
Now I don't know if this is true of Johan and Lena's headstone. I suspect they never had a stone because that is just how it is in my family. Or maybe there are more stones out there then I think. Stay tuned for posts on my other 5 cemetery visits from Saturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment