I used to love going to Buffalo to visit my wife's mom. Now I won't even drive through that neighborhood. Good beer, delicious pizza, beef on wick, etc.
I should go back there, though. I have some more cemetery crawling to do at Holy Cross in Lackawanna. Her my wife's great-great grandfather, Lewis Carney was taken prisoner of war off the USS INDAINOLA in the Civil War, is buried there, as are most of his family and their connections. (The family tree now numbers 7333 individuals, back to 1580.)
I love crawling around old cemeteries. There are others there that need an inspection, also. And I'd like to visit the Erie County Historical Society.
Amazing what on can find in undeveloped areas of an urban center. Long time forgoten cemetery's that when reported to the Historical society make them run out the door to see them.
Kids and I found one back in the woods near the town boat launch, the stones were flat on the ground but after cleaning them off we saw the diseased had been Naval Officers, our side when we beat off the British. This was about 10 years ago and since JP Jones had a home across the river, still there , the historians are trying to link the Officers to him and his ship.
Nothing says they died in battle so we figure they got into a brawl on the water front in one of the many whore houses and were dispatched by the riff raft in town.
What we cannot understand is that some of the near by cemetery's date back to the 1600's so why bury them away from the cemetery's and spend the huge cost to buy a head stone, have it inscribed and sent all the way from Boston.
Mysteries from the past, some stones in the old cemetery's have no body's under them, just name, age of birth and death, and a Lost At Sea. Some so young, not yet 16.
My great, great, grand dad and some of his kin are buried in my Moms neighbors back yard.
The new neighbors who bought the house have a big wooded plot out back. Mom was at the time doing genelogy so she introduced herself to her new neighbors and requested permission to look for the family graves. The people were amazed, they had no idea there was any kind of cemetery on the property they bought.
For weeks Mom and her neighbors searched every inch of the property and could never find a thing. Got to remember our family were poor folks and may not been able to erect a proper head stone and may have just used a big bolder to mark the graves. Few people could afford to buy a cemetery plot at that time. It was a bury them in the woods or dump them in the river on the out going tide. Back then the Churches refused to bury the bad actors on Holy Ground.
For some reason it is much more interesting to find my ancesters were river rats, and pig thieves rum runners and forgers then to read a list of names of family that were simple quiet people who were born and died with never making a wripple in the waters of life.
