The day of my beloved sister Christine’s funeral, I was overwhelmed with grief and a sense of finality and loss that nothing could heal. Then came a total shift in the physical and emotional landscapes. Vicki had come down from Angola and wanted to do some genealogical sleuthing about my mother’s pioneer ancestors who settled a section of land near Michigantown when there were still Indians present. I wanted to put it off, but I’ve learned from bitter experience that carpe diem — seize the day — is excellent advice.
Bill, Vicki and I rushed back to Indianapolis, changed clothes and headed north. During that and subsequent trips, I made discoveries about my daughter and myself when we journeyed together back into the days of our forebears.
Using Ancestry.com, Vicki has learned much about our ancestors and has become a knowledgeable and avid enthusiast about the esoterica of genealogical research. She rhapsodizes over the arcane details of dusty old census tracts and wills, saying that it’s like reading a good mystery.
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
First we visited the excellent genealogical wing of the Frankfort Library where the librarians helped us find various documents and books and told us how to find the Old Home Place’s cemetery. On the way, we visited the cemetery out on the highway south of Michigantown where Granny’s people are buried. It is a quiet, country place, and its fresh air is redolent with the scent of wild clover. My devout great-grandmother’s tombstone reads, “Asleep in Jesus.” I’m sure that she knew the hymn that I quoted above.
Cemeteries are more than graves; their tombstones hold much history. There was no stone for mother’s cousin, Mary Beck whom we all loved. Feeling that she shouldn’t lie in an unmarked grave, my cousin, Wayne Kelly, and I bought a stone.
Next we drove a few miles from Old Home Place that was the true north of my mother’s people who spoke of it with a deep reverence and sense of rootedness. The house and its round barn, the first built in Clinton County, are gone, but up on a wooded knoll above Wildcat Creek we could see old tombstones.
Bill was with us the first time when we scrambled over a rickety gate and walked up the rutted, grassy lane. They were all there, the ancient ones, about whom my mother told the stories that had been passed down to her. Some of the untended tombstones are tilting, blackened and illegible; others have fallen over or are sinking into the ground. Vicki said, “If I had the money. I’d restore this cemetery.” She was in a state of genealogical rapture. “Oh look!” she chortled. “There’s David Kelly!” David was the original settler of the Old Home Place. My great-grandmother Kelly was the last person to be buried there.
I sat on a tombstone and thought about this spot that overlooks the fields that were carved out of the forest by my pioneer ancestors nearly two hundred years ago when Indians were still present. Slowly, the soothing hush and gentle light of the gloaming hour descended upon me and brought me a sense of completion and of being in an oasis of tranquility in a hurtful, hectic world.
As I mused, I felt a renewed sense of connectedness both to those from whom I sprang and to my daughter as I watched her forge her own connection with our people and find her place in this story that has no ending. Vicki and I had sometimes been like two fractious mares who are hitched together and sometimes give each other little nips or kicks. On this day we began to develop a deeper understanding. “Goodbye, Old Ones,“ I whispered as we turned to leave. wclarke@comcast.net