Two weeks ago, I visited Prospect Hill Cemetery in Caldwell, New Jersey. This cemetery is most likely overflowing with ancestors of mine. Until I research more, I think I’ve hit the limit of my knowledge of them.
Prospect Hill plot layouts
This is the closest I can come to laying out where my family plots are. They could be slightly off though. We weren’t exactly in the cemetery hunting mode. We were in wedding mode!
Overall I really loved going to this cemetery. The graves were layed out in a very easy to navigate manner. Every grave is actually facing one of the access roads. So there wasn’t a real need to get out of the car unless you wanted to. I walked the whole back half of the cemetery in a very short period and I saw LOTS of names that are familiar to me after so many years of researching Caldwell. I can’t wait to go back when I have more connections to find, or even just to take more pictures for Find a Grave. I will definitely take the advice of Russ from My Tombstone Collection (Thanks for the comment Russ!) and take more pictures of the surrounding areas so I can better determine where the plots were. I did that for some of them, but not all!
Leonard family plotLindsley Family marker
For example, I was able to pinpoint exactly where I found the Leonard family and Lindsley plots from this photo. I knew I had spotted the Leonard plot from the Lindsley plot and the Lindsley plot was right along the road.
When I was a kid, my Mom used to hate taking us to the store. It was a guarantee that one of us would get caught in the excitement at whatever store we were at, and we’d lose track of her. More than once my Mom has told the story of my sister walking into columns at the store, despite numerous warnings of “Amanda. Amanda. Watch out Amanda. AMANDA.” BAM. Of course I never did that… I did use to follow the wrong Mom around the store though… Okay so I did that last week.
Never has this handicap of ours become more apparent then it did today. I have a few hours to myself. So I decided to finally add some tombstone photos I took at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Caldwell to Find A Grave. First thing I noticed when reviewing the photos I’d added a few years back was that I missed a few! Somehow when I got all the Thorward photos from my very helpful Photo Volunteer, I forgot to add some of them! He left it to me, and look what happens!
Step 1: Admitting you have a problem
It was shortly after adding Frank Thorward and his wife to the site that I noticed something. Do you see in the sidebar where it says “Find all THORWARDs in”? Well, that’s something that I’m sure has been there all along, but this is the first time I’ve ever noticed it. Please try not to hold it against me, you’ve seen I have a handicap of sorts.
Since I was working on the Thorwards and it isn’t a common surname, I decided to click on New Jersey instead of a lower area.
Step 2: Recognize a Greater Power
Only 12 Thorwards came up and 11 of them were added by me in Prospect Hill Cemetery! That 12th name at the bottom looks familiar too!
Step 3: Examine Past Errors
It just so happens, this is Frank S Thorward’s son. In Mercer County, New Jersey where I probably wouldn’t have known to look for him. The only thing that keeps me from being completely angry at my own inattentiveness is the fact that this record was only added in July.
So please remember the lesson I’ve learned… Always pay attention to ALL features of a website. I only went through 3 steps here, but I’m sure as I learn and venture more I’ll come across more instances.
As I was writing up yesterday’s Mystery Monday post, I was reminded of the single, most consuming mystery I’ve ever had. It started when I first started going through the boxes of treasures/photographs/papers. When I first started scanning the photographs into my computer, I just labeled them UnknownMooreThorward-01 and so on. Funny enough, years after solving this mystery and they’re still named that.
Mystery Photo #1
This is the photo that launched the hours, months, years of frustration. Okay, so I’m exaggerating a tiny bit. It did take me years to solve this though. I would pick it up every few months and try again. I don’t know why I was so struck by this picture. I was just so curious about this building.
At one of our reunions, I brought the picture up on my laptop and asked around. Many members of my family chimed in. No one really knew where it was though. We dissected it many times. We were analyzing the routes that the cars were taking. My father thought he saw a crane in the back and chimed in that it was probably a temporary structure. I scoffed at that! Who would tear that kind of building down! That was nonsense!
Mystery Photo #2
A few months later I stumbled upon this photograph among the others. This one doesn’t show the structure very well, but it gives a bit more detail among the pillars. This one was taken on a different day I think. Here you can see something draped between the pillars and you can see what looks like balloons!
This set our family on all new tangents. My Aunt even showed the picture to some of her customers and got their input. We researched everything from European architecture to the Sesqui-centennial celebration of 1926 in Philadelphia. I went so far as to order a program on eBay from the event and even emailed the Boston Historic Society! No stone was unturned. Then one day I found a genealogy community online. I decided why not see what happens and I posted the first picture. In a twist of fate that is very common to me, someone posted back within a few hours!
This may sound silly and redundant, but have you checked out Victory Arches?
Oh.
Oh.
Silly me, I didn’t even know what a victory arch was! So I quickly put my Google-fu to the test! Here’s a simple Google Image search of Victory Arches. Holy canoli, I was back on track!
Oh.
I was eventually led to an expired eBay auction for this item. In fact, if you search for it today, there are even more images now! It turns out my structure was an Arch of Victory that was erected to welcome the troops home from WWI.
Arch of Victory at Madison Square, New York City, with men of the Twenty-seventh (New York) Division marching in a victory parade that was witnessed by hundreds of thousands of cheering spectators. The city turned out in masse to do them honor, and they received a tremendous ovation along the line of march. The avenue was packed from buildings to curbs.
This is why I love the internet. It took two years, and many hours of research for this huge family mystery to be solved by one poster on an internet message board. We spent many a hour at reunions discussing what this structure could be. My Dad always maintained that it was probably temporary. Well, you can bet he had bragging rights for a long time on this one!
Google Street View
It’s funny how different the street looks today, yet it still looks the same. I don’t know if you can tell from the size of the images but the buildings from the original photograph seem to all still be standing and look almost exactly the same!
I love to torture myself now. Sure one mystery was solved but that leads to more questions! Was my family in the hundreds of thousands of people welcoming the troops home? Were any of my relatives one of the troops being welcomed home? Gosh I love a good story!
My Mystery Monday posts usually have to do with the people in my photographs. That isn’t the case today. I’ve been wondering for awhile about where this particular picture is taken. I’ve had numerous inputs, one being around the Jersey Shore and others being another Jersey town. The only thing everyone agrees on is that this is Jersey. My questions about places aren’t usually solved quickly. Remind me to tell you about the Victory Arch photograph… In fact, I’ll write that up sometime this week. It’s a great story!
What I know about this photo:
It was most likely taken in New Jersey… somewhere.
It is most likely a member of the Thorward family.
What I want to know about this photo:
Where this particular house is?
Who’s house is this?
Who are the people in the photograph?
How are they related or connected to my family?
Where those awnings green and white? For some reason I feel like they were green and white?
Can I have a time machine to walk through these old houses? Pretty please?
Mystery Monday is a weekly series on my blog. It is now a Daily Blogging Theme at GeneaBloggers also! Feel free to post about your own mysteries and link me to them!
On Friday, I hinted about a project that I have coming up. I meant to have the entry ready to go for Sunday, but things got busy during my trip over the weekend and I didn’t get a chance. So I’m here now to give a little info on it.
I often talk about my Great Grandmother’s journal here on the blog. The diary starts on January 1, 1923, or at least from what I can tell. So on January 1, 2011 I will be starting my Llewellyn Project. In a separate section of the blog, I will be doing a daily transcription from her journal. I will slowly work my way through the diary. Adding in pictures of relevant people or places when I can. The diary goes on for close to three years. This isn’t going to be an overnight finish. I hope to finally finish getting through it though. Sometimes it wasn’t more than a few lines, but those few lines are a great glimpse into the past. I hope you will enjoy this as much as I hope to!
January 1st is my deadline for my site re-design. If it’s done earlier, well that would be great!
