Monday, September 6, 2021 Grave Musings 10: Denison Cemetery

Previous: Grave Musings 9 Chasing the Sea Wing

Years ago, my daughter Ruth and I decided to go exploring in the area around our house, so we drove off and took random turns, ending up on a gravel road in the country that wound around through corn fields and past old farms. At a lonely crossroads, we found a small cemetery, well-tended, but looking a little neglected nonetheless. We got out and wandered for a bit, took some photos, and went on our way.

I tucked it away in my mind as a place to which I’d like to return and it went on my list of local cemeteries last year when I decided to try to visit all the cemeteries in our town and surrounding countryside. My ambitious schedule was to visit 20 cemeteries in one summer. I made it to three.

A few weeks ago my niece was coming down for a visit and and I had a fun idea to do a cemetery scavenger hunt with her at Denison Cemetery where Ruth and I had gone before. Don’t worry, she’s used to my strange ideas of fun and is a pretty good sport about it.

I did a little research before she arrived, but didn’t come up with much, other than finding a list of those buried there and the dates. I looked it over, did some speculating and deducing and came up with the following scavenger hunt list:

1. First burial: Denison Baby Girl, March 6, 1853, daughter of James and Mary.
2. Last burial: Elberta Nichols Denison 1906-1988.
3. Possible founders of the cemetery: James Denison and Mary McEachran Denison. Did they start the cemetery to have a place to bury their infant daughter?
4. Interesting deaths noted: Shirlie Tripp Fulton – drowned; Andreas Swanson – killed by horses.
5. Eddie Castle 1878 -1883. Only five years old when he died. Probably not all that unusual, but I was drawn to his name and age.

It all looked so easy on paper, but in reality, when we got there we realized that a lot of the gravestones were so old you couldn’t read what was on them anymore. We found a few on our list, but mostly just wandered around taking photos and noting interesting epitaphs.

Scavenger List #1. We didn’t find Baby Girl Denison, who died in 1853, but we found her older brother. Does that name look like “Lurton D” to you? I’ve never heard of that name. He would have been born before his baby sister, but died On August 28, 1862 when he was 16 years and 17 days. How sad for James and Mary, the parents, but they had hope of seeing Lurton again. The poem below reads:
“We’ll meet again when storms are o’er,
The ills of life are past
Where trials rend the heart no more,
We’ll meet, we’ll meet at last.”

Lurton died during the Civil War – is it possible he joined up without his parents’ permission and died in battle? You’d think that would have been noted. Still the Civil War would certainly have been a dark storm and trial hanging over the whole country at the time.

Scavenger List #2. Elberta Nichols Denison.

We noted that that there were later burials than hers, so I guess the list I had looked over was not up to date.

Scavenger List #3. Possible founders James and Mary Denison.

James married an older woman! I wonder how common that was? If I’ve done my math right, Mary McEachran was born around March 19, 1812, so she was 8 years old when James was born. There were lots of Denisons in the cemetery, so if James and Mary weren’t the founders, there were plenty of other candidates. My money’s on them, though.

Scavenger List #4 Shirlie Tripp Fulson and Andreas Swanson.

Shirlie was only 13 years old when she drowned. What a blow for her parents and family! We couldn’t find the gravestone for Andreas Swanson who was killed by horses at 87 years of age in 1911. We also never found the gravestone for Eddie Castle, the little 5 year old boy who died in 1883.

Our house was built by a Spitzack – it’s a common name around here. I was intrigued by the DIY nature of the engraving on his stone. It sort of looks like the Spitzacks couldn’t afford to pay a marker company to do the engraving, doesn’t it? There were two Spitzacks side by side, both of them with these home-made looking engravings. Neither of them had death dates either. Benhart’s says 1908 – 19___. Hmmm. Seems unlikely Benhart is still with us.

Note that the tree on Flora’s stone is similar to the one above on Lurton’s. I did a little research and believe these are weeping willow trees, which of course suggest grief and sorrow. However, “the weeping willow is also associated with the gospel of Christ, because the tree will flourish and remain whole no matter how many branches are cut off.” (Source: Stories in Stone by Douglas Keister)

When you enter a cemetery, you enter a little village where the residents can only tell you so much, just the essential bits of data that can be scraped onto stone. And as the years go by, those voices fade.

Thanks for joining me for another cemetery ramble.

Start at the beginning: Grave Musings 1 Maple Lawn I

Next: Grave Musings 11: The Forgotten Cemetery

I’ll probably delete this in the morning when stones speak in quiet places.