Dear Ancestor

Your tombstone stands among the rest;
Neglected and alone.
The name and date are chiseled out
On what was once polished, marbled stone.
It reaches out to all who care
It is too late to mourn.
You did not know that I exist
You died and I was born.
Yet each of us are cells of you
In flesh, in blood, in bone.
Our blood contracts and beats a pulse
Entirely not our own.
Dear Ancestor, the place you filled
One hundred years ago
Spreads out among the ones you left
Who would have loved you so.
I wonder if you lived and loved,
I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find this spot,
And come to visit you.

--Unknown


The above photos show the way I found my great grandmother Elizabeth BAKER WOOLSEY's grave in the summer of 1992. This was a rude reality check. Obviously no one had been to her grave in many years. The photo below shows how it looked 24 hours later, and still does today. This is one of the shocking truths of doing genealogy. Hopefully you'll never find one of your ancestors graves, like the one in the above photographs.