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St. Vincent Cemetery: The Conversation Continues
posted Friday, 3 November 2006
Back in December of 2004 I wrote about my maternal family history, the Burgetts, specifically William Burgett (1852 - 1902). I wrote about it in A Stone in a Field and Stone Redux .
To recap a little, there is a cemetery in Sheffield Township right on Detroit Road that looks like a large field and on the east end you can see one a gravestone. On the rare occasion that we would drive out that way my mother would say that the person buried there was a relative of ours. It became a distant childhood memory.
One day as an adult I drove by and my memory was jogged. I stopped by and took some pictures. After a lot of work I found him to be my great-great grandfather. In my past writings I mentioned speaking to Bridget Shindler who lived next to the cemetery. Recently I met Bridget's daughter, Judith Wilson, and we had an interesting discussion on St. Vincent's Cemetery. She told me that she wrote an essay on the cemetery for the Lorain County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogy Society. I've copied the essay to my blog and you can read it HERE. Her essay corrects some minor mistakes that I made from writing from memory but all in all we have the same story.
As I've had time to think about the cemetery I have some serious questions..
Why would the church not maintain the cemetery and let it devolve to such a sorry state? Why, even after being visited by people from the church wasn't something done? Finally, how could the stones be destroyed and graves ignored?
As a final thought, I had heard rumors that the stones were deposited in a landfill off Ford Road. I had considered poking around in case a stone had popped up over the years. I found out the other day that the landfill is a superfund site and very toxic. It is against federal law (and safety considerations) to poke around there.
I will post more on St. Vincent Cemetery as I come across it. I want to thank Judith Wilson for writing the essay and posting it on the internet.
To recap a little, there is a cemetery in Sheffield Township right on Detroit Road that looks like a large field and on the east end you can see one a gravestone. On the rare occasion that we would drive out that way my mother would say that the person buried there was a relative of ours. It became a distant childhood memory.
One day as an adult I drove by and my memory was jogged. I stopped by and took some pictures. After a lot of work I found him to be my great-great grandfather. In my past writings I mentioned speaking to Bridget Shindler who lived next to the cemetery. Recently I met Bridget's daughter, Judith Wilson, and we had an interesting discussion on St. Vincent's Cemetery. She told me that she wrote an essay on the cemetery for the Lorain County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogy Society. I've copied the essay to my blog and you can read it HERE. Her essay corrects some minor mistakes that I made from writing from memory but all in all we have the same story.
As I've had time to think about the cemetery I have some serious questions..
Why would the church not maintain the cemetery and let it devolve to such a sorry state? Why, even after being visited by people from the church wasn't something done? Finally, how could the stones be destroyed and graves ignored?
As a final thought, I had heard rumors that the stones were deposited in a landfill off Ford Road. I had considered poking around in case a stone had popped up over the years. I found out the other day that the landfill is a superfund site and very toxic. It is against federal law (and safety considerations) to poke around there.
I will post more on St. Vincent Cemetery as I come across it. I want to thank Judith Wilson for writing the essay and posting it on the internet.
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