An Odd Hobby

In my attempts to locate my ancestors grave sites, I found a free website appropriately called "Find A Grave."

Being mildly curious about the "famous" people buried in the many cemeteries near my home, I signed up as a volunteer "grave stone picture taker". As a result, every now and then, I find a request in my e-mail box asking if I can take a picture of some one's gravestone.

While this may sound rather ghoulish, my thoughts are of the difficulty I had finding my ancestors - and of wanting to help others find their ancestors and to be, in a small way, helpful in their finding their roots.

What I did not realize was, that within just 5 miles of my home there are literally dozens and dozens of cemeteries - some dating way back into the late 1600's and that I would get a fair number of requests.

Many of the stones I've seen over the few months are weathered beyond readability, or nearly so, such as Matthias Rittenhouse's shown below.


It reads, "In Memory of Matthias Rittenhouse who departed this Life June the 3rd 1793 .. Aged 59 Years".

Matthias was a Mennonite ("nearly-Amish") minister in the town of Skippack, PA.

Willem (William) Rittinghausen (1644-1708) was born in the Rhineland, Germany, and lived in Amsterdam before he immigrated to America in 1688. He became the first Mennonite minister in America and builder of the first paper mill at Philadelphia in 1690. It is believed that all American Mennonite Rittenhouses have descended from him.

The most famous person bearing the family name was David Rittenhouse (1732-96), the Philadelphia astronomer and scientist and the first director of the United States Mint, who was a son of Matthias of the third generation in America. He lived in a farmhouse a few blocks down the road from me, very near the Methacthon Oak - which he may very well have sat under - it being on the church grounds that his father preached at.

In my strolls up and down the old gravestones looking for the one someone requested a photo of, I have encountered many of the same names - names that the nearby towns, streets, and businesses also carry. Bergey, Detweiller, Bean, Kreible, Kulp, Landis, Clemens, Heebner, Beyers, Cassel, (Christopher) Dock and many more.

Usually, it takes a bit of walking, up and down rows, to find the one I am seeking - sometimes I end up walking miles and miles and sometimes I don't find the grave - but when I do, I get a thrill and think, "Aha!" and take the picture and move on.

The grave stones however, do not tell the person's story. Recently I was asked to take a picture of the grave of Harry "Tom" Collins Jr. - the requester only knew what year he died - as he died tragically. So... I took this picture -


Harry J. Collins Jr. (1916 - 1946)

Buried nearby are his sister Bertha Collins Lake (1918-2003), his father Harry Jay Collins (1875 - 1956) and mother Rose Mae Collins (1889 - 1978) and unknown relatives Claude R. Collins (1907 - 1989) with Elizabeth M. Collins (1897 - 1988).

Harry Jr. died at the age of 29 - 10 years before his father - and more than 50 years before his sister. A short investigation led me to this newspaper story published August 3d, 1946.


Attempting to zoom by a driver in a 15-lap midget auto race at the Yellow Jacket Speedway, Harry (Tom) Collins of Norrlstown, Pa., was killed "instantly" after his midget racer locked wheels with another car and crashed into a fence. Collins, 29, was attempting to pass Carl Miller of Trenton, N. J.,on the eighth lap of the race, but he got too close. A wheel of Collins' car tangled with one of Miller's. Miller eventually won the race.

"It is hard to picture the city of Philadelphia as the center of racing. But, back in the late 1930s the city of Philadelphia was the hot spot in the world of midget racing. Race teams from across the country would tow to Philadelphia to race at the two race tracks located inside the city limits. The two tracks, Yellow Jacket Speedway on G Street in Frankford, or at the National Stadium, provided some of the best in midget racing action." The track closed in 1950.

Quoted from http://www.thevintageracer.com/articles/phila_midgets.htm

I asked my dad about this and he said, "Oh my yes!! I remember seeing a few races there with my father!" I then asked, "Why does 'G' street sound familiar?" and he replied, "'G' Street was on the way to the foundry - we commuted down that road for years. The race track was at Erie and G., where we drove over those nasty trolley tracks." Then I remembered. The huge Philadelphia Coca Cola Bottling plant is at that site today. I said, "The Coke plant?" and he replied, "That's the place."

So many connections - and so many more invisible ones.

Thanksgiving, Turkey and what's in the water?

As many of you know, I was "home alone" for Thanksgiving day. I wasn't feeling well and the rest of family was out of town - some as far as Florida and some in South Carolina. Unperturbed, as the date of the holiday is far less important to me than the actual celebrating it - I waited til they came home and suggested we go down the shore like we usually do, the weekend following Thanksgiving.

Well, that weekend didn't work out but I did see my younger brother play one of his annual "Old People's Home" gigs with the three guys he plays guitar with... and I saw my niece play some hoity toity tunes with her High School orchestra chamber music set - Haydn and Bach (ugh!) but they woke up the crowd with some Leroy Anderson tunes like Sleigh Bells and Syncopated Clock.

So it came to pass, that this weekend was "Thanksgiving Day" down the New Jersey shore with my folks. The weekend adventure actually started last Tuesday, when my mom called and said, "Can you buy a 15 pound turkey right after work today and start thawing it? My grocery store is all out of them!" Always willing to oblige, and knowing my folks live about 20 miles from the nearest other grocery store, I acquired a 17 pound "bird" and put in my refrigerator so it would be thawed by the weekend.

Wednesday I gave the bird a poke and it was still a solid chunk. Thursday morning it was slightly more yielding, and by Friday morning it was "well on its way to thawsville".

I have been very behind in my blog reading, and had only recently read Matty Thoughts where he tells us of his recent memory problems. He's a good sport and is able to poke fun at his own follies.

Matty's entry reminded me of my own father, who has on more than one occasion when leaving the houseboat to head for home, has forgotten his car keys, gone back down the dock and gotten them, forgotten his cellphone, gone back and got it, left the car keys on the counter on the boat when he picked up his cell phone and had to go back and get them, forgotten his medicine and gone back and gotten the pill bottles - and on one occasion, making no less that 7 trips up and down the dock! I sat there in the car rolling my eyes while waiting for him to get his act together and slowly started to seethe.

And then I encountered my other neighbor Martha's blog entry (both Matty and Martha live nearby) where she writes her horror tale about remembering concert tickets (or rather, not remembering them!) over at The Daily Grind I was sitting smug and thinking to myself, "Sheesh, I would never do that!"

Last Friday was one where the minutes felt like hours as I looked at the clock hundreds of times, eager to get home, packed, and on my way down to the seashore. It has been a long time since I've last been down there! Once home, I threw some clothes in a bag, grabbed my briefcase with a bunch of Christmas Cards I wanted to address, grabbed my camera, and checked my email when I found one from a dear friend asking me to keep a close family member in thoughts and prayer... and deep in thought, I got into the car and headed to the seashore - in the dark.

About 85 miles down the road and within 20 minutes of getting to the beach, I suddenly realized I had left the turkey in the refrigerator...



Martha, Matty, Dad... I hope you will forgive me for silently snickering at your memory woes. Maybe it's something in the local water?

P.s., I'm going to meet my mom tomorrow to give her the turkey - she plans to cook it and give my grandfather some when she and my dad meet him for lunch sometime this upcoming week.

P.s.s., My mom got an oven-stuffer chicken when I called her to tell her I screwed up and forgot the turkey. We all had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner.

A lost cousin is found...

A while back, I wrote about an accident in which one of my great-grandfathers was killed when the truck he was driving was hit by a railroad locomotive. I recently learned some things -

- one of those things is just where this accident occurred. If you look at the scene closely, you will notice that there are two tracks at this location.



I found a dusty old book which states, that the Camden And Burlington County Railroad (later the Pennsylvania Railroad's Pemberton Branch) was only double tracked between Smithville and Birmingham, New Jersey. This is the branch line that took hundreds of thousands of troops to Fort Dix during WWI and WWII.

I also found out where my great-grandfather was building a summer cottage. I've marked the street map I got from Google Maps below. If you click on it to "biggify" it, you will see two streets named Railroad Street and Indian Trail. These streets ran next to the tracks back when there were tracks there (they were removed twenty or thirty years ago).



On the satellite version of the map, I've drawn the length of railroad that was double tracked. The scene of my great-grandfather's accident is somewhere along that red line where a road crosses it.



This last picture was taken in 1961 and shows the remains of the Ewansville's train station. The second track has already been removed (around 1958)- and the trees and plant life is once again reclaiming what it can from man's impermanent works. Indian Trail Road is just to the left.



There are many visual "hints" of similarity between the first and last pictures.

And now for the what gave me goose-bumps. The main road in the area, Route 206 used to (and in my memory) go under a railroad bridge (removed in 1987) as it heads south from Ewansville to Vincentown - I've been down this road countless times from a tender age of weeks-old to the present - this is the route I take to go to the New Jersey shore. Could this have been the grade crossing? When was the bridge put in and the grade separated? I do not know - but the accident happened near here.

The second goose-bump causing result of my research into this accident was two-fold, I discovered the accident occurred November 9, 1924 around 8:30 AM. While trying to uncover this date with near desperate and quickly growing frustration, I encountered a family tree for the McClurken family on the MyHeritage website. And lo and behold, I discovered the date of death of my great-grandfather William Spence McClurken.

Having been stymied, mostly because every other male McClurken in my family tree name is "William" and every other female's name is "Margaret", I grew dizzy in my efforts to keep who is (or was) who straight. And there, on this MyHeritage website, was the many generations of Williams and Margarets all sorted out and neatly delineated. This glorious family tree is the work of the grand-daughter of my great-grandfather's brother.

I've never known any of my Grandmother's family beyond her brother and his children. I was beyond elated. And just to cap things off - she has a large picture of my great-grandmother's family - and once the rush of the holiday season is over - she will send me a reproduction of it!

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Today, I also heard one my college buddies had a heart attack over the weekend shoveling snow, and underwent triple-bypass surgery. My thoughts and prayers are with him and his family as well as with Rita of Soul Comfort's Corner's daughter-in-law, whose mother was recently diagnosed with late stage cancer.

"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows."
- Helen Keller

Morning (and Evening) Affirmation

I've been a bit of a "Debbie Downer" of late - I blame it on the seasonal shortened daylight - and having to drive home in the dark (amongst a number of other things...)

But I placed one of my birthday presents in a location were it is sure to be seen each day - morning or night.

I have to say, it's bold, brash, toothy, and makes me smile despite my mood.

Thank you Tori!