Going to Disney World

Well, what caught my eye when I was leaving my 4-great grandparents grave site, was a large monument.

Please pardon the names and relationships - they are mostly for myself, trying to keep all the old folks straight.


Driving towards the exit, I went by the Torresdale Lawn section of Lawnview Cemetery, because I knew my great-great-grandfather, Harry Lincoln Mousley's brother Thomas Charles Mousley was buried there.

Somewhat upset and tired of "not finding" my forefathers' graves, Lawnview was the 5th different cemetery I have visited over the course of nearly a year, I wasn't about to park the car and go walking up and down the rows of gravestones looking for him. I had gotten tired of dealing with the somewhat unhelpful person representing the cemetery and hadn't asked them "exactly" where Thomas was buried.

Just as I reached the end of the section, driving slowly in my car, I saw this monument.


Oh my goodness! What is this? Was this Thomas' grave? Am I related to Walt Disney? And what is that object resting on the monument under the "M"?

Feeling suddenly rejuvenated and thinking, "Yes! I finally found 'somebody'!" I parked and jumped out of the car. Well, it turned out it was Elmer Mousley and his wife's and her parents' grave.


Who then, was Elmer? And what was the Disney connection? I had to do some more research.

"Cousin" Elmer was the middle one of three sons of Thomas Charles.

He was an electrician in the Navy during WWI, and he served in Brest, France, and on the US Navy Repair Ship Bridgeport. He later worked at the Alexanderson Alternator Transmission Station, Tuckerton, NJ (located very near and visible from the fish factory I saw each summer as a boy when down the shore). This radio station was one of the earliest in the efforts to transmit a radio signal across the Atlantic Ocean. More on Alexanderson Alternator here. Later, Elmer worked for Western Electric installing the very first automatic phone switching station in Philadelphia.

He married Helen Disney on December 20, 1924 in Philadelphia, PA. Helen Marguerite was born July, 1899 to Charles Albert and Ella Virginia Disney of Baltimore, Maryland. I've spent about two hours tracing back this family tree all the way back to William & Sara Disney who had Margritt, born 28 Dec. 1686, & William, born 11 Aug. 1693 all and still in Baltimore, Maryland...

As for Walt Disney... The family name, originally d'Isigny ("from Isigny"), is of Norman French derivation, coming from the canton of Isigny-sur-Mer. The Disneys, among others, descended from Normans who settled in Normandy around the 11th century.

Well, you can search for yourself, I'll give you a start. Click on the 1st through 4th generation links. The answer is, no, there is no direct link going back about 10 generations.

Does knowing this qualify me for a 10% discount at my favorite place?

I doubt it. :)

Oh.. and I walked up and down the rows looking for Thomas Charles for nearly an hour and didn't find "him". Maybe next time.


The object on the monument was a photo of a young woman in a heart-shaped picture frame. I thought she is (was?) a very pretty woman... Who might she be? I might try tracking her down sometime. I might get lucky and find her... :)


This is what remains of my 4-great grandfather's home and all the buildings he owned on this block. The entire block is now a parking lot. Add to that the fact that the cemetery he was originally buried in is now a parking lot. I... was a bit emotionally stunned when I saw this. A day later, I am at least thankful the parking lot is a clean one - and the bumpers are straight and freshly painted. Irrational of me - but that is the best I can make of this.

Across the street, the view my forefather would have had out his bedroom window - is this...


...the boarded up, vandalized, graffiti covered, litter strewn ruin of a block of buildings that was once the Reiger & Gretz brewery. Founded in 1881 as Reiger & Gretz, this lager brewery re-open as William Gretz Brewing Company after the 1933 repeal of Prohibition. Most of the nearly one hundred Philadelphia breweries never recovered from the Prohibition; by 1950, there were only eight left. Gretz Brewing Company closed its doors in 1961.

I suspect my 4-great grandfather saw this building being built - and my 3-greatfather may have enjoyed a sip of their brew, owning a brewery himself only a couple blocks down this street...

My 3-great grandfather is ... the one I view as the most interesting of "the lot". More on Charles later and I promise I won't be as ... morose. But before that, I've a lot of your entries to catch up on.

Eight score and nine years ago...

Eight score and nine years ago, some of my forefathers left Belgrave Gate, Leicester, England and landed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Others came over about the same time from County Antrim, Ireland, also to Philadelphia, where at least one of them made Steton Hats and one died in tragic train accident while those that remained entered the insurance business.

Some of the other forefathers came earlier - my mother's fathers family came over from England on the Neptune (1617) and the Gift (1619), settling in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. From there, they slowly migrated west, going with Daniel Boone into Kentucky and later into Oklahoma.

Some came a little later, my mother's mother's father came over to Boston from Paisley, Scotland where fate would bring a young sailor from Oklahoma, enlisted during WWI, to his door asking for his daughter's hand in marriage.

Recently, I've been doing a bit of retrospective thinking, I don't know if it was because my last birthday made me feel old, or because I was alone on Thanksgiving Day with the family out of town, or because I've not been feeling my usually chipper self. Perhaps, it is because I have no children, that I am looking back into the past and not forward into the future?

At any rate, I've researched the family tree, looking for ... something.

169 years ago, my 4-greats-grandfather Joseph Mousley, entered this country. He married Sarah Elizabeth Hose on Christmas Day, 1826 in St. Margaret's Church, Leicester in a joint wedding with Sarah's brother Edward Hose and his bride Mary (Allen). Joseph and Sarah had ten children, three of which died before reaching the age of two and the last three were born in America.

I've sat and pondered what made him pull up stakes and move at the age of 38? Was his entire family enthusiastic about the move? What did nine year old Charles (my 3-greats-grandfather) think of the "great adventure"?

They settled at 1547 Germantown Avenue and Joseph went into business as a cordwainer (shoemaker) and shoe salesman. In a few years, Joseph owned the entire block and the courtyard alley was known as Mousley Street. Joseph retired about 1878 and was succeeded by his youngest son Joseph William.

Joseph passed away July, 1883 and his wife followed him in January, 1888. They were buried in Odd Fellows Cemetery, Diamond and 24th Street, Philadelphia. I went to find his grave and... the cemetery no longer exists.

I discovered, via the Internet, the following:

"Monument Cemetery, the second rural cemetery in Philadelphia, was founded in 1837 on North Broad Street, across from Temple University. In the 1950s, it fell victim to the school's need for parking lots. Thousands of those interred there were transferred to a mass grave in the suburbs. Their monuments were dumped into the Delaware River, where they are still visible today.

Other vanished cemeteries include Glenwood at Ridge Avenue and 27th Street, which gave way to the Philadelphia Housing Authority's first housing project in the 1930s; The original Odd Fellows at Diamond and 24th Streets, displaced for the Raymond Rosen towers (ed. note: a failed urban public housing effort); and Franklin Cemetery in Kensington, whose 8,000 bodies disappeared in the 1940s as part of a political swindle gone bad."

Further investigation lead me to Lawnview Cemetery, in Rockledge, PA, whose website states, "There are two Philadelphia Cemeteries which were closed and relocated to Lawnview Cemetery. In 1951, the original Odd Fellows' Cemetery was closed and the 65,000 bodies interred there were re-interred at Lawnview. When Monument Cemetery was closed in 1955, all 26,000 bodies were also re-interred at Lawnview."

I found many of my Philadelphia relatives had been buried in Glenwood, Franklin, and Monument cemeteries as well as the original Odd Fellows cemetery. So, many of them were dug up in the 1950's and reburied in Lawnview without their gravestones.


The office told me my 4-great grandparents, Joseph and Sarah, were re-buried in the Norris Lawn area, Section 14, Grave number 62 and drew an "x" on a map on the rough location.


Somewhere - in the shadow of an ancient oak tree, lie the unmarked remains of my great-great-great-great grandparents, who I suppose, came to this country with high hopes, much excitement, and a dream for a brighter future... and while unmarked, are not forgotten -


Somehow, I think my forefather might of liked knowing there was a small lane lined with big ol' oak trees nearby - and this one, in particular, which shades his grave... I gave it a big hug.

As I was leaving the cemetery, something caught my eye... I'll write about that later...

Centralia, Pennsylvania

When I drove up to see Alice Kay a week ago, I went through the town of Centralia. I've been there a couple times - but each time I see the place I find myself driving up and down the quaint streets lined with sidewalks...and without any houses.


Centralia is a ghost town a little ways north of Ashland, Pennsylvania. Its population has dwindled from over 2,000 in its heyday to 1,000 residents in 1981 to just 7 in 2010.

It is a typical Pennsylvania coal town. Alexander W. Rea, a civil and mining engineer for the Locust Mountain Coal and Iron Company, moved to the site after coal was discovered near the surface and laid out streets and lots for development in 1854.

Alexander Rea, being a "coal mine manager," was seen by the poor and rather abused miners as an evil man, and he was one of the victims of the secret order known as the Molly Maguires when he was murdered on October 17, 1868. Three individuals were convicted of the crime and hanged.

It is not known for certain how the fire that made Centralia essentially uninhabitable was ignited. The fire remained burning underground and spread through a hole in a rock pit used as the town dump and into the abandoned coal mines beneath the town.


Attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, and it continued to burn throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Adverse health effects were reported by several people due to the byproducts of the fire, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and a lack of healthy oxygen levels.


In 1992, Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey claimed eminent domain on all properties in the borough, condemning all the buildings within. Very few homes remain standing in Centralia; most of the abandoned buildings have been demolished by humans or nature. At a casual glance, the area now appears to be a field with many paved streets running through it complete with street signs and park benches.


It's our planet - and it's the only one we have.

Democrat and Chronicle Newspaper

R-H's Kody Mousley bowls 300
Staff report • November 18, 2010

Rush-Henrietta senior Kody Mousley bowled the first perfect game in school history on Wednesday. Mousley, 17, helped the Royal Comets defeat Webster Thomas 6-0 in the season opener at Clover Lanes.

"It was pretty cool and still feels surreal," said Mousley, who carries a 210 average. "I was just hoping to do decent in the first match of the year. I was a little nervous at the end. I pulled the last shot and that last pin seemed like it took a while to fall."

Source

That's my nephew!!! Way to go Kody!!! Yehaw!