NOTE: I accepted the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge headed by fellow genealogy blogger Amy Johnson Crow in January 2023. The idea behind this challenge is that you will receive email prompts, a word or phrase, every week, and you find something about your research or family history to write about. I write in a journal about all the prompts, but I blog about at least one prompt a month. Click HERE to read about how I have incorporated this challenge in my blogging.
In the beginning of my research, I knew that I would have to eventually spend some time at the cemetery. I put it off as long as possible because I have always hated going to cemeteries. The only cemeteries I had ever visited where in small towns that were way off the main road, down a dirt road isolated and surrounded by trees. When the time came that I could no longer put off going to cemeteries, I called my Dad and asked him to go with me (click HERE to read more about that trip). He had no problem going to cemeteries and knew where everyone in our family was buried. So that became our thing, walking around cemeteries. He would point out where our relatives were buried, and I (and my husband) would take pictures of their headstones.
Over the next eight years, we had visited all the cemeteries in Jackson county, Arkansas to take pictures of our family’s headstones. But there was one cemetery we visited more than any other, Odd Fellows Cemetery in Auvergne, Jackson county; Arkansas. That’s the cemetery where all of my grandparents are buried, so we spent a lot of time at that cemetery. My Dad passed away November 2020 (click HERE to read more) and he is buried beside his parents and brother at Odd Fellows Cemetery. Because he and I spent so much time at that cemetery, I now know how to get to that cemetery, and I know exactly where my Dad, my Uncle, and all of my grandparents are buried. So much so that I was able to lead the monument company, while on facetime/video with them, to the exact spot where my Uncle’s headstone needed to be placed last year because I couldn’t make there in person.
I have spent more time in the cemetery in the last three years than I ever thought I would. Not only do I go to visit my Dad and other family, but I have gone to the cemetery to clean their headstones (click HERE to read more). I have also gone to the cemetery with the sole purpose to just walk around because that was the land of my enslaved ancestors. My 2X great grandfather founded a church in 1864 that was directly next to this cemetery that is still active today. The church was destroyed in a tornado in the 1990. But by walking around the cemetery, I was walking on the same land as my enslaved ancestors in the 1850s and 1860s and the same land they continued to walk after they received their freedom after the Civil War (Click HERE to read more).
The days of me never wanting to go to or walk around a cemetery forever changed when my Dad passed away. I can’t imagine not going to visit him. I can’t imagine not continuing to clean my family’s headstones to ensure they always look nice and presentable. Over the past 10 years, I have had an evolution when it comes to cemeteries. Cemeteries are not my happy place by no means. But because of the memories I have of me and my Dad walking through cemeteries, it is now easier for me to visit cemeteries.
Click HERE to read my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2019 – At the Cemetery
Journey Through the Generations 
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