Musical Graves & A Mystery Solved

In autumn 2011, I posted about the practice of grave robbing in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area. This late 19th century practice has been well documented, but the actual number of bodies stolen has not been. As part of the post, I related a family story that was written down and added to the E.E. Barton Papers in the 1940s: "My Mother never did think that her grandfather [Samuel Cox] rested in his grave, for just in a night or two at 12 o'clock, a man left that grave with something wrapped in white lying across his horse in front of him. The man was a truthful man, and is a brother-in-law of my father, Newton Humble was the man. [Speaking of the witness]. We always thought that it was old Dr. Thomas, and that he probably took the body to Cincinnati and the medical college to find out what was the cause of his death." Pearl Allender 

For decades, my family has known where this small family plot was located. My Great-Grandmother, Nellie Cox Beyersdoerfer, would always point it out to us, and when I was early into my genealogy journey, my Mother and I visited a few times. We knew this was the resting place of Samuel Cox (d.1857) and his first wife, Mary Dean Cox (d.1836), on their farm, Cox's Run. The stones were in terrible shape - hardly legible with lichens filling in the carvings. They were so bad that photographs did not help, and so I took notes about each stone. The plot only contained a few graves. Two upright, carved stones, and a couple of rocks sticking out of the ground with no markings/carvings. Per Kentucky law, the landowner had been faithful about keeping them from harm by placing his bales of hay around the plot each year. There was a small fence, but things were deteriorating, and they did sit dangerously close to the road.

Samuel and Mary Cox Graves, taken in 1996

In a surprise move out of left field, Jim Cox, another distant cousin and descendant of Samuel Cox, recently decided that they were in harms way. He took action and paid to have the graves re-located to a larger cemetery that already contained many of this couple's descendants. According to reports from John Peoples of Peoples Funeral Home in Falmouth, they disinterred each grave, but only found remains in two of them: the two adult graves with carved stones. With no remains being found in the rock marked graves, everyone assumes these were infants and already decomposed to dust. Both sets found were re-interred into the same grave next to Sam & Mary's Grandson, Jeremiah Cox in Lenoxburg Cemetery. If my memory serves me correctly, Jeremiah is on the outer edge of the cemetery, not too far from other Grandchildren of Sam & Mary - a very fitting spot for them - and quite romantic as this was the original couple who produced so many Cox descendants. I'm certain they would have approved.

So....with two sets of remains being found (one set was more complete than the other), this might suggest that our old family story related through many generations was just that - a story. Which, actually makes me feel better. I was hoping Grandpa Cox was resting peacefully in his grave, and not scattered to the wind without his family's knowledge or permission. This also exonerates poor Doc Thomas as Pearl accused so many years ago. Will this make me leave this story out of our family history? NO WAY!! I still love this story, and it serves as a valuable example of the oral grapevine that flourished in our family - even if the tale was wrong.

Plus....how do we know there wasn't some community truth to the story? In other words, maybe there wasn't a grave robbing going on....but maybe some other nefarious activity? Was someone sitting in a graveyard getting drunk and needed to be carted home? Was the person on the horse drunk and merely took a small detour late at night through the graveyard? Or, was Newton Humble drunk as a skunk that night, and telling a whopper only seen in his imagination? With any of these scenarios, it makes for a colorful addition to the family narrative! Besides, the conclusion they all made about the sight in the middle of the night proves the prolific nature of the grave robbing rumors in the area.

As for a small post script, their new stone has not been made just yet. That is a work in progress. Another cousin, Eric Peelman, has been hot on the trail of this story and is helping with the effort to replace the stone. They had hoped to re-incorporate the old stones into a new monument, but that might prove to be too cost prohibitive. However, Eric sent me these wonderful photos of the stones after they had been cleaned off - how beautiful they were under the years of lichen build-up!! We rarely get to see them in this state, so I was delighted with the end results. I can't wait to see what they have in store as a monument. Once that is up, I will travel to that cemetery for more photos!

The Empty Grave

After last year's post about genealogy encounters of the Creepy kind, my creepy meter has been getting a work out all year. My above title does not refer to the Resurrection, but to those monsters of the cemetery: The Resurrectionists (cue evil cackle and lightning/thunder.) My interest in this macabre group came about after two incidents. Late last year I became acquainted with the cemetery/burial issues concerning the Eastern State Hospital in Lexington KY. During a period of time spanning from 1824 to the 1950s, patients dying while residing in the "lunatic asylum" were believed to have been buried on the premises, especially when family members could not afford the cost of hometown burial. Unfortunately, finding the "missing" remains has been a huge challenge. The records are "missing" from the state, and apparently, so are the bodies. Some bodies have been discovered on the premises, but the number is very low compared to the amount that should be there. One of the documents I viewed in regard to this issue was a letter from a health nurse in the 1980s. She suggested that perhaps many of the bodies are missing because they were never buried, but instead, transported north to the Cincinnati Medical College for post-mortem use: ie: dissection.

I don't think many people took this suggestion very seriously, but I suspect it is a distinct possibility. Eastern State Hospital sits right next to the railroad line, and reports have surfaced that the Cincinnati to Indianapolis to Michigan network for cadavers was a true network that involved pickle/paint vats and the train system. For those of you not familiar with Cincinnati's grave robbing history, I suggest three things: 1. Read up on the grave-robbing scandal involving the Harrison family. 2. Check into some of the publications written by Dr. Linden Forest Edwards at Ohio State University. He wrote a series of articles for the Ohio State Medical Journal back in the 1950s that were later re-published in the form of small booklets by the Wayne County Indiana Public Library. These articles/booklets explored the medical practice of employing grave robbers to fill the need of fresh cadavers for medical dissection. (I will provide a small reading list at the end of the post) 3. Watch the video posted at the end from the History Detectives. They are researching a grave alarm which in turn leads them to go over some of the numbers associated with the grave robbing "industry" of the time. With each medical college in the area advertising a cadaver for each student, the number of fresh cadavers needed each year was pretty staggering.

The Cincinnati area was rife with the problem. Bodies were being stolen all the time during this period (1860s-1880s)....many from poorer cemeteries. Dr. Edwards wrote about the stories that were being told, and people were so aware of this problem that they employed night watchmen to guard over fresh graves - if they could afford this service.....otherwise, sometimes carried out by family members. Ironically, in the largest Cincinnati Cemetery, Spring Grove Cemetery, the Medical College erected a headstone in memory of all the bodies used for scientific purposes. I think that alone speaks volumes about the number of bodies we might be talking about.

So what about the central Kentucky area? Were these areas susceptible to the crime of stealing bodies? Without any real proof, my gut says, not as much as the Cincinnati/Louisville area. We had Transy's Medical School here, but I would imagine the need for them was not as large. Louisville was noted to have a bit of a problem there, but like Cincinnati, they were on a river. I would say, unless we used the railroad heavily, I would guess the easiest victims were had more along the river. After all, the grave robbers may have sold the fresh bodies to the medical colleges, but they were essentially on their own. If arrested, it was clear the men acted "on their own", with the doctors nor colleges feeling any heat with the arrest. Public sentiment grew pretty hostile against this practice, but things did not change until laws were passed that allowed legal acquiring of cadavers, including the donation of bodies.

This regional issue brings me to my second encounter with grave robbing. It came when I stumbled upon a note in the E.E. Barton papers of Pendleton County KY. One of my distant cousins related a tale that had been passed down in the family about the burial of my fourth great grandfather, Samuel Cox: "My Mother never did think that her grandfather rested in his grave, for just in a night or two at 12 o'clock, a man left that grave with something wrapped in white lying across his horse in front of him. The man was a truthful man, and is a brother-in-law of my father, Newton Humble was the man. (Speaking of the witness). We always thought that it was old Dr. Thomas, and that he probably took the body to Cincinnati and the medical college to find out what was the cause of his death."

What really struck me about this report was the proximity of Samuel's grave.....it is a small family plot on the side of the road, out in the rural areas of northern Pendleton County, which is a pretty hilly place. If I was going to snatch some bodies, I wouldn't want to have to trek up those hills an back down again carrying a body, just for $10. But then, it wasn't too much farther to Foster in Bracken County which was right on the river. What better way to transport bodies? So, it has all just made my head spin a little to wonder....how many of our ancestors are not in the cemeteries we visit? I don't really mind them being used for science.....but it kinda makes me mad in a way....our ancestors were so against it, for religious/principle reasons.....what gave these colleges the right to steal what belonged to our families? And once they were done, I'm assuming the bones were burned, etc. Which means we no longer have true knowledge of a final resting place. I think the headstone placed in Spring Grove is a nice gesture, but I would like to know where they deposited the post-dissection pieces or ashes. I think that would be the proper place for a memorial - and a place we could point to as a final resting place. Anyway, just some points to ponder - especially on Halloween :-)

Watch Cemetery Alarm on PBS. See more from History Detectives.

For additional reading:
Body Snatching in Ohio During the Nineteenth Century by Dr. Linden F. Edwards
Cincinnati's Old Cunny by Dr. Linden F. Edwards
Dissection and Body Snatching in the Nineteenth Century by Heather Fox, The Filson, Volume 9, Number 2, Summer 2009
The Poor, the Black, and the Marginalized as the Source of Cadavers in United States Anatomical Education by Edward C. Halperin, Clinical Anatomy, Vol 20, 2007.

Ancestor Approved Award!

Just last week I was honored by receiving two nominations for the Ancestor Approved award! This is my little blog's first award, so I am both humbled and a little giddy....a sweet blog Christmas Present if ever I saw one! First, let me begin by thanking the two wonderful bloggers that selected Journeys Past for this award:

Alice Keesey Mecoy at John Brown Kin
&
Janny Lancelot at Are My Roots Showing?

The award comes with the requirement that you pay it forward in two ways.....the instructions are listed below:

1. List ten things that you have learned about your ancestors that surprised, humbled, or enlightened you.
2. Pass the award to ten other genealogy bloggers.

So here are my ten things:

1. After finding several skeletons in the closet (some of which I will list below), I have come to the conclusion that skeletons in our closets are merely proof that our ancestors were human just like us....boy were they!

2. As we grumble about getting older, my Grandmother always used to remind me to celebrate each birthday because at least you made it to another one, which I usually rolled my eyes at.......and then I discovered that my Great Grandmother on my Mom's side (Florence Warren Watts) died at the age of 26 from tuberculosis, just after giving birth to her third child. Since my Great Grandfather was handicapped, all three children were put up for adoption. The horrible things they lived through at such a tender age, and I grumble about nearing 40.

3. Surprise of a genealogical lifetime: discovering KKK rally photos in an old family album - from Ohio! After some outside research and good old fashioned asking, I found out that this family lived in Ohio and Indiana at the same time that the Klan had become a huge political movement in the north. Indiana was the capital of Klan activity in the 1920s and my Great Grandmother's family was heavily involved. No one ever talked about this skeleton at all until I found the photos. Involvement was actually denied, and explained away as "someone must have snuck through a fence to snap the photos". Which would have worked for me until I found a photo of Great Grandmother Ruth in a beautiful patriotic group photo - except for the Klan guy standing by a tree next to them! Then I asked the same questions again years later, and got the full confession - be tenacious about your family questions - if the answers don't make sense, dig further, ask others, or wait awhile and ask again!

4. Play on names - lunacy, and the in-laws! This one was discovered as I found a birth record that didn't make sense . My Great Grandmother (Nellie Cox Beyersdoerfer) was the granddaughter of Clarissa Hughbanks Cox. According to the Barton Papers (which I will blog about soon), an interview given by a neighbor about the Hughbanks sisters said that Clarissa and her sisters all died in their 40s after going crazy. One day, when I asked my Mother what Nellie's middle name was, she told me (Isabelle), but made me promise not to repeat that because Ma (Nellie) hated that name. I was shocked - it was so beautiful! But she said Nellie insisted that it was pronounced with a long I as in ice. So, back to the birth record: When Nellie gave birth to her first son at her in-law's farm, someone in the household went down to register the birth for the new parents, but listed Nellie's name as Icey. Obviously, they called her that to tease her about her middle name. However, later, I discovered that Clarissa also had a nickname: Ricey, which is so close to Icey. I suddenly realized that Nellie hated that middle name because her in-laws made fun of it and connected it to her "crazy" Grand Mother. I don't blame her in a way - how crude to use the nickname when reporting the actual birth record! Family politics and snarkiness - an age old problem! It taught me the lengths of detective work and serendipity that is so much a part of what we do!

5. Discovered another set of shocking photos among the family collection: a late 19th century trip to the Klondike! Still working on which ancestor they belong to, but after some outside research, have learned that this gold rush - made famous by Jack London - was the most photographed event of 19th century North America because Kodak gave the intrepid explorers (ahem, gold hunters) a large number of their new products as they went north: the portable camera.

6. One of my greatest enlightenments about our research: we search for facts, but if we are lucky we end up telling a story. Each one of those stories can serve as uplifting stories - re-discovering heroes to remember - or cautionary tales - exposing mistakes to avoid. All are pertinent as reflections on how we live our lives in the present.

7. Very surprised that people are astonished when you mention a connection to royalty or famous personalities. As researchers comb through Obama's family tree and make new announcements about his familial connection to another new celebrity, the reaction is usually amazement. As one of those "cousins" of Obama from the Duvall family, mathematically, this is not an astounding turn of events. It is estimated that over 35 million Americans are descendants of the Mayflower passengers. Of course, only 25,000 have proven that fact. Connections to the European royal families are even more common.....but be careful about spouting that fact unless you've researched it yourself. Might be a fun party factoid, but not something to rest your laurels on based on others' "online" research!

8. Always amazed at the reality of my ancestors' lives. I have been so guilty of researching them within a standard formula: birth, marriage, children, death. Sometimes forgetting that research outside the box is necessary to make a legitimate timeline. By taking time to think about motives behind life decisions I made startling discoveries about: divorces, illegitimacy, sexual abuse/incest, lost inheritances, law suits, public displays of drunkenness - you name it, our ancestors did it - sometimes just well hidden - which is where we come in.

9. Have become obsessed with the social or gossip sections of small local newspapers. By just pouring over them, I found an adorable post about the night my Great Grandparents eloped: "The bride was dressed in a blue serge coat suit with hat and gloves to match." 1915 Sometimes the daily events are as minor as one visiting another, or a single sentence to give a health report that "Lanson Cox is no better" (he died of Tuberculosis a few days later in 1911) - but each a precious fact to fill in some of their story.

10. Humbled by the fact that as much as we record, and think we know how something happened, each person's perspective of the same event can be entirely different. Have learned this through sibling interviews and descendant interviews. Each one remembered the same facts or events in slightly different ways. Trying to remind myself that as I interview loved ones, emotions can cloud or embellish or even cause pain after so many years. Each perception, even though different, is valuable as a life experience for the person telling the story - and should be recorded as told for future generations.

Ok, so here are my 10 new recipients of the Ancestor Approved Award!
1. Mary Jane's Genes

2. Villa Victoria Blog

3. Tomorrow's Memories

4. The Turning of Generations

5. The Wandering Vine

6. The Symbolic Past

7. The Pieces of My Past

8. The Misadventures of a Genealogist

9. Sharing Our Family's Memories

10. Samuel and Mary Clark Reed of Barnwell

Again - thanks for the honor!
CD 12/5/10