February 23, 2023, I boarded an early morning flight bound for Detroit. An ice storm had made its way through the southern Michigan area the night before. When I arrived at my oldest brother Jim’s house, the power was out. We grilled dinner by flashlight and got up early to embark on a road trip together the following morning. We were heading to our parents’ home near Aiken, South Carolina for Mom’s 85th birthday. A stop along the way in Wheeling, West Virginia was planned so that we could spend time on some genealogy and family history research. Jim, my youngest brother Dave, and myself took on this portion of the journey. We would be joined in South Carolina by our brother Ed and his daughter Lindsey.
Stone Church Cemetery
Our first destination was Stone Church Cemetery in Wheeling, West Virginia. Dave, Jim, and our Dad all dabble in ancestry research. They are working on building out our family tree that has branches going back hundreds of years. The purpose of this stop was to locate and document gravesites of relatives from our Mom’s side of the family tree.
We pulled up to the cemetery and parked on the street. There was a smaller section to our left. To the right was a vast hilly area that seemed covered with head stones. According to findagrave.com, Stone Church Cemetery is the final resting place of many prominent Wheeling residents including 19 Revolutionary War patriots. There were many very old grave stones that were slowly succumbing to the elements. Some names and epitaphs were obscured to the point of illegibility.
Our mission at the cemetery was to locate, photograph, and geotag headstones with the name Smith, but there were also several other names to keep an eye out for including Baxter, Henry, McKernan, and Higgins.
Memories Found
We knew that our great-grandparents, Fred & Bessie Mae (Smith) Henry were buried there. So that was the first grave we searched for, and found, in the smaller section on the left side of the road. Great Grandma Bessie (we called her Nana) was from Wheeling, but made her home with Great Grandpa Fred (Pappap) in the Detroit, Michigan area where they raised my Grandmother Alice, and where my Mom was born. At Fred & Bessie’s grave, I paused to spend a few moments in my memories of them.
Nana
I didn’t know my Pappap very well, but after he passed away Nana came to live with us. We shared a bedroom for a while. Nana loved to bake! She said it made her feel useful to bake for us. Cinnamon buns were her specialty. Her eyesight was very poor. She couldn’t see well enough to read a measuring cup. Mostly she measured by feel, adding hands full of flour until the dough was right.
Nana liked to share her favorite pink candies which she called “lozengers.” They tasted like Pepto-Bismol. She regularly sent money from her small pension check to a television preacher named Rev. Leroy Jenkins. Jenkins was constantly sending her letters asking for more. Despite admonishments from my parents about sending money away like that, she considered it her tithe, and gave what she could spare.
Nana had a great sense of humor and she loved to hear jokes. She claimed she could never remember jokes to tell them, but she would occasionally come up with a “knee-slapper.” We laughed a lot together.
She called her purse a pocketbook and she always wore a dress. Eventually, I became a teenager busy with things that are only important to teenagers. When she became frail she moved to a nursing home where she lived out her last years. I think of her often, and in that moment, standing at her grave I missed her terribly as I relived those precious moments that we had together.
Weathered Remembrances
My brothers and I walked the grounds of Stone Church Cemetery for several hours, feeling our age as we walked up and down the hills. We dreaded the late-night aches in store for us from walking the uneven ground for so long. There were head stones everywhere! A large majority of them dating back into the 1800’s. Many were difficult to read, some impossible. Others were crumbling. Some tipped over by storms, or vandals.
As I wandered the meandering rows, reading each name and epitaph, I couldn’t help but wonder about those who placed these monuments. Those who couldn’t bear the thought of a world without their lost one, etched the names in stone to keep them, at least a little bit, in this world forever.
Even the stone markers–that tell the tales of long, fruitful lives, or tragically short ones–cannot escape the relentless march of time. Soon, those who mourned were long gone. And no one was left to remember the person who loved jokes, baked treats, and loved family more than anything. Those who knew and loved the person behind the epitaphs are now themselves nothing more than fading names and dates on the next weathering stone.
Family History
After finding quite a few of the family names, we were ready to call it a day. But then, Jim found Quintilla (Baxter) Smith and Lawrence Smith—Nana’s parents! We were cold and tired, but we stopped to take photos of their stones. As far as I can remember, Nana spoke very little of her parents. Fred and Quintilla are just names carved in stone for me. But surely, their influence on Nana filtered down through Grandma Alice and my Mom to have a formative effect in shaping who I am today. I never knew them. But, in some small way, they are a part of me.
Time to Go
We continued to search for a few more minutes, but we had found what we were looking for. It was time to go. I took with me a new appreciation for the memories that we make with our families and friends. The real memories are not just the big events, the weddings, the funerals. They are the small moments, the tiny details, and the stories that truly define a person. Memories are fleeting, but they are precious. For better, or for worse, we make a formative difference in the lives of our loved ones far beyond our own lifetime. My son Jon never met Nana, but he has her quick wit and sense of humor. My son Bill never knew his namesake, my Grandpa Bill Allan, but he has his intellect and quiet introspective manner.
We are the sum total of our family tree. We can discover so much about ourselves by taking the time to look back at those who came before us. We need to learn our family history, and tell the stories! Through stories our lives continue on, even when we ourselves fade from collective memory. By learning and telling our stories, we can move forward, intentionally bringing along the best parts of our heritage to pass along to the next generation.
