Finding Graves

Today I went to the cemetery to take some photographs for my new obsession, Find A Grave. While I have used Find A Grave for ages, I've only recently begun to add my own entries to it. At the lecture on Saturday, I met Barbara M., a member of the North Castle Historical Society who has worked with them to compile transcriptions from the town's historic cemeteries into a book. After seeing the result, I was inspired to work on the spreadsheet of transcriptions of the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery that I've been compiling over the past year. Find A Grave is the perfect way to keep track of all the photos I've taken for this project and access them easily.

In seeking out stones that haven't yet been photographed for Find A Grave, I found some that I'd never seen before (or at least remembered seeing). This stone is unusual - can you tell why?

As far as I know, no other stone lists only the mother on the gravestone of a child. If a stone lists one parent, it lists both. Was Elizabeth Clark a single mother?

Another mystery: Whose stone is this? I believe we found this fragment in the restoration last spring, but I have yet to match it with a name. "Joseph son of Hiram ..." is not listed in Eaderley's transcription of the 1910s, which suggests to me that the stone may have broken before then. Close by is the stone of Theodore G. Sarles, the son of Hiram and Ellen L. Sarles. Perhaps this is his brother.


Remember the Haines family? The stone of matriarch Martha Dingee Haines is nicely preserved as far as its legibility, but obviously needs a bit of work.

This is the only stone I have seen in the cemetery that has a Christogram. As you may recall, Mary and Luke Rooney were Irish immigrants. I have, however, seen it on gravestones in the nearby, contemporaneous Catholic Cemetery. Maybe someone can enlighten me - is the Christogram more of a Catholic than a Protestant symbol?

21: Mary Rooney

Grave of Mary Rooney

On September 8, 1850, Mary Rooney died at the age of 22. Had she died a few months earlier, she wouldn't have made it into the 1850 census, which is the only census in which she appears with her husband, Luke, and daughter Margaret. This census reveals many details about the Rooney family. To begin with, Luke and Mary were both from Ireland. He was a laborer, and their one-year-old daughter had been born in New York. Additionally, the census indicates that then-21-year-old Mary was illiterate. You can't see it here because it's cut off, but on Mary's line there is a check next to the box marked "Persons 20 yrs of age and older who cannot read & write."

1850 US Federal Census

After 1850, the surviving Rooneys become very hard to trace. I haven't been able to identify them definitively in any other records, but I thought I should just post what I found because it's interesting on its own. Of course, it raises more questions than it answers, but maybe the answers will come in the future.

1. Luke Rooney (1828-) m. Mary (1829-1850)
1. Margaret Rooney (1849-)