Another Mystery Solved: Frances Thorn Van Winkle

Frances Thorn Van Winkle

Months ago, I posted about Charles Thorn, the son of shoemaker Stephen Thorn, whose body was moved from the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery to a different cemetery by his widow in 1907. I also posted about Lyman and Lydia Searles, the couple who were moved from St. George's/St. Mark's to Oakwood sometime in the first decade of the 20th century. Well, now I have found a fourth person whose body was moved from St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery to another cemetery in the early 20th century, and it happens to be that of Charles Thorn's sister, Frances Thorn Van Winkle.

I really should have figured it out much earlier. Months ago, a descendant of Stephen Thorn wrote to me that his aunt - Frances's daughter - had written in a letter of 1924 that she was considering moving her mother's body to Cedar Lawn Cemetery in New Jersey because of the poor condition of the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery.

In the past few weeks I have been working on Find A Grave, I haven't been able to find Frances Thorn Van Winkle in the cemetery, though she is listed in Eaderley and Miller's 1909 transcription. While reviewing my spreadsheet today, I remembered what Stephen Thorn's descendant had written to me and decided to check the Find A Grave page for Cedar Lawn Cemetery. Sure enough, Frances Thorn Van Winkle was buried there!

(Source)

I can only imagine how terrible the condition of the cemetery must have been for multiple families to have made the decision to exhume and rebury their long dead relatives. Charles Thorn had been dead for 29 years, and Frances Thorn Van Winkle for more than 49 years when they were reburied! Clearly, their families cared very much about them and would not stand to see their gravestones languish in a neglected and overgrown cemetery.

In 1928, village historian Herbert B. Howe wrote of the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery that "apparently neither of the institutions [the Episcopal and Methodist churches] who claim to own the property feel like assuming anything but a most perfunctory responsibility for the upkeep of the place." Yet the cemetery was still in use until 1940.

I wonder how many other people removed their relatives from the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery over the years. While some gravestones have certainly been lost or destroyed, some of the stones I have been unable to locate in my searches may very well be standing in other cemeteries!

In the local newspaper, have found numerous accounts of people laying flowers, installing memorials to veterans, and doing landscaping in the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery in the 1880s and 1890s. This all seems to decline at the turn of the century, when the St. Mark's Church was moved to its new location.

In the 1920s, Herbert B. Howe suggested to then Mayor Harry Blackeby that the upkeep of the cemetery be arranged as part of the plans for the new Leonard Park (in the place of Kirby Pond). This doesn't seem to have happened. The last major restoration effort seems to have taken place in the 1960s, when the St. Mark's Buildings and Ground Committee gathered up all of the fallen stones and moved them to the center of the cemetery.

The plight of the "old burying ground" - as it was called in the papers - raises a larger question about the maintenance of old cemeteries and other historical sites. Who is responsible for them? How can we keep them from being lost in the flurry of development?

This leads, interestingly enough, to an episode in my own personal genealogical quest. I was planning to go up to visit my family's ancestral burying ground in Millerton, New York. Angelika (of archaeology blog fame) had offered to come along with her metal detector and try to find my uncle's wedding ring, which he lost there years before. Having had the cops called on us for suspicious behavior (i.e. archaeology) in a cemetery before, we decided to call the town of Millerton to ask for their permission to use a metal detector.

The town said that we didn't need their permission, because they didn't own the burying ground. When asked who did, they responded that the descendants of the people buried there still technically owned it, although they had abandoned it. That's right - upon asking who owned the cemetery, I learned that I did (along with hundreds and possibly thousands of other people). What a strange feeling. And now that I know, I'm going to have to fulfill my responsibilities and clean the whole place the next time I go.