Hacienda Circle: Tombstone Tuesday -- two tombstones for the same person, in two counties

11 January 2010

Tombstone Tuesday -- two tombstones for the same person, in two counties

Last week I put up the tombstone of Charles Arnold, our grandmother "Pi" 's great grandfather. It was pretty darn hard finding her grandmother, the wife of Charles' son, Jacob Arnold, because Pi's grandmother's name was Mary Jane Smith. Believe me, it doesn't get harder than looking for a Mary Smith.

The one clue we had was that Jacob Arnold had two wives and that his two wives were first cousins, and that his first wife was named Orilla Smith. Well THAT is easier than Mary. So I looked for Orilla Smith hoping it would lead me to Mary. Eventually it did, but along the way I came across a phenomenon that may not be as odd as it seems -- two tombstones for the same person. Below is a very pregnant Mary Jane Smith with her husband, Jacob Arnold.

Orilla died at 33 in 1850 after having 5 children with Jacob Arnold. She was buried in her father's family plot in the Copeland/Curtiss cemetery in Genoa twp, Delaware County, Ohio -- just on the edge of a 20th century reservoir. Jacob then married her 1st cousin Mary Smith and had seven more children -- one of them being Pi's father Charles Eber Arnold.

When Jacob died in Madison township, Franklin County, Ohio, his children by Orilla erected an obelisk to him. They put Orilla as his wife on one side. So...Orilla has two tombstones. Our Mary Jane Smith Arnold has a small plaque on the ground near the obelisk. I leave it to others to explain it all. I just present it here. And just for fun I present a picture of our grandmother "Pi" (named by my big brother Jack who tried to call her what she called him, "Sweetie Pie," and could only get out the "Pi" and the name stuck.)

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Note to Gilberts

All the ancestors posted on this blog belong to us all. Hacienda Circle lives. It is a place of our present with Jack & Roxanne there now, and it is a window into our past.

We are true American mutts -- a mixture from England, France, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, and Germany.

Our DNA will, no doubt, reveal more counties of origin. I'll be adding information about this as I gather and understand it. but we already have two 37 marker matches (one with a Frank M. Cresap -- no surprise there!).

1. Thank you, Jack, for doing our Gilbert DNA.

2. Thank you, Karen (Cresap) Bach, for having your late father, Andrew Bruce Cresap, Jr., do our Cresap DNA.

3. Thank you, Maurice Walton, for doing our Walton DNA (via Granwilla's maternal grandfather, James Walton's line).

4. I did our mitochondrial DNA back through Mom, Pi, and our direct female line back. This line is also included in a family finder project at https://www.familytreedna.com/. This works by comparing our autosomal DNA to that of other people who have taken the test through FamilyTree. Our relationship with a match is calculated based on sharing linked segments of DNA. Although any two people from the same population may have some of their DNA in common, as a matching segment of DNA becomes longer and we share more segments, it becomes more likely that the sharing is due to a recent common ancestor than a chance match. Thus far we have five people who we are probably 4th cousins with, but we haven't figured out the exact connection.

Happy ancestoring!