Ellsworth Cemetery

Ellsworth Cemetery is a small plot located a little northwest of Paw Paw, Illinois. As with all of my graveyard quests, I came here in search of ancestors. In this case, I was seeking out the grave sites for Emeline Johnson, the daughter of Smith H “Prairie” Johnson and Ziba K Tompkins, my Great-Great-Great Grandparents.

The cemetery itself is a small plot, maybe half an acre or so. It is still tended to, in terms of being mowed, and has a flag raised in the center. The entry is right off of Paw Paw Road and it’s not at all hidden; it’s easily seen from the road. It’s a curious site, because the name - Ellsworth - is a family name, suggesting this was a family plot. There are, in fact, some Ellsworths buried here, but they are significantly in the minority. One wonders if, perhaps, this was originally a family plot and then perhaps given over by family to the township or county for more general use.

The stones here date back to at least the 1870’s:

And they range from the very simple:

To the comparatively grand:

As is so often the case for these smaller plots, there are many markers in various states of disrepair.

As is also common for these sites, there are blank spaces in-between groupings of stones. It’s always possible, of course, that these spaces are simply empty and unused, that the interest in the use of this particular cemetery faded away before it was filled up. But then one comes across something like this:

...And one realizes that its also possible that some, or all, of those blank spaces are also occupied, but have since had their markers yield to the Earth. This would mean that somewhere, a few inches down, there may be stones identifying other occupants, ancestors since forgotten and fading away, at least in terms of their final resting place.

El Campo Santo - San Diego

Take a tour through this site and it will be clear that I have spent a fair amount of time in cemeteries over the years. This could be due to some morbid obsession, I suppose, but mostly it has been in search of markers for departed family members. And in general, this means that a cemetery that does not potentially include family members is of little interest. However, sometimes they are different and interesting in a way that draws me in.

This was the case for El Campo Santo in the Old Town district of San Diego. This site is just a couple of blocks or so down the street from the Whaley House, and it speaks to differences in how such settings were managed in the desert Southwest as compared to our midwestern approach.

Markers were rough, typically made of wood, and in many cases burial sites were outlined in rock:

The cemetery has been restored, so some of the sites have information plaques about the people interred:

And because it is under restoration, there is an information plaque on the inside wall to give a bit of background.

There are a couple of sites that are a little more like we see in the Midwest - this example has a wrought iron fence around it...

And an actual headstone inside:

The plaque on her site indicates that her marker is one of the the only original markers left. It was laid flat during restoration after it cracked.

Like many of the stones from the mid- to late 1800’s in our local cemeteries, it lists her age at time of death. This young woman passed at the young age of 21. And if that isn’t a sufficient reminder of the harshness of life in the 1800’s, this site reflects the all-too common loss of an infant:

Several of the sites were surrounded with white picket fences. This is a feature that I’d only ever see in movies (most recently in WestWorld). If they were in use in our region, they’ve long since decayed away and not been replaced.

The restoration plaque indicates that the cemetery had 477 persons buried in the grounds. There are certainly not 477 sites present in the current cemetery, and the plaque does indicate that "a number of the graves were relocated". However, what it omits, but can be learned from other sources, is the fact that other burial sites simply had construction built over top of them. There have since been efforts to address this, and as one walks down the sidewalk one will see these coin-style markers embedded:

It’s a small site, and can be easily viewed in a half-hour or so. Because it’s a few blocks down from the Old Town State Park, it would be easy to miss if one wasn’t aware of it. It’s definitely worth the short walk and bit of time.

El Campo Santo - San Diego

Take a tour through this site and it will be clear that I have spent a fair amount of time in cemeteries over the years. This could be due to some morbid obsession, I suppose, but mostly it has been in search of markers for departed family members. And in general, this means that a cemetery that does not potentially include family members is of little interest. However, sometimes they are different and interesting in a way that draws me in.

This was the case for El Campo Santo in the Old Town district of San Diego. This site is just a couple of blocks or so down the street from the Whaley House, and it speaks to differences in how such settings were managed in the desert Southwest as compared to our midwestern approach.

Markers were rough, typically made of wood, and in many cases burial sites were outlined in rock:

The cemetery has been restored, so some of the sites have information plaques about the people interred:

And because it is under restoration, there is an information plaque on the inside wall to give a bit of background.

There are a couple of sites that are a little more like we see in the Midwest - this example has a wrought iron fence around it...

And an actual headstone inside:

The plaque on her site indicates that her marker is one of the the only original markers left. It was laid flat during restoration after it cracked.

Like many of the stones from the mid- to late 1800’s in our local cemeteries, it lists her age at time of death. This young woman passed at the young age of 21. And if that isn’t a sufficient reminder of the harshness of life in the 1800’s, this site reflects the all-too common loss of an infant:

Several of the sites were surrounded with white picket fences. This is a feature that I’d only ever see in movies (most recently in WestWorld). If they were in use in our region, they’ve long since decayed away and not been replaced.

The restoration plaque indicates that the cemetery had 477 persons buried in the grounds. There are certainly not 477 sites present in the current cemetery, and the plaque does indicate that "a number of the graves were relocated". However, what it omits, but can be learned from other sources, is the fact that other burial sites simply had construction built over top of them. There have since been efforts to address this, and as one walks down the sidewalk one will see these coin-style markers embedded:

It’s a small site, and can be easily viewed in a half-hour or so. Because it’s a few blocks down from the Old Town State Park, it would be easy to miss if one wasn’t aware of it. It’s definitely worth the short walk and bit of time.

Percy Wade

One of the ongoing joys of living in a family homestead is the gift it gives of allowing one to routinely walk in the footsteps of one’s ancestors. But this is only true for one side of family. The homestead is the product of my mother’s side of the family.

Getting a bead on my father’s ancestry is more challenging. For his part, my dad has been known to say that this is because his side of the family was made up of “gypsies and horse thieves”. There’s a bit of truth to this - family members on his side moved around quite a bit, and lived in the intensely rural north-central part of the state, sometimes bleeding across the Mississippi into Missouri and Iowa.

This means that, when the opportunity presents itself to get a better understanding I try to take it. Last weekend the weather and my time conspired to allow me to take a ride along the Hennepin Canal State Park Trail. While this would have been fun in and of itself, it offered some familial connection because my Great Grandfather Percy Wade worked as a Lock Tender on the Canal. Specifically, he worked at Lock 12, which was the target of my ride.

It starts to give me a feel for this man who was previously little more than an abstract idea for me. Between the trip to Lock 12 and available records, these are the things we know about this man:

Percy Leroy Wade was born in 1896 in Bureau County, and died in 1962, nearly a decade before I was born.

Percy was one of six or possibly 8 children - 3 girls and either 3 or 5 boys - born to George Washington Wade (these types of names were popular for the era - we also have at least one Benjamin Franklin in the family) and Sarah Amelia Ireland. I say "possibly" because Ancestry.com lists two additional boys in his generation, both younger than Percy, who don’t otherwise appear on the census information from 1900 or 1910. The additional boys - Irvin Charles and James Monroe Wade (there’s another of those names) - have birthdates of 1905 and 1907 respectively, so they should be in the home on the 1910 census, but they don’t appear there:

Now it is the case that the family does run down to the bottom of the page, but the following page is also available, and they don’t appear to continue there. It’s conceivable, I suppose, that the record keepers just decided it would be too confusing to have the remaining two kids continue on the next page and, given that they would have been about five and three years of age, just chose to drop them off. There are other errors or points of confusion in the census - in 1900 George’s wife is listed as "Carrie A", and in 1910 as “Sarah A". He could have remarried, one supposes, but both women have the same birthdate...

If Ancestry were correct, Percy would have been a middle child in the group. It seems more likely that he was the second youngest. Two of his sisters - Jessie and Nina - became teachers and frequently came up in the local papers due to one school function or the other. His parents were both born in Illinois, and appear to be first generation Illinoisans - though this is sketchy, as the birthplace of both of their parents is again, different between the 1900 and 1910 census’s. According to the 1900 census, George’s parents were born in Kentucky (father) and Maryland (mother), while Sarah’s (or "Carrie’s") were from Pennsylvania (father) and Ohio (mother). In 1910 George is consistent with the information about his father’s birthplace, but now his mother is from Iowa, while Sarah’s father is now from Illinois while her mother continues to hail from Ohio. Did they change what they reported 10 years later, or did a census taker make an error? There’s quite a difference between Maryland and Iowa, and as well between Illinois and Pennsylvania...

Percy’s father was a farmer and by 1910 one of his brothers, Harry, was also working as a farm laborer. Interesting, his oldest brother is listed as working as a telegraph repairman. Percy, at 14 years of age, hadn’t yet entered the work world in 1910.

When he was 21 years old, in 1917, Percy’s draft card says he was a tall man of "medium" build (the other options were "slender" and "stout"), with brown hair and blue eyes. He was living on Rural Route 2 in Tiskilwa, Illinois, and working as a farm laborer for John Albrecht. He was already married by then. It’s unclear from what I have at the moment whether he served in the military - the First World War persisted until 1918, but his draft card was filled out pretty late in the game - June of 1917. Also, he was claiming an exemption from the draft on the card, specifically due to "support of wife", so one suspects he may have managed to avoid service.

His first wife was Anna Amelia Tolene. She was the daughter of Swedish immigrants, though she appears to have been born in Illinois. Her parents spoke Swedish, according to the census, and one suspects she may have as well. Together they had two children - my Grandpa Glen, and Lorene Marie Eleanor Wade. Marie, which she appears to have gone by, died unfortunately young, just shy of her 12th birthday.

When he worked as a Lockman on the canal is unclear - in 1920 his is still indicated as a farm laborer, and by 1930 he is listed as a foreman at, I believe, the Zinc Plant in DePue - his job specifically says "Lithophone Plant", I think (it’s hard to read), and the Internet says Lithophone (or Lithopone) is a pigment used in Zinc, so that’s my extrapolation.

Given the history of the canal itself, it seems most likely he worked there at some point between 1920 and 1930. What is known, through family lore, is that he worked specifically at Lock 12. Picturing this originally I would have thought of this as a basic day job - travel from home to take a shift at the lock raising and lowering barges and boats through the lock, then travel back home. What I did not realize is that this was a far larger affair. The lockmen lived on the canal, with housing provided. They were responsible for operating the locks, maintaining and repairing the canal as needed, and had workshops and outbuildings to assist them in these tasks. In the winter they cut ice off of the canal to sell; this to help fund canal operations (somewhere we have family pictures of them hauling ice - understanding this role suggests that it’s Percy in those pictures). In short, it was as much a lifestyle as it was a job.

And it would have been a rustic lifestyle. While housing was provided, the homes had neither electricity nor running water. This wouldn't, perhaps, have been terribly unusual for the era - the region was, and remains, very rural. Percy’s son - my grandfather - was born in 1918, and his daughter in 1924. One can imagine family pressures ultimately driving the decision towards taking work that offers, say, the opportunity for indoor plumbing...

I mentioned that I had an opportunity to see Lock 12, riding out to it. The house and maintenance buildings are long since gone, and the site, accessed via trike on the towpath, feels very remote. It really gives a feel for the lifestyle that one would be embracing choosing this work.

Arriving at Lock 12

Looking about it is clearly an isolated spot:

Lock 12 is somewhat special in and of itself because it was the site of one of the nine aqueducts along the canal - huge concrete troughs that carried the canal water and traffic over rivers and streams in the area. In the case of Lock 12, it rose some 20 feet or so above Big Bureau Creek. Six of the aqueducts still remain, but Lock 12 is not one of them. Instead the trough was replaced with a piping system that runs under the creek and rises up back into the canal on the far side.

Bureau Creek below, with pilings likely from the old aqueduct

Canal is walled off above Bureau Creek...

...Goes down this drain...

...and bubbles up on the other side.

Anna, Percy’s first wife, died in 1940 at the very young age of 42 years. Percy later remarried, and my father still refers at times to "Grandma Mattie" - Mattie Wade Lampkin.

Mattie survived him. Percy passed away in June of 1962, at 66 years of age. He is buried at Elm Lawn Cemetery in Princeton, Illinois, alongside both of his wives and his daughter.

Old Pictures

One of the many upsides to doing genealogical research is having the opportunity to look through old family photos and get a glance - however fleeting - into the lives of ones ancestors. In the house itself we have a handful of pictures, and family members have allowed for the gathering of others.

While I enjoy them all, I was particularly impressed to find that my uncle, who is certainly our foremost family historian, had pictures of three pairs of my generation’s third-great (great-great-great) grandparents. This is delightful and surprising, as these are people born in the first half of the 1800’s or, in one case, late in the 1700’s. None of them were born in, or really anywhere near, their final settlements in Illinois.

Here are Smith H. "Prairie" Johnson and Ziba Johnson (née Tompkins):

Prairie has the distinction of being the earliest born of the bunch, in 1797 in Vermont. Ziba was several years younger than he, born in 1809 and hailing from New York. Both are buried in Fisk Cemetery.

Joel Compton and Nancy Compton (née Townsend):

Joel and Nancy were born in 1819 and 1824, respectively. He was from New Jersey and she from Pennsylvania, and my records indicate that they were married in Pennsylvania in 1842. They opened a general store and a town that became their namesake was founded around them. Both are buried in Melugin Grove Cemetery.

John Foulk and Martha Foulk (née Morrow):

Both born in 1822, John was born in Pennsylvania, while Martha hailed from Ohio. These folks are the builders of our old house, the people responsible for the living history around me each day. They are buried at Restland Cemetery in a family plot.

These photos give a glimpse into their lives, and give a reference for our modern day family. Photography would have been a new technology in their times, making the existence of these pictures all the more remarkable. Clearly, these moments were special occasions, and you can see in the shots that they’ve selected their finery, such as it was. Nancy Compton, in particular, is decked out in necklaces, ribbons, and earrings.

It’s interesting to consider as one looks through these and considers current day family members where the resemblances lie - who looks like a Compton, a Johnson, a Foulk, from days of old. Or does a given person perhaps more resemble one of the other third greats, for whom we may not have pictures? There are, of course, six of these per parent, 12 to consider in all...

Part of the long-term goal is to have these pictures and the known stories about these folk preserved in order to know them better myself, but also to allow for others to know them. Having this ability is a gift many are not given, whether due to poor family record keeping or, often, due to the unfortunate nature of how their ancestors arrived into our country. It seems appropriate to make of that gift what we can.

Edward’s Church

Edward and Erna lived In a house just down the road from our old house when I was growing up. Most of my memories of them were from when I was very young, but they are all fond. I remember that they had a three legged dog - my recollection is that it had been hit by a lawnmower (poor thing). My memory also records that Edward had a delightful speaking voice - a voice I can best describe as being reminiscent of Paul Lynde.

I had no idea at the time that Edward was my grandmother’s first cousin. It makes sense, of course - her brother, also Edward’s cousin, lived right across the road from Edward, and it’s clear that this was a family stretch of road. But I was frequently unaware of these relations as a child, coming to learn and appreciate them all the more as an adult.

I also came to learn that Edward was a painter. Not a painter of houses or fences and such, though I’m sure he was capable in that regard. Rather, he painted oil on canvas of things around him. One of those paintings hung in my grandmother’s house for the entirety of my recollection, and it is of the old church.

I realize as I write this that I know very little about the painting beyond its original subject and the artist. For example, I do not know when it was painted, nor how old Edward was when he did so, nor where this fell in his artistic arc - e.g. is this an early work, or something that occurred later?

Assuming that he intended a realistic representation of the subject, some clues can be gathered from the painting itself when compared to current day (photo taken from the seat of my trike, so the vantage point is a little different):

The differences here suggest some things about the era in which the painting was made. The difference in the roads stands out, of course. In all four directions out of the intersection the road is asphalt in current day (though two of those directions change to gravel after a short distance), while Edward portrayed either gravel or dirt roadways. The road signs are absent, of course, as is any sign of anything resembling a power line.

The fence in the foreground of the painting is gone now, though I remember it within my lifetime. Edward’s Church also does not have lightening rods atop the peak of the roof. You can see that he took pains to try to accurately represent the complex lines of the stained glass window.

Though part of it may be the differences in the days portrayed - Edward’s a bright, partly cloudy summer, mine a steely gray midwinter - as I look at the painting I find that I’d rather be in his picture than in mine much of the time. His is quiet, serene, while mine is harsh and cold. I can see that he is connected to the place and the time, and I find that I very much appreciate the window into that place and time that he has given.

Searl Ridge Cemetery

In the latter part of this past summer I had an opportunity to search out and find Searl Ridge Cemetery. This little site is tucked away in one of the more rural areas of the already very rural Bureau County here in Illinois. Many of the ancestors on my father’s side of the family lived in this area, and I was interested in this site in particular because it includes the gravesite of my great-great grandparents.

I often like to bike or trike to visit these graveyards, but Searl Ridge is a good 30+ miles from home. I may work up to that type of distance, but I’m not there yet, so when one of LB’s Cross Country meets took us into Bureau County I took the opportunity to find it. Like many of these older cemeteries, it’s clear that the site has been cared for. Still, the degree of this declines over time, likely as descendants move out past the generations that actively remember those interned within. As a testament to this, the iron fence and sign have on it a plaque indicating it was "donated by M.R. Clark [and] R.L. Clark, 1994". This seems, to a person from my era, like recent attention paid to the site by benefactors until one realizes that 1994 was 23 years ago...

There are other indications of change as well. As is often the case, I found this site through findagrave.com. This site often includes pictures not just of gravestones, but also of the entranceway to the graveyard itself, which can be helpful when things are hidden away behind trees and the like. The black fence and sign here are unmistakable, but to the right of the sign there is a building foundation with charred remnants of its former occupant.

I’d saved the entranceway photo from findagrave back when I first came across the location. It’s unclear when that photo was taken, but the building was still present at that time.

When you enter the cemetery you see that someone cared about this site not just enough to put up a fence, but also to make an informational sign:

The sign was put up as part of a restoration project that appears to have started back in 2007, according to this article from BCRNews. The building that is gone was The Ridge Chapel. The cemetery, the chapel, as well as some history about the buildings, are touched on here by Avra Valley John on his site Off the Beaten Path in Illinois. The article, which is from March of 2017, refers to the chapel as being present, which suggests it burned relatively recently. A comment on his site suggests it was in very poor repair so it’s possible the fire was intentional, though vandalism also rears its ugly head out in rural areas.

Also referred to in these sources is the old schoolhouse, which is still there:

Avra Valley John indicates the structure, built in 1875, is the third school built on the site. The first was a log cabin which hosted the first classes in 1837. This was replaced by another building in 1860, and then the current building, pictured, built in 1875. The history on the sign indicates that it continued to be used as a school until 1947.

The graveyard itself is like many in the region, with stones ranging in age from the mid-1800s to the late 1970’s (at least), in varying states of repair:

Several of the "stones" weren’t stone at all, but appeared to be a cast metal, and are hollow:

This was new to me, and it’s difficult to tell just by looking, but knock on them and they ring out. Wikipedia suggests that these could be cast iron, or sand-cast zinc, which were popular for the era. In many cases the "engravings" and information appear to have withstood the ravages of time better than their stone counterparts.

George Washington and Sarah Amelia (Ireland) Wade are the great-great-grandparents I was here to find, and their site was present:

I know very little about these folks, aside from some demographic information. They had eight children together, including my great grandfather, Percy.

Two of their daughters - Jessie Pearl and Nina Elsie - worked as school teachers in the area (they show up frequently in newspaper archives). Percy himself was a lock tender on the I&M Canal.

There are only these Wades in the cemetery, but there are several Irelands. There are also Searls, as one might expect, and at least some (if not all) of these are family to Sarah Amelia. Included among them are her great-grandfather, Timothy Searl, and her parents, Jonathan Ireland and Elizabeth Catherine. The broken gravestone, above, is possibly for Elizabeth - it reads "Eliza, wife of J. Ireland". If so, it was later replaced with this, much larger stone:

It appears she also has two brothers here. Wilber, buried with his wife Mary:

And her brother Frank, is also here:

The inscription on the stone reads "Uncle". This would suggest that he never married.

It seems likely, given the nature of these sites, that several of the other Searls and Irelands are also relations. I realize, as I look through my family tree and try to pair pictures with people, that I will need to take another trip to Searl Ridge Cemetery. I was focused primarily on finding George and Amelia’s grave. I was successful in this, but i missed out on many others. I’ll need to take more time on another day