This is Encouraging
Posted by David | Filed under Heaton, cemetery, genealogy
On a brief trip to the library the other night, I took a quick glance at a few films — one which will be written about soon for what I didn’t find — and pulled a few books.
I have been wanting to revisit an issue that came up regarding the Odd Fellows Cemetery near Granite City and the library has two volumes of Madison County cemetery transcriptions that cover this burial ground. One volume’s info was apparently source from Odd Fellows lodge records, while the other from a cemetery walk about 25 years ago. What I was trying to figure out was what exactly had been recorded as being on the gravestone of Isaac HEATON. If what was written is correct, a rather obvious error was made; Isaac was not the son of Valentine and Emmaline as noted. These three were siblings. I state that with almost 100% certainty because I don’t believe there was another family in the area with these names and these were the names of three of John HEATON’s children.
Another visit to the cemetery will have to be made when it’s warmer. We didn’t find the stone a few weeks ago. While disappointing, I wasn’t surprised by the outcome. On one hand, vandals apparently did a number on this cemetery beginning in the 1960s and it doesn’t appear to very well maintained, if at all. On the other hand, a stone was found in the mid-1980s. Is it among the pile of broken stones at the back of the property or a few inches under ground in the plot where it originally stood? That’s what the next visit will hopefully determine.
The thing that most excited me during this library visit was that while pulling books a small booklet fell off of the shelf. It was an older guide to records in Madison County. I hadn’t seen this before locally or during trips to Alton and Edwardsville. Among the few pages with small text were a handful of potential keys to help me unlock the mystery of John HEATON’s origin.
If none of those sources pan out, I will finally have to do something drastic that I’ve put off for a couple of years…
