Mark Wing's Genealogy Mind Dump

This summer, we took a side trip to Royalton, Vermont to search cemeteries. I have family including direct ancestors who had lived in the area. My goal was to first locate the family members with known (to me) burial locations and maybe find others.

My best unexpected discovery was the Flint lot in South Royalton Village Cemetery. The headstone included Elisha Flint and Polly Keyes (3rd great grandparents), their daughter Betsey, their son Jonas Flint and his wife Clarissa Rowe (2nd great grandparents).

Polly Keyes was Elisha’s third wife. He had two children with Polly and twelve children all together. I located some of Elisha’s other children in the same cemetery, but not his first two wives. His first wife, Patty Wood, died before 1807. His second, Betty Orvis, died in 1826. I don’t know if they were interred in Village Cemetery or somewhere else. If they had been buried in Village Cemetery, it wouldn’t surprise me that I couldn’t find headstones.

One of the curiosities this satisfied for me when Polly died. The History of Royalton put her year of death at 1891, making her 104 at her death. For me, this seems too old for the time to be believable. It turns out she died in 1881 make her are more realistic (but still very old) 94.

A couple weeks ago, I located the graves of Pierre Beauregard and his wife, Matilda Marquis. Pierre and Matilda are my third great grandparents. Both have been somewhat of genealogical dead end for me. I have the death record for both. The records include the names of the parents and the fact they were born in Canada. Unfortunately, that is the only thing I know about them.

Matilda’s death certificate had her interred at Notre Dame Cemetery in South Hadley, MA. The office’s records were incomplete. They had an index of burials, but had lost the original records. The best they could do was guess at the section. They didn’t have a record for Pierre.

I spent some time in the cemetery, but things weren’t adding up. Lots in were issued on a an as needed basis, meaning the headstones were in order by death date. Matilda died in 1905 and this seemed to have been started around 1910.

I started to wonder if it was possible Matilda was moved. Turns out, she was moved. Her daughter, Emma Balthazar was interred in nearby Precious Blood Cemetery. I had previous asked who else was buried in this lot and didn’t have this information.

When I went out to the lot, I was surprised to see Pierre listed on the headstone. This gave me a birth year and a death year. I suspect Pierre was also buried somewhere else and moved. I can’t imagine they would have been interred separately if this lot was in the family when Pierre died.

When the office determined Matilda was buried in Precious Blood, they also said that there was a Napoleon Beauregard there too. This was a surprise to me. My second great grandfather was named Napoleon. I don’t know if this is the same person or if it was meant to be Pierre. I believe him to be buried in Norwich Bridge Cemetery in Huntington. His name is listed on a headstone, but some of the information on the headstone is incorrect, so I don’t know.

I have added aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright to my famous relatives pages. Our common ancestor is Samuel Wright. Samuel is my ninth great grandfather (twice). His lineage to the Wright brothers looks like this:

Samuel Wright (?-1665)
James Wright (1639-1725)
Samuel Wright (1674/75-1734)
Benoni Wright (1718/19-1761)
Dan Wright (1575-1832)
Dan Wright (1790-1861)
Milton Wright (1828-1917)

I always do some level of research before adding anyone to my famous relatives list. There is a lot of bad research out there and I would be doing a disservice to repeat it. My research into the Wright brothers proves this point. I was initially researching them because I read that they were descendents of Abel Wright, who is also a ninth great grandfather. Obviously, this wasn’t the case.

Abel and Samuel were amongst the founders of Springfield, MA (and possibly related). I have researched the first three generations of Abel Wright’s ancestors, so I am comfortable distinguishing Samuel’s lines from Abel’s, at least while they are in the Springfield area. The problem starts once they leave Springfield. Samuel Wright (1674/75-1734) relocated his family to Lebanon, CT. A descendent of Abel Wright (also named Abel) did the same thing and he also had a son named Samuel. The net result is two Samuel Wrights living in Lebanon around the same time. Abel’s grandson married Mary Case and Samuel’s grandson married Rebecca Sikes, thus making it easy to distinguish children of the two families.

Once I get through this hurdle, the research supporting the rest of the family connections seems to be sufficient, but not rock solid. The references are available through my Genealogy Database.

As a mentioned before, Samuel Wright (?-1665) is my ninth great grandfather twice over. My sixth great grandmother, Miriam Goss, was a direct descendant and she married into Abel Wright’s line. Abel Wright is my mother’s family. Another of Samuel Wright’s descendants was Carrie Jane Loveland and she married into my Wing line, which is my father’s side. While I have had many ancestors with common ancestors, this was the first time I discovered my parents’ trees crossing.

On Saturday, we looked at Fuller Cemetery in Ludlow for information related to the family of Timothy Wright. Timothy Wright is my sixth great grandfather. He and his family lived in Ludlow, but I have only found limited information on their extended families.

We had looked at Fuller Cemetery once before, so I wasn’t expecting to find anything major. I figured it was worth a second look because there were some Wrights in Fuller Cemetery that I had previously ignored because it wasn’t clear where they fit in.

One of the previously ignored Wrights was Isabel (Searl) Wright. Her headstone identifies her as the wife of Abel Wright. It turns out that Abel Wright was the brother of Timothy. Abel was born in Springfield on February 8, 1739. According to the research of others, he married Jerusha Griswold and settled in Windsor, CT. Some time before 1786, he relocated to Ludlow, MA. Jerusha died some time after this (presumably in Ludlow). Abel remarried Sarah Wilder and then Isabel. He died in Ludlow in 1836.

I don’t know if Abel is buried in Fuller Cemetery or somewhere else. There is open area next to Isabel’s headstone that could be Abel’s unmarked grave. Another possibility is Island Pond Cemetery. Island Pond Cemetery is actually Ludlow’s newest cemetery. The graves from Jenksville Cemetery (aka Village Cemetery) where moved there in around 1902. Like Fuller Cemetery, we have visited Island Pond Cemetery once before and it probably warrants a second look.

John Wright and Eunice Hatch are my fourth great grandparents. While I have some good information on them, I don’t know when they died or where they are buried. Figuring this out has been a recent quest for me.

I know John was alive in 1855 and living in Palmer, MA. I can’t find any information on him or two of his younger sons after 1855. Assuming he and/or his sons died while living in Palmer, it seams reasonable that he was buried either in either family plots in Ludlow or Palmer. Last year, Laurie and I walked the relevant Ludlow cemeteries and had no luck. Yesterday, we walked a couple Palmer cemeteries.

The first cemetery we visited was Three Rivers – Thorndike Cemetery. It is a small cemetery with a very steep incline for most of the front. There were very limit records available on the cemetery and it wasn’t listed on FindAGrave.com. Many of the stones were hard to read. There were large sections without any stones. I don’t know if this was by design or there are many graves with missing headstones. While there were some small clusters of names with similar names, there weren’t so much as to make me think the cemetery was a informal burial ground for local farming families. The oldest headstones seemed to go back to the early 1840s. We did find a Lucretia Wright, but there is no immediate relationship to my family.

The second cemetery we visited was Four Corners Cemetery. This cemetery has been able to expand by acquiring adjacent property. According to the Town of Palmer’s web site, the cemetery was laid out in 1851. We concentrated our search in the areas that seemed to be original. Once again, no luck. The only Wright I found was Henry Nelson Wright Jr. He is also a descendant of John and Eunice, but a relatively recent burial.

While I thought both cemeteries were real possibilities, we had no luck in Palmer. There are two other non-Catholic cemeteries in Palmer: Palmer Center Cemetery and Oak Knoll Cemetery. Palmer Center Cemetery is very interesting, very old and supposedly haunted. It is also well documented and would have been closed to new burials at the time of John’s death. Oak Knoll Cemetery is the largest cemetery in Palmer. It is also one of Palmer’s oldest cemeteries, but was able to expand and is still open for new burials. I have walked it in the past, but it probably warrants a second look some time in the future.