Discovery At the Cemetery - Ancestors in 52 Weeks

This year's challenge is 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and is run by Amy Johnson Crow.

Topic Info.: 
What discoveries have you made at the cemetery? Do you have a favorite ancestral cemetery or tombstone? What cemetery do you want to visit?

I waited to write this until I had further questions and information Amy put with the prompt because I could have interpreted this a few different ways like with the past topics of Nature and Nurture.

My History in Cemeteries

My grandmother's obituary in 1988 from the Times Herald Record

Over the years, my history with being in cemeteries hasn't been much. The first time I ever went into one was when I was when I was 15 years old. My paternal grandmother, Jean Schmitz, died. I found out by looking in the newspaper as was a ritual with my mother. Also, I knew she was very sick in the hospital because my sister, Debbie, called us and told us. I insisted my mother take me to St. Luke's in Newburgh to see her. It was an eye opening visit to say the least with my grandmother looking so small in bed and talking in many languages and about how she was seeing things with my father and uncle. Shortly after this visit, I found she had passed away and I wanted to go. My mother, however, put up a fight and I made my ultimatum - You take me or else I'll walk to entire way. It it would have been a walk because the town we lived in to where she was buried was about 20 miles to walk each way. I would have done it and my mother knew this. She finally relented and had her boyfriend bring me. He parked on the side and stood by the car while I went to the side and attended the ceremony. No one spoke to me or anything. Then when it was over, I turned for the car so I could go because it was starting to lightly rain. However, my father's second wife came over to me telling me my grandmother would want me to have this and shoved an umbrella at me and turned and left me there. I shook my head and turned and left. I'm still not sure if anyone else knew I was even there.

Anyhow, I didn't know where it was after this and I was so busy I didn't visit for awhile. It wasn't until I started doing genealogy research, I remembered about her obituary. We had a few other people here in Australia pass away, but it wasn't until we went back in 2001, my husband and I went to find Grandma Jean again.

When my uncle died in 2002, we went back to see Grandma after Uncle John's services. I was a bit more in my research but still very new to this type of research. It wasn't until after my uncle passed away I really dived into it and started to find people. In the last five years, I found so many relatives and ancestors both alive and dead it makes me dizzy when I sit down and try to list them all.

Now I'm pretty seasoned to what to look for and what to do. It did help being a volunteer and going to take pictures in a cemetery a few years ago. We had our nephew William with us and we were teaching him how to do things respectfully and he did enjoy it too.

Our nephew, William, in July 2016 helping with wetting down headstones for taking pictures for Find a Grave.

 In the past 8 and a bit years, we hadn't been back to the US where my family and ancestors are for my immediate family. Upon my brother's passing in January 2019, we went back and did some research in cemeteries. It was winter but we were able to work around the weather to go visit 3 of them which was great. This lead me to a.....

Major Discovery at the Cemetery!
I had where my grandparents (all except for my paternal grandfather - still looking for him!) and great grandparents are buried (except for my paternal side but they are in Germany which are gone now). This trip back, as unexpected as it was, let me go and find the resting places of the people I was able to find.

To save time, I went and gathered the ancestors and where they were buried grouping them by the cemetery. I listed the relative, their relation to me, the cemetery, its address and if they had it the GPS location. GPS location seems a bit funny and weird but it really did help with this major discovery.

We visited my grandmother, grandpa Charlie, and uncle John before continuing with the new information and cemeteries. The first one up was my great grandparents in St Francis Cemetery in New Windsor. This one was strange because it was listed on St Francis Cemetery and yet the church is listed as St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Newburgh, NY. They were in two different towns but were connected. Then when you look at the map, there're two cemeteries a huge one and then up on the side a smaller one (below).

The two cemeteries shown side by side in New Windsor NY. Credit Google Earth

We drove around the bigger one thinking this was it, but I also told my husband it could have been the smaller one up there (and I pointed) but I wasn't sure. After looking for a bit, we then put in the GPS details and it showed us that it was indeed the smaller cemetery on the side.

My maternal great grandparents which are both buried at St Francis Church. Credit as noted above.

I was using my great grandparents Bernice and Apolonius Jagodzinski because they were both listed as being buried there. Thankfully, this one was much smaller in size and we were slowly driving up the road looking to see if we could see the Jagonzinski name. My husband had finally seen it and pulled over. We got out of the car and walked back to where he thought he had seen it. Before I had seen the Jagodzinski headstones, I made my major discovery.... my grandmother's headstone!

My great grandparent's headstones with my grandmother Janet Gauquie's behind theirs. Credit: J. Fitzgerald

Gone but not forgotten

My grandmother had been in state care since they came and took her after she was staying with her sister, Genevieve in Newburgh sometime after 1960. No one in the family knew when or where my grandmother had died. I found out she had died through my research which was a very sad way to find out. My mother and all of us had looked for her for years. This one was one reason why we looked at the obituaries every day.

My sister, Debbie, once found my grandmother Janet in a nursing home in Newburgh, and my mother and I went down as soon as we could to visit her. My mother had them write in my grandmother's file who she was and how she could be contacted so there was a link to us. This was the year, in the 1980s, when we were able to bring her to our home on South Montgomery Street, Walden, to have Thanksgiving dinner with us. However, within a few months, they had moved my grandmother again.  We went to visit her and found she had been moved out of the facility or so they had told us. Once again the searching was on.

My grandmother Janet's SSDI.

After awhile, my mother accepted Grandma Janet had died, but no one had called us with the information still. When I started researching, she was one of the people I was trying to find. I finally found her social security death index and found she had died about 18 months before I really started my family research.

I had the heartbreaking task of telling my mother her mother had died in 1999. I gave her what little information I could, but told her I was still looking and I promised her to not give up looking because we wanted to know where she was.

I didn't give up and kept finding more and more out about my grandmother, up until where she was until 1960 when she placed an add about selling some land on Walsh Ave in Newburgh, NY.

June 22 1960 06 22 from Warwick Valley Dispatch, Page 4

I knew she was still in Newburgh, NY in 1964 (above) when her mother passed, but this was second hand to filled out the obituary which is not always reliable.There was nothing on where she was buried and no obituary for my grandmother Janet. I knew she would have been buried due to her being so faithful to the Roman Catholic religion.

"Grandma!" I gasped.

My grandmother Janet's headstone, me and my brother (in urn) two weeks after his death.

Getting back to the story, I was walking towards where my husband said he saw the last name Jagodzinski. I looked up and zeroed in on just one headstone... and all I did was gasp and say "Grandma!" and went directly to her headstone standing in front of it in disbelief.

I finally found where my grandmother Janet is buried and I found her as I had promised my mother I would.

It took me over 20 years, but I had done it. I let one of my sister's, my cousins, and my uncle Jimmy know. My cousins and uncle Jimmy all want to know what she died of and to prove she is buried there.

I know, in my gut, she's buried there, to be near her mother but not so much her father, but her mother I think she was extremely close to. I say not so much her father, because my mother once told me none of his kids liked him because he was a nasty and cruel man.

I know there's more paperwork to track down for record keeping sake, but not, for me, this is enough and closure. They won't be moving her from here that's for sure.

A Promise is a Promise no matter what

While I lived up to my promise, too bad it came too late for my brother to find out as he had died weeks prior to the finding and my mother has dementia pretty badly and probably won't even remember anything about my promise, but I will. I say this because upon a recent call I made to my mother, she didn't remember my brother dying and this is after I had called her, twice, to see how she was just after it happened and talked to one of the nurses which assured me my mother knew of his passing from my sister, Theresa.

There are a few other ancestral cemeteries around in the US, in which we did visit some and not others, but for now this was the one that had the biggest impact on me as I am my grandmother Janet's namesake.