Monday, February 13, 2012

The Story Left Behind...

For Taphophile Tragics

... regular dixxeland readers (all much appreciated) know I am a Photo Volunteer for the Find A Grave website..and anyone can do it...its a wonderful network of people helping people with ancestry, research, and fact finding,  and  it's a huge vault of information.  I have enjoyed all the trips to the various cemteries Ive visited over the past almost a year since I started...One of the local cemeteries that I get lots of requests for photos is Quaker Cemetery  c-1759...I also combine birding with the photo shoots, since this old cemetery has Large Live Oak trees throughout.  Birds seem to love it here.




So Ive veiwed many cemeteries containing all kinds of stones...I like the old style stones best...although a few are hard to read some are in very good condition considering the age! This stone is over 200 yrs old and is still very legible!!



Ive believe in family plots it's a good idea for the Living, and after all that is what cemeteries are for, a place for the living to remember the ones who paved the way for us, they have left their legacy for us to carry on...I consider a walk around a cemetery to be a walk through the pages of family history and Community, State, and Country history....one can find great grand father, grand father, and father resting alongside or nearby and a spot for son awaits...time keeps moving forward one falls by the way so another may pick up the torch and carry it into the future.



Every stone tells a story, its up to us to find out what that story is...I enjoy doing more research to uncover the story, get the facts, and this little grave has me intrigued so I want to try and find out what is the story here?  Since Maxcy Gregg was a great Civil War Brigadier General and was killed at the Battle of Fredericksburg, VA Dec 15, 1862, that makes me wonder who this tiny grave belongs to and why the name Little Maxcy Gregg?



Unsolved mysteries abound!!
This post is linked to Taphophile Tragics Meme
thank you for visiting!




PEACE

24 comments:

  1. Great photos- love that mockingbird on the gravestone! I find this grave-finding stuff very interesting- might have to check it out myself.

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  2. Great post with some amazing photos. The first one is my favourite with the sun shining through the tree.

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  3. Beautiful cemetery. Is that what a mockingbird looks like. Funny, I imagined it would be larger.

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  4. My father is a huge fan of Find a Grave.com - it's wonderful that you are involved in that. Love the photo of the bird on the tombstone!!!

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    1. I have tracked down many of my ancestors via the Find a Grave site, and been able to clear up a few family mysteries and secrets too!! Very valuable website and FREE to everyone!!

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  5. Lovely photos of the cemetery. The light in them is perfect. The bird is cute and you have found a mystery too.

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  6. Cemeteries can be great places to look for birds.
    I hope you find the history of the last grave. It certainly looks like that of a child.

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  7. A beautiful bird photo, what an interesting place.

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  8. Could Little Maxcy be the son or grandson of the general?

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    1. I have been unable to find any wife or children in his Bio, so far....during the time of the civil war many were named after famous generals etc...like my own G-G-Grandfather who was saddled with the name Uylsses S Grant Walling, he was a southern man with the name of the northern general who squashed the south...:o/

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  9. The bird shot is exquisite. Collecting the info from the cemeteries is such a great contribution for family historians, your work will be appreciated.

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  10. Your motivations and sentiments are very similar to my own, Sondra. I meander through cemeteries for the history they contain, and also to pay my respects to the past. To place a hand upon a marker to assure the departed that they have not been forgotten. To consider that life is a continuous thread that we all are connected to.

    I have many shots of birds on markers and generally within cemeteries. I think they respond to the peace and quiet and to the large old trees as well.

    I also like the old markers, the ones that I have to squint at real hard to be able to read them. The ones where I have to hold back bark and grass heads that sway into my line of sight.

    I have often thought that I am the sort of person who ought to volunteer for our Australian equivalent of 'Find-a-grave'. I must do something about it ... sooner rather than later.

    Thank you so much for this contribution to Taphophile Tragics. I value your style and your research. I have gone back through some of your earlier posts, and 'enjoyed' the story of the mass drowning.

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  11. You know that story you told last week, the one of the duel, that you started off researching that 1860 mass drowning? Is the Quaker Cemetery in that story the same cemetery as in today's post?

    It is a very beautiful and simple looking cemetery. I can understand how the birds love it. We do not have many family plots that are bricked around like I can see in the photographs here. We have a lot of plots surrounded with wrought-iron fencing, instead.

    I like all the birds in your 'Blustery Day' post over the weekend. You are a very good bird photographer. I do not have a steady enough hand. I am probably not patient enough either.

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    1. HI Julie thanks for aweseome comment and I love the way you put it, that life is a continuous thread and we are all part of it...that is SO TRUE in every way. Yes Quaker is the main old historic cemetery of our town and in the early years it was RIGHT in town...the town moved a bit north after a fire in 1828, yes that fire mentioned in my post about the duel. I am still researching the mass drowning and when I get all my research in I plan to add that to the Taphophile Tragics

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  12. Nice photo's of a beautiful old cemetery.

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  13. "I consider a walk around a cemetery to be a walk through the pages of family history and Community, State, and Country history."

    "Every stone tells a story, its up to us to find out what that story is."

    I couldn't agree with those two sentences more. Wonderful post, thank you for sharing.


    Herding Cats

    http://seathreepeeo.blogspot.com

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  14. The Find A Grave site looks very interesting! I got side-tracked looking at it and had to remember to come back here to comment :-)

    I became interested in cemeteries because of the history, but now I find them interesting in their own right. The largest local cemetery is also quite beautiful, and many people take walks there, alone or with their dogs.

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  15. Interesting post -- and I read the comments, b/c at first I assumed 'Little Maxcie' was a son -- interesting to see he probably wasn't. I agree cemeteries are good birding spots.

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  16. I have always liked graveyards because of the historical information they provide. I must visit that site.
    Great photos of the headstones/markers...and love that Mocker!

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  17. i came across that site a few times in recent weeks when trying to find stuff out about cemeteries i went to. must be time-consuming, but fun, no?
    i like your photos. as has been said before, the light is very pretty.

    i like those old gravestones too. they seem to all have the same style of lettering. and they are so thin!

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  18. A wonderful post to read Sondra..
    What a lovely thing to do.

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  19. that cemetary is really beautiful! the old stones are lovely among the trees. :) thanks for coming by! hope the 'embed below post' doesn't cause any issues for you, but often that makes problems for folks trying to leave comments at your site. i had to switch from Internet Explorer to Google Chrome a few weeks ago in order to be able to load and comment on several blogs that had switched to that setting. just wanted to give you a heads up. :)

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