Recently I went on a mission with my dad & Grandparents to find the gravestones of relatives. It's a wonder that we found them because we didn't even know what cemetary they were in. All my grandpa could remember about his grandpa's gravestone was that "he was buried under a tree". As it turns out that was an uncle or a cousin. But after tracking down the records with the funeral home & by process of elimination we stumbled upon them in the Avon cementary in SE Des Moines. Here are Emma & Clarence, my Great Great Grandparents. As it turns out, we didn't have the name correct either. My grandpa didn't know his GPA's real name was Clarence.
Then we went to Newton, IA to see my grandmother's side of the family. This is my Great Grandfather Dale Allen.
This is my Great Great Grandfather, Roy Griggs Allen, and my Great Great Grandmother, Maude Clement. (Clement was actually her Maiden name)
All together the Allen's have about 13 headstones in this cemetary in Newton. The really old ones were moved to this cemetary a while ago. Some of them are so old you can't read them and the grass has even begun to grow over the stones. We had a hard time determining how we were related to each of these people but I know that included were my Great Great Great Grandparents and their children. Amazing really. A lot of the children died young (1 mos- 1 yr old) and you could kind of tell that an infection/influenza swept through families bc often 2-3 kids would die within the same year. This particular stone has people's names written on all four sides. You can see the name on the front says "Kitty". Also, the top of this stone is broken there was probably a statue of some sort on top.
This was the oldest stone.
Here is the zoomed in picture. Who knew there was another Thomas J in our family! It was really neat the way they wrote out this information on the stones because they included how many years, months and days old they were when they died.
It was a great day trip to spend with family (both alive & deceased). It is so interesting to learn about where we come from!
