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| Enon Cemetery, Woodstock, Georgia, 4 June 2019 personal photograph |
It was one of those perfect days for a cemetery visit, not yet Georgia summer hot, cloudy but not rainy, and an uncrowded midweek morning. I had visited several times over the past 20 years to take pictures, but this time I had another purpose. I knew that my relatives were buried in a family plot, but I wanted to record exactly WHO was WHERE and to be certain that I had a picture of each marker in the plot. It was time for me to make a map of the family plot.
Although it had been close to 10 years since my last visit to Enon, it was easy to locate the Perkinson family plot. It is the plot with the tall obelisk near its center.
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| Perkinson Monument personal photo |
Armed with pen and paper and my cell phone camera, I arrived at Enon Cemetery midmorning and was pleased to see that paved parking places were now available just next to the family plot. I decided to work left to right, front to back, to document all of those buried in the plot.
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| Rough sketch of the Perkinson family plot |
My quick sketch of the plot included a number and the name of the one buried there. It was not an architectural or even scaled drawing by any means, but it is enough for me to see who is buried where and to consider some relationships. The numbers on the sketch made it easy to locate the corresponding photo in my phone's camera roll for that day. The arrow pointing right at grave 24 refers to three more graves in that row, graves which I documented on another page. Later I plan to upload any new photos to BillionGraves.com so that all of the burials in the plot will be recorded in their database.
As I walked around the plot and made notes, I came across this section which I do not remember ever noticing before. It took looking at all three relatively recent markers to see the family connection among the unfamiliar surnames. And the box of artificial flowers here and on a few other graves was a touch I had not seen often at Enon. It made me wonder if there had recently been a Decoration Day at Enon. Decoration Day, a long standing tradition in the rural south, is a time for families to gather at the burial place of ancestors, clean the cemetery of weeds, leaves, etc., and perhaps leave flowers in memory of loved ones. DigitalHeritage.org has an interesting article about this observance.
Finally, once home, as I was writing the detailed list of the burials, it was interesting to determine who was the first one to be buried in the plot at Enon Cemetery. The first family member buried in the plot was six month old Willie Perkinson, a younger brother of my grandfather, who was buried at Enon in 1883. In 1894, Walter Dean, a grandson of my second great grandparents, was buried there at the age of four months. Then followed the interments of various Perkinson and Dean family members and relatives up to as recently as 2017. Perhaps I need to start referring to this plot as the Perkinson-Dean Family Plot in recognition of the blending of the two families.
Lessons Learned:
- Taking the time to look at all the graves and markers made me want to be certain of the family relationship of each person buried there. Now that I'm home, I am listing each person buried in the family plot, their birth and death dates, relationship to anyone buried in the family plot, and a notation for any direct ancestor. Having this information along with a neater version of the plot map will help me. I plan to add the redrawn plot map, the relationship list, and labeled thumbnail photos to my Perkinson Family file folder. Plus, a copy will go to my brother. As the old saying goes, it's hard to know the players without a program.
- There were a few recent burials in the family plot for whom I need to document their relationships in my genealogy software.
- It was a time to pause and reflect when I saw the graves of six young children buried among the 34 family graves. I wondered if these young deaths corresponded to pandemics sweeping the area or if they were caused by genetic problems or undiagnosed health issues.
- The variety of last names - Barnes, Dean, Drinkard, Felton, McAfee, Perkinson - give this plot the feeling of the small town where most of those buried had lived at some point in their life.
- As I explore some of the relationships, I am reminded once again that there may be something new to learn when we revisit a genealogy resource. Documents, photos, even grave markers can continue to provide additional information when we take another look; they might even lead to new questions to research.
- My decision to include a visit to Enon came as I was planning to visit the Woodstock Public Library, just across the street. My purpose for going to the library related to my quest to find an elusive marriage verification I needed for my DAR membership application. Still no luck finding any marriage information, even in among obituaries on microfilm of old newspapers, but the trip to Enon was a worthwhile endeavor. Combining research missions helped me have success in one area even if the other task was less fruitful.
