Tracing Family on Find-A-Grave

Through a team of independent volunteers, you may be able to trace your heritage through links on Find-A-Grave pages. Here is an example, from our family.

Starting from my father Peter Adams Sutherland, going up the patrilineal line, we can go straight to John William Sutherland (1735-1817) before we lose the trail on Find-A-Grave. We go father back on MyHeritage.com.

Starting from my father's mother, Susan Adams Sutherland, going up her patrilineal line, we go back to Asa Adams (Sr.) (1729-1826).

Both these ancestors are 7 generations back from my generation.

On my mother's mother's patrilineal line, starting from Dennis Frank Reeder, we only go back to his father, William Manderson Reeder.

But if we follow, William Reeder's wife, Diana Elivra Park Reeder up her patrilineal line, let's see how far we get. Not far, just to her father, Spruce McCoy Park. But in MyHeritage.com we find that Diana's mother is Martha Reed. And though not connected, Find-A-Grave has Martha Reed, and from her we get to her mother Catherine Reed (1781-1841), where the trail goes dark again. 

(Martha's brother John, and her parent's Catherine and David are buried in the Rowan County, Reed Graveyard along the Yadkin river, which I visited last month.) 

Most of the lines I tried to follow on my mother's mother's father's lines didn't go far on Find-A-Grave, not that they aren't there, just that the search function is difficult to get direct hits on, so it takes finding them through alternate routes.

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Posts are published for informational purposes. Writing edits will need to follow.

Irish Immigrant Honora Egan and her Husband Frederick Reed

The night before last, with serendipity as the only plausible explanation, I discovered the burial site of one of my (and my siblings' and cousins' too) great great grand parents on the Sutherland side of the family. I have searched repeatedly off and on for several years without success until now.

Lineage:

Arthur E Sutherland Jr. & Susan Adams Sutherland  (Grandparents)

Nellie Reed Sutherland & Arthur E. Sutherland (Sr.) (Great Grandparents)

Honora Egan Reed & Frederick Reed (Great Great Grandparents)

My namesake, Honora Egan, her husband Frederick Reed, a farmer in Nunda, New York, and one of their two offspring, their son, Fred B Reed, are buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Nunda where they lived (too obvious not to have been found sooner, wouldn't you think?). Fred B.'s sister Nellie Reed, who married our great grandfather, Arthur E Sutherland (Sr.), is buried in Rochester, New York.  (NB I have put in the request to add links to the next of kin on the FindAGrave site.)

The red pin sits on the town of Nunda, west of the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York

Oakwood Cemetery in Nunda New York, Section D, Lot 77 & 78 owned by Fred B. Reed

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All posts will require editing, but are posted for their informational value sooner than they might otherwise be.

Coming up for Air

I felt changed when I discovered that some of my forefathers are buried in the "Reed Graveyard" along a river in Rowan County, the Old Yadkin river, just a couple hours drive from Wake County.

Just the discovery changed me, changed the temperature of the water, the feel of the wind, my sense of what's real. Like when a strange compelling light filters through clouds and is so stunning you have to stop and take a breath.

I am walking a short stone wall, balancing between falling and falling, teetering: Is it significant that some of my hundreds of known predecessors are buried in North Carolina where I now live? Or is it not significant because at 6 generations back there are at least 64 parents / grands and greats? What kind of significance is there?

I did the math, forefathers double each generation. See for yourself. At the 4th generation there are 16 foreparents, at the 6th generation there are 64 foreparents. That's a lot, how important could any one couple among them be?

1G - 2      Parents
2G - 4     Grandparents
3G - 8     Great Grandparents
4G - 16   2x Great Grandparents
5G - 32   3x Great Grandparents
6G - 64   4x Great Grandparents
7G - 128 5x Great Grandparents
8G - 256 6x Great Grandparents
9G - 512 7x Great Grandparents
10G - 1024 8x Great Grandparents
11G - 2048 9x
12G - 4096 10x
13G - 8192 11x

The math would seem to lean towards a lack of signficance. After all finding two of my many dozens of foreparents in NC is just two in a collection of hundreds, thousands.

Maybe it's finding out that some of this Northerner's roots are in the South, though their story is that they left New Jersey due to a real estate swindle. The story is fascinating, if disturbing.

Or maybe it's the experience of driving through the centuries to a place where family and friends would have gathered to bid their farewell. If loved, everyone would feel so very sad. Hopefully they were loved.

Finding the graveyard down a riverside road, and a small road off that, almost a driveway, to the river's edge where, protected by a chain link fence, a crooked entrance, and not a sign with a name and statement, lay a motley collection of stones in all kids of repair and disrepair. A couple or so have had new granite gravestones placed near the collapsed grave.

One car parked next to the river, perhaps someone went fishing; another parked in the large lot next to the graveyard, so I wasn't alone in this otherwise somewhat remote site. Still I was wary, as I always need to be as a woman. I stepped through the whole small cemetery. Maybe a quarter of an acre in size. Under a dozen or more old trees. Camera in hand looking for the names that had arisen in my myheritage.com family tree, I sought every stone, and took photos of every one that had any sign of lettering, poured water over the stones whose carved letters were all but eroded, hoping that the letters might be clearer.

I saw some names I recognized, the gravestones that showed the generation whose name was spelled REID instead of REED.

I felt sobered stepping on land my mother's mother's forefathers had gathered on time and again as they returned their loved ones to the ground.

That was the graveyard visit.

The Registrar of Deeds visit in nearby city of Salisbury was also stunning, surreal. I opened these huge books, books the size of ten text books, and saw signatures written centuries ago, to registrar land purchases. Grants were listed, too. From that book we are given numbers that make it possible to look up the details on a computer database, to see copies of the actual documents, their handwriting, from as far back as the 1700s, maybe even earlier.

It is stunning for me. I feel a shock in making even this bare minimum contact with times and lives gone by; as if reaching through the veil of time by touching the paper and stones that my forefathers touched.

That's what I have for now.

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Edits are ongoing.