Little Ones Lost

I’d heard stories about my great grandparents, Robert and Rosa Logie Bennett homesteading a farm since I was very young and often wondered about them.  Of the ten children in the Bennett family, three babies died either at birth or before they were three.  All three were buried on the family farm in there in the bottom land of Fort Canyon, Alpine, Utah.

I missed living on the old homestead by a few months and never knew where the Bennett children, Beatrice, Pansy and a stillborn son were buried.

In 1983, I asked my family about them and my oldest brother could still remember where grandpa had buried them beside each other in a small area on the north end of a section of the orchard.  Our grandmother and other family members had shown him the site many times when he was a young man.

Great grandpa Bennett had planted a large apple orchard on part of the 160 acre farm.   When we went to look for the site, all of the trees were either dead or had been removed.  I thought to myself, “This is going to be hopeless.  He won’t be able to find the spot now that it looks so different than it did years ago.”

A few landmarks still existed, so I stood back while Bob looked around orienting himself.  Within seconds, he knew exactly where we were standing in relation to the old orchard.

He looked at the ground, turned left and started to walk calling out what the topography should look like under our feet.  Within five minutes we were at the five foot deep dip in the ground that he said we’d find.  Looking left and then right, he said we should see a wide spot in the dip fairly near our location.

Again, he was right on.  Less than twenty feet to the east the depression widened and we walked to it.  Bob raised his arm and pointed to a spot just south of the bank and stated that the babies were buried ‘right there’.  I asked if he was sure only to receive a look that answered the question better than words.

I made notes about the spot and then began stepping off the distance directly back to the road.  Having designed thousands of miles of power lines over the years, tying down a location was simple business, especially since I had wandered the location repeatedly in my youth and was very familiar with the land.

I told Alpine City employees where the graves are located and have put a map of them on my family history website hoping to keep some focus on the tiny cemetery.  I hope the babies won’t be disturbed by future building and growth in the canyon.

A new home was built just west of the graves and a road was constructed just to the north of them a few years ago.  The babies were buried the same day they died, so I doubt if caskets were used.   My ancestors probably buried them in blankets and over the 100+ years since, I doubt if any of the soft bones have survived.  I’m not as sure about the two-and-a-half year old young daughter though.

Dick Eastman mentioned a webpage that identifies cemeteries in unusual locations in one of his posts recently.  The page is well worth reading.  It will make you wonder if you have ever unknowingly passed by similar sites.   Click here to read it.

Do you know of any similar burial sites?  If so, you’ll want to let as many folks know about them as possible including government officials if they haven’t been preserved already.

There must be tens of thousands of small burial grounds like these around the U.S.   I wonder how many exist all over the world?

As for me and my wife, we long ago purchased burial lots in a well established city cemetery to receive our mortal remains.  With any luck, the property won’t become so high in value that our graves also end up in a parking lot or under a multi-unit dwelling.

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Legacy Never Ceases to Amaze and Please

I often talk about my love of Legacy Family Tree. I’ve been a beta tester for products from Legacy and their parent company, Millennia for many years and know how input from users of Legacy has shaped the products we see today. Ken McGinnis, Dave Berdan, Geoff Rasmussen and crew listen to the beta testers and to users in general and it shows.

I own almost every genealogy package on the market, but I use Legacy as my main family history software.

Legacy 7 will be released in the next month or two and I’m really looking forward to the new features in it. If you have attended any of the larger genealogy conferences in the past few months, you’ve probably seen Geoff and Ken there making presentations about the new features and talking to folks who are visiting their booth.

Download the free version of Legacy 6 here. You can buy the deluxe version of Legacy now and upgrade to version 7 in a few months to access the new features. Legacy 6 already has so many features that it is mind blowing. I’m sure there will be an upgrade path for new buyers of Legacy Deluxe. You won’t be sorry if you start using Legacy today.

Dear Myrtle recently interviewed Geoff Rasmussen for her podcast. You can hear Geoff extol the virtues of regularly helping with FamilySearch Indexing and talking about Legacy 7 here.

Another old friend, Dick Eastman, interviewed Ken at the Saint George conference in early February 2008. You can see that interview here….