Just a touch over 500 miles from my house to the west side of Danville. Took a little over 9 hours, but other than miserable traffic and construction delays around chicago, it was a nice trip. I will try to post a picture or two and also the results of my conversation with Mike Wilder.
A local resident who is also a Harmon - Pipes descendant named Mary Rall and her mother Mary Stuart Guerrant called me this afternoon and plan to meet me at the cemetery to talk about the cemetery and genealogy.
Friday...
Robert Mayes met with me and Mike Wilder today and we discussed the stone and the placement. This is not as easy as I first thought it would be. We need to have a stone that looks like it belongs in this old cemetery, is big enough to fit all of the wording we want on it and fits our budget. Mike assures us that we can do it and the stone will probably be a gray, flat finish, rough edge stone, about 6 inches thick and 48 inches wide by 24 to 30 inches high. Placement will be at the 'foot' of the grave site. One side will have the names, dates etc and the other side will have the memorial inscription.
On the way to the cemetery, Robert and I stopped at the home of Randy Glasscock and his wife Sue. They own the land that was the original land purchased by John Pipes Jr. in 1796. The home that is there now is not built over the original house but is most surely on or very near the spot where the original house must have been. Randy's father purchased the property from a Pipes family member named John F. Pipes in 1943.
Mary Rall and her mother Mary met with Robert and I at the cemetery and we talked history and genealogy for quite a while. They are descendants of John Pipes jr and Michael Harmon (Like me!) They made a generous donation to the fund and that means we are now at 99.9% of our goal. (see the side bar for the graph.)
I found the two broken and buried stones for Nathaniel Pipes and his wife Margaret Harmon and plan to take them home with me, get them restored and then reinstall them in the spring.
I spent the rest of the day mapping the graves in the first part of the cemetery. Tomorrow is more mapping for the rest of the old part of the cemetery.
Saturday...
I spent most of the day completing the mapping of the other two sections of the cemetery. Mary Rall stopped by to help and between us we spent about 7 hours getting it all on paper. We totaled 160 burial sites with markers of some kind and many of those have multiple names on them. I am estimating we have about 200 names. The various lists I have total between 200 and 230 names, so there may not be as many missing markers as we thought. Many of the markers are broken like the ones in the picture above. It breaks your heart to see it, but there is hope that we can repair some of them and possibly make some kind of a plate marker for the ones that are missing. Several of the above ground crypts are collapsed and probably can not be repaired. We also uncovered about 15 markers that had been overgrown.
The cemetery grounds look very good. Probably the best that I have seen in 25 years of visiting there. Edwina Morgeson and Robert Mayes have both done a wonderful job. Edwina owns the farm land that surrounds most of the cemetery and she has a son buried there. She has spent many hours there and her own money to clean weeds and fence lines, pull trees and brush out of the fences and make the place look good. Robert has hired a new person to mow and done work on stones and some wrought iron fencing. We talked about new ways to try and raise funds to get more stones repaired and cleaned and to repair some of the fencing.
This has to be one of the most satisfying and enjoyable trips I have made to Kentucky. Many nice people, good things are happening for the cemetery and the weather and scenery were gorgous.
More later.....
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