A Century Detour
Yesterday's ride was another "get it in while the weather is good", meaning I had to be out the door and on the bike before the projected heat became more "pool time" oriented rather than "cycle time". Dealing with the high degree of autumn weed pollen was another limiting factor in how far I was willing to go yesterday as well, so I settled for a relaxed 15.4 mile (24.7km) around-the-extended-block ride that kept me (for the most part) on the gravel roads and (again for the most part) under the cooling protection of the ever present woods hugging the rolling rural byways.
There was just enough coolness to the air to make the ride pleasant, and so I took advantage of my time to linger where the roads passed interesting sights, and to cruise at speed when the road allowed. It is one of the perks of being by yourself that you get to call all the shots in how your ride unfolds, and, if intriguing detours present themselves, you can indulge without apology.
One of my favorite little detours is a short loop through a very old graveyard near my farm. I guess it can be more appropriately called a cemetery now that the old Quaker meeting house - which owns the land still - is no longer extant. It is also still an active cemetery, and I do know a few folks who have since relocated there for their final rest. I've ridden through this peaceful place enough times to, on occasion, stop and chat with people who have come to pay their respects to their own dearly departed. I heard from more than one living relative that their now deceased family member had specifically chosen this cemetary for "its beautiful views". I find that amusing, but I try not to judge. I've also been told many funny or endearing stories of the departed. I'm not shy about asking for those stories as I find that the people left behind in life often find joy in reminiscing to strangers. I love seeing the smiles on their faces as they spill the family secrets, and bring alive once again the wonderful engaging personality of the person that lies buried beneath a thoughtful tombstone and the surrounding well tended grass.
This particular cemetery is very very old, and being a genealogist I am interested in what the gravestones reveal - in their age, inscriptions, and styles that went in and out of fashion as the decades progressed. I have haunted many a graveyard, many a cemetery, looking for the graves of long lost relatives for my clients who are often thousands of miles away and unable to wander these local hallowed grounds themselves. It is an interesting profession involving a great deal of research into old records, old families, and old history. And lots of old tombstones. Just my cuppa tea.
Anyway, my cruise through the cemetery often involves a stop at one particular grave to a person I never met in real life, but one that had a part to play in an article I wrote several years ago for a preservation society publication (the article also ended up being referenced in another magazine as well.) The article was about a local high school built in 1916 at the time when the US was transitioning from somewhat unregulated religious and church tithed funded education to a far more structured secular educational system paid by taxes. I had to seek out 100 year old courthouse documents, as well as many years of family held photographs, to piece together a lively, witty history worthy of reading. In interviewing several of the grandkids of the school's first graduating classes, as well as two 90+ year old former students who entertained me with a delightful rendition of their years at the school, I came across a photo from 1921 - a century ago - of a striking young teen posed with some of her classmates.
I was fascinated by her fluid pose - that of an Art Neuveux ingenue - among the staid poses of her friends. As I spent weeks researching and writing the article on the school and the notable events of the decades following, that photograph never left my side. Those moments when I had time I would allow it to lead me on a chase through history, trying to track down this elusive young lady, who I discovered was named Ella Moore Brown, that had posed so beautifully for this singular photograph among her Junior classmates, but inexplicably never graduated with her Senior class. She would briefly appear in a courthouse record here or there years later, but the glimpses were fleeting and sporadic. I had found, after much digging through archived fragments, that she had married, had at least two children, and had obtained a nursing degree, but she had dodged all my other attempts to find her until a day or so before I finished the article. When I did, I was both astonished and amazed. All that time spent looking for her, and she had been right under my nose every time I rode my bike along the gravel roads of that nearby cemetery. It took me a few days of searching each tombstone erected the past 50 years in that cemetery, but I finally found her.
My search for Ella Moore Brown ended up being a closing addendum to the article, one that I immensely enjoyed writing. Sadly, the school had burned down less than a half century after it had been built, and only the foundation remained, now serving a house that was built where the ruins once smoulderd. I bike past the site pretty much every day, sometimes glancing at the bronze commemorative plaque on the stone column standing at the driveway entrance for what used to be the school yard but now is the driveway for the resident home. All other traces of the past are gone. All the students who had graced the school with their lively antics and childhood dreams now lie buried and silent. Even the two gentlemen I interviewed for my article are now gone, one buried in this cemetery as well, just a stone's throw from Ella.
To this day everytime I bike through this cemetery I make sure Ella has flowers at her grave to remind anyone passing by that this once beautiful young girl, with the graceful Art Neuveux pose so striking in a faded photograph 100 years old, is remembered.
