It Pays To Clean House!

How many are like me and would rather be doing genealogy than cleaning house? Who cares if the wash gets done, the dishes get done or the toilet gets cleaned? My ancestors are waiting. The older I get, my priorities have changed in that I try to spend more time doing what I want to do. Occasionally though I have to bite the bullet and go after the "dust bunnies" when they get so deep that I have to walk around them or company is coming. Such was the case in December past. While YGGG#1 was off in Virginia visiting her son and having fun, I was slaving away in my basement and cleaning out one of our spare bedrooms for company which was coming for the holidays.

That cleaning job was one that had needed to be done for nearly 10 years (can you imagine that--10 years of junk and "bunnies" taking up residence?) Since the passing of my parents and the subsequent sale of their home and property, I have had nearly 30 boxes of stuff stored in that bedroom along with assorted junk and left overs from when my boys still lived at home. When Mom and Dad passed away there were just things I could not go through due to time and some I just didn't want to go through and make decisions on at that time. My brothers helped, took what they wanted and the rest was left to me to deal with. I dealt with it by stuffing it all in my spare room! Believe it or not, the room was piled to the ceiling. YGGG#1 will attest, she couldn't even stay in that room when she came to visit and was relegated to the upstairs family room.

For that nearly 10 years, I had lived under the misconception that all the important , relevant, keepsakes and momentos had already been found, sorted and distributed within the family. BOY, was I wrong!!!!! What treasures I found living with all those huge "dust bunnies". I found enough old photos, cabinet cards and documents to fill two boxes the size of orange shipping boxes and that isn't all. Many pictures from my Coleman family were in boxes that Dad had stored and I had never seen those pictures before. My grandparents large, nicely framed 1905 wedding parchment and a large framed 16 x 20 photo of Grandma Moore when she was only about 15 years old. How does one miss things so large? Surely those "bunnies" are to blame.
Mom had kept greeting cards from the early years of her marriage. Beautiful little cards with notes, many are nearly 75 years old and best of all--the original handwriting and name signatures on them from so many of my early ancestors. Dad had also stored a large box of my mother's grade school papers and art work. These will supply a treasure trove of wonderful scrap booking momentos for my children and grandchildren. Mom's 1934 high school graduation dress and her baby bonnet were two more treasures and my Dad was a volunteer fireman for years and I unearthed his fireman's belt buckle and convention badges. Flower show ribbons and cards from all the years that Mom entered and judged shows. Of course the pictures that rounded out this great spare bedroom discovery were an awesome discovery.

You will surely understand why the moral of this story is the old cliche: Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today! Just imagine what you might find in that old room or even in just that one box that may be lurking in a corner and slyly being hidden by your resident "dust bunnies".

LOOKING FOR ADALINE

On a recent trip to eastern Nebraska, the YGGGirls made a visit to the quaint old cemetery at Blue Springs, Gage Co., Nebraska. It was a nasty and cold day with high winds but we were determined to find the final resting place of our Great Grandfather as well as some of our Great, Great Grandparents.

We arrived at the beautiful old iron gates of the cemetery which is located about a mile north of the little community of Blue Springs, Nebraska. This cemetery was started in the year 1860 and is the oldest recorded cemetery in the state of Nebraska. There is a great old central building in the middle of the cemetery with an old water pump next to it which made it a very picturesque scene. We could hardly even stand up due to the wind but started out to locate our ancestors. We first found Great Great Grandmother, Mary Eberhart on the west side of the cemetery. By then we were about to freeze out, having only brought sweaters on an extremely cold day, but we pushed onward while trying to not blow over in the wind!

Finally, we discovered the rest of the family who seemed to be all together. Father, Joel Moore and his son Thomas Moore were close together. It seemed natural that Adaline Moore who was the wife of Joel should also be close as we knew she was buried in the same cemetery. No stone for her, that was odd--but as we pondered her whereabouts, we noticed that an area of grass that was next to Joel's stone seemed to appear slightly sunken. Down on hands and knees, we began to probe the area with our hands. Sure enough , it seemed as though Adaline's marker was indeed there. We pulled grass and moved as much dirt as we could by hand in order to bring her marker to light. Both of these people had only the original metal plate markers which had been set in cement many years before. Adaline's had sunken below ground level and become completely overgrown over time.Her first name had been spelled incorrectly on the old metal plate. We cleaned the area out as best we could, knowing that she would surely be covered up again when the first rain came through and washed dirt over the stone. We hoped that at least for a few short weeks that she might "stay in the light of
day".

It was a great day to be able to find our Great Great Grandparents and other family in that beautiful little cemetery. I will visit there again someday but wonder who will look for our "Adaline" in the distant future and again re-discover her final place? We put out flowers, the first to be there to honor our relatives in many, many years and then hurried back to our little red car to turn on the heater and recover from our freezing outing. It was a great discovery for us and soon we were off to yet another cemetery for more research!