05 March 2013

Tombstone Tuesday--Oh, Allens

 Several years ago, I went with my crazy aunt Glenna to go cemetery crawling.  She was showing me some of the Kent County, Michigan Allen graves.
 We search several cemeteries that day.  I had armed myself with information from the Western  Michigan Genealogical Society website to figure who was in what cemetery.  But since we had several names not included, most notably my Irish Hurley branch, we still checked several cemeteries.  I believe that these pictures were from the Courtland township cemetery.  Aunt Glenna knew approximately were the Allens were located, and that helped.
We found the big Allen marker with out too much problems, it was near the south drive, and also near the road. 
What we failed to find was my Great-great-grandparents.  My aunt was pretty sure that Isaac and Lydia were buried here.  We did however find stones for two of their sons, Ora and Orlin.
 We also searched in vain for their brother's (and my Great-grandfather's) first wife.  Again, Aunt Glenna though she was also here with them.  Anna Laura Hurley died over 40 years before Ggrandpa Omar, and was, she believed, buried with her in-laws.  She was the mother of my grandpa.
(Which always leaves me wondering, was she Catholic and then disowned by her family?  We have almost no information on the Hurley clan, and I need to find something on them.
Last of all, we found Great-grandpa Omar. He is buried in the Alton township cemetery, again in Kent County. 
He is buried next to his second wife, and as luck would have it, the mother, by a previous marriage, of my grandma.  My grandparents were step-siblings who then got married.
Grandma Carrie is one of the sources of my Ford connection. 
And another strange fact was that Carrie and Omar had one child together.  She (strangely enough) was named after the first wife, Anna Laura.
And here is crazy Aunt Glenna, checking out the Alton cemetery stones shown above.
Yup, no mistakes on those stones.

1 comment:

  1. Notice that Grandma Carrie's stone is flush to the ground and has the potential of becoming a buried stone, like I last posted about.

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