Monday, March 10, 2008

"I Wish Someone Would Visit my Grave"

While Googling for Cornelius Feather (see my previous post here) today, I ran across the web site Treasures of the Past created by C.A. Currie.

The connection to Cornelius Feather was a mention of his name in a list of the witnesses to the will of Dugal Boyd in Washington County PA. This is a great resource - almost 500 will abstracts for the 1780 to 1815 time period - with witnesses, heirs, dates, etc. that someone (probably the owner of the Treasures of the Past web site) took the time to abstract and post on the Internet.

The real gem on this web site is the article "by Catherine Mary Hobart, 1791-1814" titled "I Wish Someone Would Visit My Grave." The first lines read"

"My name is Catherine Mary Hobart. I was born near Schuyler Town-Ship in 1791 and died near Schuyler Town-Ship in 1814. My father was a farmer and rope-maker, and my mother died giving birth to me. I never married, and my father always said I was plain in the face. I spent most of my life looking after the children of my father's second wife, who died in child-birth, as well. I never set foot from the county and had much pain from sour stomach and several abscessed teeth. I died of a fever that swept through Schuyler Town-Ship and its environs in the winter of 1814, and I was buried in the north-west corner of the grave-yard on the edge of town. I neither asked nor expected much in life, and in death, I expect even less. But it has been nearly two centuries since my death, and, in that time, I have grown lone-some, as I have been largely bereft of companionship..."

It continues and is very touching. Funny. Sad. True. How many graves are like this one - overrun by vegetation, never visited, cold and lonely?

This web site is just one example of what an individual with transcribing and abstracting skill, a free web site and enough time can do to advance genealogy knowledge in their small way. C.A. Currie has helped me a bit by doing the will abstracts, and I'm sure has helped many others by doing genealogy abstracting and transcribing. Efforts like this are the real strength of web sites like www.USGenWeb.org and www.USGenNet.org - volunteers.

Readers of Genea-Musings know that I'm a sucker for poignant things like this... please go visit the web site and read the whole thing.

1 comment:

Kathryn Doyle said...

Randy,

I'm so glad you acknowledged Carla Currie at "Treasures of the Past." Her Indiana County, Pennsylvania data includes almost every burial in the county, as well as transcriptions of vital records, funeral home registers, etc. She is the Indiana County Coordinator for PA Gen Web as well.

Kathryn