Find A Grave

There's a satisfaction to discovering the people and patterns that lead up to our own days on earth. The old houses, fields and quarries of Halibut Point pique my curiosity about their origin stories.  Like growing crystals the stories accumulate bits of evidence to extend their shape and intricacy. When brought to light they accrue fascinating colors that rivet us with that most relevant of powers, currency in the imagination.

The 1702 Gott house resulted from a grant of common land by the colonial townspeople of Gloucester. It still stands as a private homestead within tracts that have reverted to public ownership at Halibut Point. It has been occupied for over three hundred years by descendants of Samuel Gott, weaver.

Headstone of Joshua Gott, 1798-1873
Seaside Cemetery
Sharron Cohen photo

When I sought details about the Gott family tree my Lanesville neighbor Sharron Cohen acquainted me with the free website Find A Grave, which maintains records from cemeteries all over the country. Sharron has photographed most of the gravesites in Lanesville's Seaside/ Locust Grove Cemetery complex, the closest to Halibut Point. Sure enough, there on Find A Grave I found a Memorial Page for Joshua Gott, complete with one of Sharron's photos. The house and the headstone substantiated a link to the otherwise lost-to-view Gotts.

A similar but much cannier search of Find A Grave turned up the only known portrait of Albert Baldwin, namesake of Cape Ann's most notable granite sloop.

Albert Baldwin, 1834-1912

Baldwin's Memorial Page well conveyed the character and circumstances of the young Massachusetts entrepreneur who prospered in New Orleans during and after the Civil War with ties to Col. Jonas French and Gen. Benjamin Butler, administrators of the military occupation of New Orleans and founders of the Cape Ann Granite Company.

Baldwin tomb
Metairie Cemetery, New Orleans

Sharron came upon the Find A Grave about eight years ago while pursuing her own family genealogy. She gleaned information from the website and began adding whatever novelties she could, especially photographs. The character of the monuments and their inscriptions began to interest her. She roamed beyond her ancestral plots to other memorials with interesting architecture or attributions. Back home, on frequent walks with a friend, she took it upon herself to ensure that a Memorial Page existed for all the nearly 6,000 gravesites in Seaside/Locust Grove Cemeteries. She gave these reflections on her "obsession."

___

   I believe the dead should be acknowledged. This is my specific way. I think the dead should be available to their families. I can't explain it as anything logical or rational. It's a touching presence. I don't know why, but it's there.

   I don't even believe in an afterlife. It's not like I believe the dead are still living. It's just that I think that their lives, and the story of their lives, and the very idea that they once lived, should be given enough importance to be respected.

   At Seaside there is a man who gardens his son's grave. Elsewhere there are shrines, diverse collections of mementos--toy cars, AA-coins that you get for staying sober, beads, leprechauns, dogs, little chachkies. There's something really touching about that, the memory piece.

   To me it's a marvelous puzzle, and it's interesting. Part of this is treasure hunt. Genealogy is like playing Solitaire, solving crossword puzzles, any of those things you do to stop you from thinking but to focus you on something...the puzzle of who these people are, the puzzle to find the next document. Some of it is a game. It's a game that seems to have at the end of it some value.

   There's a Potter's Field there. I got the records from the Cemetery Department and entered them on Find A Grave. It's what appears to be an empty section. That whole area is chock-a-block with people. There are no markers except the one in the middle. I know about it because I was asked to find Minnie Dunbar, who is right here [points on map.] Minnie Dunbar didn't have a stone. I started filling this map in. I came to "Unknown man killed on railroad tracks." People who don't have names. There's "Child found in the harbor." I made some Memorial Pages for them, just because I thought they deserved some mention.

To produce these stories gives me an incredible high. Bringing them to notice again. Everybody has a story. Everybody.

Sharron Cohen