Stone hunting for Bardricks in Adair County
Posted on June 12, 2007 in Genealogy by DM
Larry Lehmer has a great post about rural cemeteries this week, and it got me thinking about one of my favorite stone-hunting stories.
Grandma Verdie told me that her mother’s parents were buried “in Pitzer Cemetery” in the general vicinity of Winterset and Earlham, Iowa. Wanting to find the gravestone and see the burial site of Isaac Groves Bardrick and his wife, Celestia Brewer Bardrick, I ventured off one day with just an Iowa DOT map to find the cemetery. It wasn’t difficult to find, but after a thorough walk-through I determined that the stone I was looking for wasn’t there. Disappointed, I returned home.
At this time I didn’t fully trust the Internet as a source for genealogical information – everything that’s online, I reasoned, had to be transcribed by an imperfect human, so the chance for erroneous information was high. Also at that time, there wasn’t much even available online. These factors led me to shy away from using the Web as a serious genealogical resource.
Nonetheless, sometime after my attempt to find the Bardricks, I found a notation online which stated that Isaac and Celestia were in fact buried in “Roberts Cemetery,” in Adair County – not Pitzer cemetery in Madison County as Grandma had recalled.
So on another sunny day, I took off again in search of the Bardricks. A librarian in Greenfield (Adair County seat) gave me an imprecise map generally showing where the various cemeteries were located in the county, but this map was a hand-drawn affair with little dots where the cemeteries were. It did not name the cemeteries, or even the roads. She encouraged me to stop at a particular farm and ask the residents there for help, as they were sure to know.
These folks were friendly – but couldn’t direct me. I decided to go on up the road and maybe find someone else to ask. It was mid-summer, and lots of folks who work the land were out and about on various farm tasks so there really was no shortage of people to ask for help. I stopped at a couple places, and finally at one of them someone told me to visit a particular farm where the owner would probably have a spare “plat map” to share with me. It turns out that a plat map is a booklet published by the county that shows who owns each farm, and who resides in each farm house. The map also showed little crosses where the cemeteries were, but again it did not name them by name. The man who gave me this booklet suggested that I stop by Bill Beaman’s place – Bill had lived in the county “forever” and could probably help me.
Bill Beaman was indeed helpful – he gave me perfect directions to Roberts Cemetery, and the moment I rounded the bend in the road I had a feeling I was in the right place. I stepped out of the car at the foot of the little hill on which the cemetery had been situated and started my walk-through at the west end of it. At the foot of the hill, at the last stone in the second row I walked, was the resting place of the Bardricks. “Ha! Found you,” I told them, and gently brushed away collected grass clippings from the stone.
Twist-to-the-ending #1: As it turns out, the stone here is marked for Celestia Bardrick but her death record shows that she is actually buried in Summerfield, Kansas, where she had traveled after Isaac’s death to live with one of her children. So even though I found them, I still haven’t fully found them.
Twist-to-the-ending #2: upon hearing the name Bill Beaman I immediately recognized it as one I’d heard my husband mention several times. The guy who helped me find my missing great-great grandparents was my husband’s ex-wife’s first ex-husband.
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[...] really incredible, as it’s likely more than 100 years old. And extra special to me, because finding his gravestone remains one of my favorite cemetery-searching stories along my entire genealogical journey. Share this with friends: These icons link to social [...]