I’ve been watching as many people on Twitter are following the daily blogging themes and making those posts to their own blogs. Not one to do what everyone else is doing (well, except actually start a blog), I’m going to try a theme, but I’m straying from the pack. I first considered Tombstone Tuesday, but I would feel like it goes by too slow, although doing one stone at a time would certainly fill a lot of blog entries.
So I’ve decided to take a crack at Cemetery Sunday. Looking at gravestones depresses my relatives, but I like them and so do other genealogists, so I’m going to share them on this blog.
Today’s cemetery is Mount Sinai located in Miami, Florida. I have four relatives buried there: my paternal grandparents Sidney and Mary Feldstein, and her brother Alex Miller and his wife Blanche. Mary remarried a few times after Sidney’s death, so her stone bears her final surname, Goldfarb.
I’ve included two images of Sidney’s stone just for fun. The first was taken in 1999 before I was using a digital camera. The second was in 2005.
Sidney has two gravestones. The one below was erected by Mary. But my parents wanted to do better by him and put up the taller one just behind it. Notice the year of birth on the two stones? He was actually born in 1904.
Sadly, this family didn’t plan ahead very well. When Alex died, they purchased two plots together so Mary could be buried next to him. Sidney and Mary are both several rows in from the road, on opposite sides of the road.
My parents question whether Alex served during World War II, which Mary put on his stone. I haven’t researched it yet.
Blanche is even farther away from Alex and Mary than Sidney is. They all used to be inline with a tree, as my mother told me to use the tree to find them, but it wasn’t there when I went to visit them. The last time I was in that cemetery before going for genealogy research was in 1990 at Mary’s funeral. I don’t recall going for the unveiling.
My last visit to the cemetery, I went looking for a couple of Gottesmans whom my mother believes are probably our cousins. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find them in the cemetery, even with directions from the office. Someday I’ll have to follow that lead again.