I feel like recently a lot of my posts have mentioned how ridiculously cool I think my family is. This is another one of those posts. Back in January, my sixteen-year-old nephew texted me about our many greats great grandfather. He’s super into genealogy which is something that interests me but basically only in the sense that I’d like the information handed to me and then I wanna go see where those folks are buried*. So, when he told me a bit of information about this random family member and mentioned he found the cemetery he was buried at, I was definitely interested!
*That really makes it sound like I’m not interested but I am! It’s just that I have a lot of other hobbies and spending time/money on genealogy sites just doesn’t make the cut at this time. There’s only so much time in a day, ya know?
Nearly a whole year has passed but as I was getting ready to hit the road and head to Philadelphia last weekend for a concert I happened to remember those texts. My nephew had mentioned it was ‘somewhat close to Philadelphia’. As luck would have it, it was only 20 minutes or so off our route. Of
The route there from the highway was beautiful. Hilly, wooded, and speckled with beautiful old homes. I exclaimed more than once “this is where I wanna live!” The cemetery itself sits next to an old church. There are close to 900 memorials listed on FindAGrave but somehow I managed to essentially walk straight up to what I was looking for…
There he is, Daniel Evans. My great great great great great grandfather! Born in 1743 in Caernarfonshire, Wales, he emigrated to the United States in 1752. Daniel is thought to have been a soldier in the Revolutionary War and was a schoolmate of General “Mad Anthony” Wayne.
I’ve never heard of this man. I know no stories of him, aside from what I read on his FindAGrave page but the excitement of finding a relative was immense! I don’t even have any relatives that I know of with the surname ‘Evans’ but suddenly every Evans in this cemetery was cause for squeals of excitement. Let me tell you, I just kept stumbling upon them too! Most were so old it was hard to make out dates and inscriptions. Still, SO exciting!!!
I kind of thought I’d just be sharing some photos from my little adventure and telling you just that it was a relative but gosh darn it, I’ve been cruising ancestry sites for the last oh… four hours. I’m excited to learn more and visit other cemeteries with the excuse of looking for relatives. I have a feeling that’s going to be my new obsession for a bit. While browsing the internet, I found my nephew’s records of our family tree, that’ll definitely make it a lot easier to start finding where folks are buried.
Here’s to finding more long lost relatives! xoxo
Check out more of my cemetery posts here.