52 Ancestors – WEEK 37 – Tombstone
By Cynthia Keefer Patton
Is it funny if I have my name and some vital information already engraved on a tombstone in Gulfport, Mississippi? When my first husband passed away we were both avid genealogists and had taken the time to design a double headstone for ourselves after his mother passed away.
It was to be located in the little county cemetery at the top of the hill overlooking our land in rural Harrison County. Family lore said the Patton family had deeded over the location to a church which later burned down. The little community is called Finley and this is now the Finley Cemetery.
When he passed away in June 2010 I pulled the drawing we had designed together out of a file called "Estate Planning" and took it to the company that made headstones. It took a couple of months until they set the headstone at his gravesite. We also had the smaller footstone that the Veteran's Administration had issued us marking his service in Vietnam.
I married again and now live in Kansas City, Missouri. My current husband is perfectly OK with knowing I will be cremated and remains shared between that location that holds all the genealogy gems of the first part of my life and somewhere here (probably Warrensburg, Missouri) at his burial location. We will annotate our marriage information on his tombstone. Hopefully, good researchers in the future will be able to "untangle" this mess and I will ask someone to make good notes on the Find a Grave site to explain if I show up in a Google search as being buried in two locations!
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