Betty's Box - Part II

As mentioned in the previous post, my second cousin Betty and I have yet to meet in person.  Last May Betty started scanning in pictures from her mother's box.  One of the first priceless pictures she sent was this one of her family.  From left to right are pictured Don, Edith Jones Hodges (sister of my grandfather Fred Jones), Wyvetta ("Betty"), Mary Lee and Betty.  Betty told me that she is the only one in the picture who is still living.  She also has a younger brother, John Patrick, known as "Pat" who was not yet born when the picture was taken.  It is the elder Betty who was responsible for holding onto all of the documents and pictures in "The Box."

There were several "priceless" pictures in Betty's Box.  One pictured my grandfather, Fred Jones (Pop) with his two siblings:  Edith and Leo.  I had never seen a picture of him as a young boy.

 

Edith, Leo, and Fred 

Britton Wainright and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Darby had two daughters and a son who lived to be adults.  There are numerous posts on this blog about Britton (you can use the search function to read about him) who died of heatstroke while traveling with a unit of Home Guards to confront John Morgan of Morgan's Raiders.  He left a widow and three children.  One of his daughters, Rachel, is the great-grandmother of both Betty Arnett and the descendants of Fred Jones.  I was such an admirer of Rachel and never thought I would see a picture of her.

Because Ruth was the older of the two girls, we believe that from left to right are pictured Rachel, Thomas, Ruth, and their mother, Mary Elizabeth Darby Wainright.  Rachel was "Pop's" mother.

Through the wonders of Ancestry, I've also been in contact over the years with another cousin, Rhonda.  She descends from Ruth's side and was able to help with the identification of the grandchildren of Mary Elizabeth from the Hutcheson/Hutchinson side of the family.  Ruth Wainright married a Hutchinson.  One of her sons was a photographer and took this picture.  The Hutchesons lived in Evansville, IN.  Through a "cousin collaboration", we were able to identify all six of Mary Elizabeth's grandchildren.  Moving in a clockwise direction from the bottom are:  Mary Olive Hutchinson, Charles "Fred" Jones, Mary "Edith" Jones, Leslie T. Hutchinson, Thomas Harvey Hutchinson, and Leo Wainright Jones.

As I don't want to lose the picture record, I think we'll just have to have one more post from "Betty's Box".

Cemetery Surprises

When I started doing research I had some underlying assumptions. For instance, if a grave marker said someone was buried there, I assumed that meant they were buried there. How naive! As stated earlier, Rachel Wainright Jones (Pop's Mom) is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate, Kentucky. Interestingly there are grave markers on the plot for her father Britton, mother Mary Elizabeth, her brother Thomas, and her grandparents, Ruth and William Wainright. The people that run the cemetery office tried to help me out. They keep pretty good records. They told me that they had no record for the burial of William. They even had a sketch of the plot showing who was buried where -- still no record of William.



By the time I found Rachel, I had substantial information about her father, Britton. He had an interesting history I'll discuss in another posting. I knew he died "in defense of his country against the rebel John Morgan" of Morgan's Raiders fame. I knew he died of heatstroke near New Albany, Indiana in 1863. I had a copy of his Civil War Pension Index. I knew his widow, Mary Elizabeth, brought the family back to Cincinnati. I wondered how someone's body from the Civil War who died in Indiana made its way back to Cincinnati. The plot sketch says that Britton was buried in Evergreen in April, 1864 (a year after his death). I've read of families spending quite a bit of money to recover the bodies of their Civil War dead, but I wondered if Mary Elizabeth actually brought his body to Cincinnati when the family returned. The Cemetery Office could not locate a card for Britton in their file. But there was the grave marker -- spelling out all of the details about Britton's life.

Then there was William -- Rachel's grandfather. They had a record for the burial of Ruth, but not William. Again, William had a grave marker. Ruth was living with her daughter, Rachel Lusk, in Newport at the time of her death. Apparently, William and possibly Ruth had been living with another daughter in Athens, OH when William died. It wasn't until October 2008 that I was able to find William buried in the South Canaan Cemetery outside of Athens on the family plot owned by his daughter, Ann Eliza Broadwell. There was a wonderful verse engraved on his marker, yet his wife was not buried next to him when she died a few years later. Lesson number one: Sometimes it's not a grave marker, it's a memorial to a loved one they would have liked to be buried near.

Then there is the mystery of Charles Jones monument in the Walnut Hills Cemetery. I was fascinated from the first time I saw it. There was a symbol on the monument that referred to the "Golden Lodge" and "70". I've scanned in a copy so you can see the crossed swords, ivy, etc. I could not seem to identify a Golden Lodge.













A couple of years ago I found the Death Notice for Charles Henry. There was my answer! Again I found it interesting that the notice would acknowledge that he was a "Member of Golden Lodge, K. of P." but not mention that he was the father of Fred, Leo, and Edith. I guess Alwilda placed the Death Notice.

Further research allowed me to find out what the "K of P" was. It stands for the Knights of Phythias, a fraternal organization established by an Act of Congress in 1864. You can read more about the organization by following this link http://www.pythias.org/about/about.html The organization was devoted to international peace. If only their goals had been achieved. It gives me one more clue as to who Charles Henry was. He obviously valued friendship and service. Wish I could learn more.