One of the things I wanted to do while I was home for the holiday was to take pictures of family stones at the local cemeteries. (I know, not particularly festive, but I don't get home that often and photos of tombstones are admissible for DAR evidence.) I found some family members but not others. Heck, I can't even figure out where some of my people are buried; so I thought I was doing good to get what I did. I was really looking for one of my great, great grandmothers on my father's side. She had been widowed and remarried, so the name was different. After a little search my sister found her in Byhalia Cemetary. It helps that she knew the place.
It is so odd, here is this tombstone of a women I never knew who died younger than I am now. What happened? What was her life like? She was married at 18 and widowed at 27. She remarried, had another baby at 41 then died when the baby was just 1 year old. Her son, my great grandfather and his wife, moved in with his stepfather to help care for the baby. Two of his children were within a year of his half-sister. It is amazing to see family dynamics at work in census records.
RIP Mattie Holmes Romick Schertzer
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