Finding Grandfather Emery

After Matt figured out that Great-grandfather Emery Moneysmith died and so assumedly was buried in Dowagiac, Michigan, I was able to call the cemetery there. Yes, I was told, he was in that cemetery and on Lot 16, but there was no headstone. Hearing “no headstone” registered at the time, but hearing is not the same as seeing, and it didn’t stick. Following our conversation, the helpful lady sent me a full map of the cemetery with Lot 16 carefully marked, lines showing the best way to reach it, and a note with the names of the headstones on either side of Lot 16. The next step was to wait for someone to have the chance to make a trip to Michigan.

That happened in September of 2010 when my husband and I and my cousin Joy Divine Sholty drove up to Dowagiac from her home on the Indiana-Michigan border. It had been pouring rain part of our trip, but when we arrived, the rain let up to simply a steady sprinkle.

Because we had the clearly marked map, we assumed it would be easy to locate what we were looking for, but it wasn’t. For starters, it is a huge cemetery. It is indeed laid out in the dozens of curved roads seen on the map, but most of the roads were grass like everything else, so they did not stand out. Shortly before we hit the panic button, we spotted a worker with a truck.

“Follow me!” he said when we approached him, and he led the way in his truck right to where we wanted to go. That’s when “no headstone” became vividly clear. Each lot holds four burial plots, and in this case not one of the four had a headstone. The helpful sexton knew what to look for. “When was this burial?” he wanted to know. “Nineteen-sixteen,” we told him. “Aha! They were still burying in wooden boxes in 1916,” and he quietly laid down the probe he had brought with him. It didn’t take him long to discern and point out to us that one part of the lot was slightly indented. The soil had sunk there, so that’s where Grandfather Emery was.

At the time, we thought he had died alone; having no headstone seemed to suggest that. But when we got home, we reviewed the information we have (something we should have done before we went) and learned that his younger son William lived in Dowagiac at the time and is listed as the informant for the information on the death certificate. Why the son didn’t see fit to give his father a headstone is something we’ll probably never know.

We do know from a visit to a grandson born eight years after Emery died that his two sons had a falling out that may have lasted the rest of their lives. One of those sons was William, the one with Emery in Dowagiac when he died; the other was my dad’s father, Jacob Moneysmith. My dad was five and a half when his paternal grandfather died, but because of the family rift, we question whether they ever saw each other in those few short years and wonder how long it took for the news to reach Jacob’s family in Mishawaka that his father had passed away.

Finding Emery’s resting place was a mixed emotional experience. Having wondered about him and searched for him for so long made the finding satisfying. But we already knew about the somewhat broken life he had lived, beginning with his mother’s death when he was only nine and including two divorces and the abandonment of a young girl. The absence of a headstone further added to a feeling of melancholy and, since then, putting together the pieces of the family rift—it definitely adds up to a mixed picture. And if Grandfather Emery ever in his life made any peace with God, we don’t know about it.

I know it doesn’t do him any good that we found him, but I am glad for me that we did.