Searching for homesteads and final resting places

This morning we visited Crown Hill Memorial Park outside Clinton NY in search of the gravesite of Charlie's maternal grandparents, Stephen Deforest Spencer and Myrtie Crawe Spencer.  A large cemetery that opened in the 1930s, the gravestones here are mounted flush with the ground.  We were worried we would never find their gravesites until we spotted the office/maintenance shop.  There we were very lucky to find a very knowledgeable and helpful employee who called himself "Goosh" (no idea about the spelling).  Right away he put down what he was working on and took Charlie into the "office" where there were binders after binders of gravesite records.  Boy, do they need a group of volunteers to computerize their files!  One leaky roof or a fire and there would be no records at all.  Anyway, we knew approximate burial dates that he used to select the correct binder and find the record.  We followed his truck to the spot that corresponded to the cemetery map, where he then pulled out a shovel, shoved it into the ground to locate a marker, and then removed the blanket of grass that had grown over the grave marker.  Again, they could use a group of volunteers to unearth those markers.  We are very grateful to Goosh for the pleasant and competent help he provided.

In Clinton NY we found the home of Charlie's favorite Aunt Grace (Spencer Bacon).  It was exactly as Charlie remembered.  That was nice, especially since the homestead of Stephen & Myrtie Crawe Spencer is now the site of an apartment complex.

Outside the village of Turin NY we went to "Welch Hill" cemetery to find the grave of Union soldier Alonzo Spencer, Charlie's great-grandfather.  We found Alonzo's gravestone, and also the gravestone for Anna M. Spencer, the 18 year-old daughter of Chester Spencer and Susannah Vickery Spencer (the parents of Alonzo).  We did not find the gravesites of either Chester or Susannah, but we suspect that they are buried there as well.  This cemetery is located along a country road and has suffered from the lack of caretaking.  The GPS coordinates are: N 43.125975, E -74.973550.  (According to a local resident, the cemetery fence had been recently installed because a preservation group had received a grant.)  Many gravestones are flush with the ground (either because they were initially installed that way or have fallen over) and have become covered by grass.  We found the daughter's gravestone only because we saw a bit of the stone and were able to pull away by hand the grass that had grown over the stone.  Without proper tools, we weren't able to investigate what other grave markers lay just below the surface.  But there are wide gaps in the cemetery's rows where no doubt there are additional gravesites.  Any volunteers to document and preserve local cemeteries?