On our last day in Watkins Glen, we visited cemeteries. First stop, Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira NY which is the resting place of Charlie's great-grandfather George Harris Horton. Woodlawn is a large shady cemetery with lovely tomb monuments for the more than 50,000 souls buried there. We did not have a prayer of finding George's grave. Without an online directory and no section markers in sight, we were out of luck. Maybe if it had been a weekday we could have found someone with information... But we did visit the gravesite of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (aka Mark Twain) whose location was well marked.
Next stop on the genealogy tour of cemeteries was Forest Lawn Cemetery. This cemetery had a totally different feel, located on a nearly treeless hill outside town. And instead of monuments, the gravesites are marked by metal plaques mounted flush to the ground. I personally don't like that, although I understand that it makes cemetery mowing a lot easier. But many of the markers are being overgrown from the dirt and grass that has settled on them over time, to the point that many are no doubt totally obscured. And of course we again did not have the benefit of a directory with gravesite locations, so we walked up and down the rows in the hot sun for two 1/2 hours until we found the gravesites of grandpa Harold Harris Horton and great-grandma Teresa Horton. Whew!
Other stops in Elmira included the hospital where Charlie was born and his first home.
Hope you wore sunscreen!
ReplyDeleteI know there just had to be a Horton Hears a Who joke somewhere in those 2.5 hours. :)
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