Midwest Taphophile

Zinc grave marker with a statue on top and inverted torches on the front. Grave marker is for the Bump family.

Zinc grave marker with an inverted torch and a dove for Love Bump.

Zinc grave marker for Bump family, including Elias Bump, with anchor, inverted torches, gathered wheat symbols.

I love Avondale. Glenwood Cemetery gets all the love, but I think Avondale is more interesting. And my family is there.

And so is the Bump Family, including the unfortunately named Love Bump. More on her someday.

But I never realized that the Bump family has a zinc marker with inverted torches!

Sign for Avondale Cemetery on a brick pier with a green wrought iron fence

I decided to go through all of my cemetery photos and find images of inverted torches.

I haven't gone through all of them yet, but after going through most, I've only found one.

One!

And I found it in the very first cemetery I started exploring as a teen:

Avondale Cemetery in Flint, Michigan

For the record, I requested changes to the first design but approved the revised design (even though I still wasn't crazy about it), but I promise the drawing looked neater than this.

Anyway, I ended up getting it fixed by someone else and am very happy with the result:

One of my favorite cemetery symbols is the inverted torch. An upside-down torch symbolizes death, and one with the flame still burning symbolizes the soul continuing to exist after death.

So I decided to get a tattoo of one!

But the first attempt didn't go great.

Also, the painted stones left at the graves of Edith Lefever and Jessie Hanna Bond are gone. A reminder that unless you are a cemetery employee, you should never remove anything from a gravesite.

I know flowers and other decorations are often removed regularly, but I'm not sure about stones.

A few side notes:

Adelia's younger brother, Hugh McCulloch Bond, was married to one of my favorite women buried in Lindenwood Cemetery: Jessie Elizabeth Hanna Bond. I'm planning on doing a post on her soon.

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Overview of Bond cemetery plot; Massive marble or granite central marker that says "Bond" surrounded by smaller gravestones in a circle or square.

Adelia is buried in the Bond family plot. Most of the Bond grave markers are thick, uniform marble tablets. Adelia's is the exception. If you look closely in the photo below, you can see her light gray grave markers splayed out amongst the other reddish-brown grave markers.

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Four stone slabs of a collapsed cradle style grave marker lying flat on the ground.

Detail photo of headstone with worn carving of an angle carrying a child within a circle. The words "Asleep in Jesus" are barely legible below the carving.

We found Adelia's grave on Saturday. It's collapsed but still in good shape. The stones don't appear broken, and it would be pretty easy to repair. The carving seems a bit more worn, though, and you can barely make out "Asleep in Jesus." As is, water will collect and freeze, causing more damage.

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Find a Grave has a 2018 photo of Adelia Mary Bond's grave, showing it as a cradle style marker. The headstone also has a carving of an angel carrying a child to heaven, similar to the motif on the Trinity Episcopal window. Her full name "Adelia Mary Bond" is displayed on the top.

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7 children. Six survived to adulthood. Charles died in 1873 of typhoid pneumonia and Anna died in 1910 as a result of an accidental fall. (Her cause of death is recorded as "fracture of the patella."

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Charles Bond was a prominent banker and also very involved in the church, as was his mother, Adelia Darrow Bond, little Adelia's namesake. I'm not sure when the window was commissioned, but it was likely completed in the 1860s, not long after Adelia's death.

Charles and Anna had a total of

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Middle section of a stained glass window with a panel featuring a line drawn image of two adult female angels looking over a sleeping child. Above the panel is a ribbon with the text He shall give His Angels charge over thee.

a sleeping child, with the words "He shall give His Angels charge over thee."

Naturally, I started doing research on my phone in the church pew.

Little Adelia Mary Bond was born October 9, 1859, to Charles Douglas Bond and Anna Lavina Ewing. Adelia died September 1, 1861. 1yr 10m 24d

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Tall, gothic-arched, colorful stained glass window inside an Episcopal church

Detail view of stained glass window showing a ribbon with the words "In Memoriam" and "Adelia Mary." Other decorative features on the window include flowers, leaves, birds, and a green Fleur-de-lis.

Adelia Mary Bond - Lindenwood Cemetery, Fort Wayne

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in Trinity Episcopal Church for a choir performance and noticed this beautiful window.

At the bottom, it reads "In Memoriam" and "Adelia Mary," while the middle has a lovely image of two angels overlooking

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But she was recorded as 2 years old, not 4 months.
So probably not.

There is a Carrie B. Hagendorf in the county death records who died June 1877, but isn't buried anywhere else. There also aren't any other Hagendorfs in the Fort Wayne census records, so I initially thought that the baby was buried hastily and maybe there was a typo, either with the B or the H

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Carrie's family. There is a county death index available for the years ~1870 to ~1920, but the searchable index online also gives no clues.

There might be clues in cemetery records or by browsing the index on microfilm at the library.

A small round grave marker surrounded by dry leaves. The date "1877" is in the center and is surrounded by "Carrie R." on top and "Aged 4 M 5 D" on the bottom.

After a bit of a hiatus, the weather is turning, and my thoughts are also turning once again to cemeteries.

This is Carrie R., who died in 1877 at the age of 4 months and 5 days. Carrie is buried in Lindenwood Cemetery, Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The surrounding graves give no indication as to

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So, I guess my message is, learn how to read primary records, do your own research, trust (I guess) but verify, and when in doubt, trust people who do this type of research for a living.

The thing is, the more people on Ancestry that agree that two different people are the same person, the more likely Ancestry is to insist that they are the same person, thus coercing more people to add incorrect records to their trees.

This is how AI works, btw.

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And Thomas married Mahala Bennett; Willis married Mahala Jones.

Thomas died before his Mahala.
Willis died after his Mahala.

And sure, some (not most) of Thomas and Mahala's kids have the same names as Willis and Mahala's kids, but that happens when you have hundreds of kids.

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My next grave story involves Thomas and Mahala Hodges who lived in AL and GA with their hundreds of kids. Ancestry is insisting in its suggested records that they are the same as Willis and Mahala Hodges who lived in AL and GA with their hundreds of kids.

But Thomas is named Thomas, not Willis

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Before I get into more Langdale Cemetery stories, allow me a moment to vent.

Ancestry makes it super easy to find records and build your family tree, so easy that anyone can do it. But please, please don't just accept the suggested records, no matter how insistent they are that they match.

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And now I'm going to do something productive, workwise, before I share another Langdale Cemetery gravestone history.

Also, side note.

I took my photo in 2012 and the findagrave photo is from 2016.

Are the graves at Langdale Cemetery sinking? Or did this one just get pushed down a bit?

BUT WHAT IF
and I'm just throwing this out there
if you take "Mrs. Rowton" out of the equation

What if it's not Littie Rowton, but Rowton Littie?

Because there ARE Litties living in Chambers County in the 1920s and 1930s.

Yeah, Mrs. Rowton does throw a wrench into that theory, but maybe?

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There are no "Rowtons" in Chambers County. There was a Routon Family in the 1870s, but they left Chambers County by 1880 and are buried elsewhere. There are also no "Rowtons" in nearby Troup County, GA.

There is a large Rotton family, but they are prominent and are buried elsewhere.

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Littie Rowton

These rounded concrete stones date from b/w 1910 - 1940. A few do have dates, and some have been further identified on findagrave, but not Littie Rowton or (her likely mother) "Mrs. Rowton" nearby.

(I never got a photo of Mrs. Rowton. The one below is from findagrave.)

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Charles eventually found work as a machinist for the Southern Railroad and moved with his family to Atlanta, where he died in 1923.

In 1890, Charles Bowles married Bobbie Lee Bain in Chambers County, Alabama. I'm not sure if Carrie Duncan Bowles had died by that time or if she and Charles had divorced. I cannot find an Alabama death record for her (Georgia's starts in 1914), nor can I find a grave.

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I cannot find anything anywhere about Carrie Rosalie Duncan other than the marriage record.

There are other Duncans buried at Langdale, but I can't find any solidly connected to a "Carrie" or "Rosalie." I suspect that she's related to Jacob and Melissa Duncan, though I can't prove it yet.

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