Tombstone Tuesday: Surprised at the Cemetery

Last summer, while my aunt, cousin and I were on out trip through the East Coast, I had a great find at the cemetery where I knew my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather were buried. About two years ago, I found Dennis and John O’Connell both listed in an index for St. Paul’s / St. Mary’s Cemetery in Hudson Falls. The day after I found the index, I called and spoke with Dorothy at the church and was able to verify that this was indeed my family. It had only taken me about 8 years to find this link. I was ecstatic and knew I would have to make the trip to the cemetery at some point. Well, last summer that all came to life for me. We spent the morning in another town and by late afternoon we had finally found our way to the St. Mary’s /St. Paul’s Cemetery. I thought that I had drawn a picture of the cemetery from the index, but no such luck. Instead we spent a good hour looking for the gravesites. I was angry at myself because I knew better than to go into a cemetery not knowing where to be looking. Though this was a smaller cemetery to what I am used to visiting back home, there was still many stones to be read. We split up and continued the search.

At one point, I found the name Daha and took a few pictures because I knew this line married into ours. I just did not have specifics on the family. Just a brief note I found in an obituary for Dennis O’Connell. After taking 1-2 pictures, I was aggravated and decided to stop taking pictures to look for the O’Connell family once again. When I did that, my cousin Tracy urged me to continue taking photo’s of the Daha stones, there were many of them. While I reluctantly continued, Tracy and our aunt were moving towards an older section of the cemetery that was further away from all the other stones. I actually tripped over a stone when I was done with the Daha pictures, I looked down and you guessed it, I actually stumbled onto my family plot! I was so excited, the O’Connell family was all buried together. John Sr., his wife Maria, John Jr, his wife Beatrice and Dennis. These were all of the family members that I knew were there. The stone I stumbled on was for Elizabeth O’Connell Daha the gravesite next to her was for Mary O’Connell Herring. Both of these ladies are sisters to Dennis and daughters to John Sr! I was thrilled at the discovery because I did not see either name in the index and when I called the church, this information was not given to me either.

Elizabeth O’Connell