GEA: Prospect Hill Cemetery

Two weeks ago, I visited Prospect Hill Cemetery in Caldwell, New Jersey. This cemetery is most likely overflowing with ancestors of mine. Until I research more, I think I’ve hit the limit of my knowledge of them.

Prospect Hill plot layouts

This is the closest I can come to laying out where my family plots are. They could be slightly off though. We weren’t exactly in the cemetery hunting mode. We were in wedding mode!

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Paying Attention to your Surroundings

When I was a kid, my Mom used to hate taking us to the store. It was a guarantee that one of us would get caught in the excitement at whatever store we were at, and we’d lose track of her. More than once my Mom has told the story of my sister walking into columns at the store, despite numerous warnings of  “Amanda. Amanda. Watch out Amanda. AMANDA.” BAM. Of course I never did that… I did use to follow the wrong Mom around the store though… Okay so I did that last week.

Never has this handicap of ours become more apparent then it did today. I have a few hours to myself. So I decided to finally add some tombstone photos I took at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Caldwell to Find A Grave. First thing I noticed when reviewing the photos I’d added a few years back was that I missed a few! Somehow when I got all the Thorward photos from my very helpful Photo Volunteer, I forgot to add some of them! He left it to me, and look what happens!

Step 1: Admitting you have a problem
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It Suckered Us All In

As I was writing up yesterday’s Mystery Monday post, I was reminded of the single, most consuming mystery I’ve ever had. It started when I first started going through the boxes of treasures/photographs/papers. When I first started scanning the photographs into my computer, I just labeled them UnknownMooreThorward-01 and so on. Funny enough, years after solving this mystery and they’re still named that.

Mystery Photo #1

This is the photo that launched the hours, months, years of frustration. Okay, so I’m exaggerating a tiny bit. It did take me years to solve this though. I would pick it up every few months and try again. I don’t know why I was so struck by this picture. I was just so curious about this building.

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Mystery Monday: Where?

Where am I?

My Mystery Monday posts usually have to do with the people in my photographs. That isn’t the case today. I’ve been wondering for awhile about where this particular picture is taken. I’ve had numerous inputs, one being around the Jersey Shore and others being another Jersey town. The only thing everyone agrees on is that this is Jersey. My questions about places aren’t usually solved quickly. Remind me to tell you about the Victory Arch photograph… In fact, I’ll write that up sometime this week. It’s a great story!

What I know about this photo:

  • It was most likely taken in New Jersey… somewhere.
  • It is most likely a member of the Thorward family.

What I want to know about this photo:

  • Where this particular house is?
  • Who’s house is this?
  • Who are the people in the photograph?
  • How are they related or connected to my family?
  • Where those awnings green and white? For some reason I feel like they were green and white?
  • Can I have a time machine to walk through these old houses? Pretty please?

Mystery Monday is a weekly series on my blog. It is now a Daily Blogging Theme at GeneaBloggers also! Feel free to post about your own mysteries and link me to them!

The Llewellyn Project

On Friday, I hinted about a project that I have coming up. I meant to have the entry ready to go for Sunday, but things got busy during my trip over the weekend and I didn’t get a chance. So I’m here now to give a little info on it.

I often talk about my Great Grandmother’s journal here on the blog. The diary starts on January 1, 1923, or at least from what I can tell. So on January 1, 2011 I will be starting my Llewellyn Project. In a separate section of the blog, I will be doing a daily transcription from her journal. I will slowly work my way through the diary. Adding in pictures of relevant people or places when I can. The diary goes on for close to three years. This isn’t going to be an overnight finish. I hope to finally finish getting through it though. Sometimes it wasn’t more than a few lines, but those few lines are a great glimpse into the past. I hope you will enjoy this as much as I hope to!

January 1st is my deadline for my site re-design. If it’s done earlier, well that would be great!

Busy Busy Busy

The day after we said goodbye to our dear old mailbox, I did something stupid. In hindsight, I probably couldn’t have avoided it. It was probably going to happen no matter what kind of circumstances led to it. Alright, I’ll tell you. I fell down the front porch stairs. I didn’t fall down all the stairs luckily. Just the last two. The first night I was afraid I broke it, but luckily it’s just a sprain. The problem is I’m a horrible patient. The first two days I had problems getting comfortable whether I was sitting or standing. Now the problem is not over-doing things now that I’m finally on the mend. I just can’t sit still!

Click for full size

The second thing I’ve been doing is troubleshooting my new website design. I like keeping you guys updated on my progress because it keeps me from quitting. This design is all my own. I haven’t modified any templates to suit my needs. So it’s a labor of love that is taking awhile to do. My current issue is getting all three columns to line up. I need that middle one to scootch over a bit so the blog sidebar can move up in line with the rest of the layout. You can’t see it but it’s there all the way at the bottom. Then I’ll conquer the customization of all the WordPress things like the look of a blog entry and the sidebar customization. I’ll tell you though, more than once I’ve wanted to download a theme from somewhere and just be done with it! This will be more satisfying by far.

Hopefully it gets figured out by January 1st, because that’s when I’m starting my Llewellyn Project. I’ll tell you more about that during Sentimental Sunday.

The Comedic Chapter

One day, I hope to write a memoir. Not to publish or distribute. Just a  way to maybe connect with future generations of my family. Llewellyn’s journal has made me feel connected to her and I want to recreate that in some small way.

If I were to write my memoir, I’d include all those funny child anecdotes, and not to mention all those teenage years where I was unruly and needed a good talking to. I’d be sure to include how I dealt with the fact that I was bullied mercilessly in middle school. All that drama and deep thinking wouldn’t be a very accurate portrayal of my life. To be perfectly honest, we’re pretty funny in this family. Our family is not only filled with drama, loss, and tears. We’ve had a whole lot of laughter too. The latest adventure I’m definitely putting in my memoir. It would be titled “The Comedic Chapter”.

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