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Dell's Grave

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    Posted 8 years ago

    SpiritBear
    (813 items)

    It occurred yesterday, whereas the photo is from today.
    For some reason, my interest in the man was renewed-- quite a bit so. For little reason, really, than that I happened to be going by a cemetery the other day and stopped to visit the forgotten graves.
    I went home that evening and began to look back at the information on Dell's "resting place" at Evergreen Cemetery. I was able to find a plot map and interpret the 3-digit code for his place of burial and see what section he was in. He was located in section 1-2-2.
    I was quite pleased. If I had interpreted it correctly, it meant he was in a far corner-- thus to be easily found. So I printed the paper off at college, wrote down direction to the cemetery, and drove there that still-foggy day.
    I parked my car beside the building that has been making headstones for that cemetery since the 1800s and crossed the street to the shaded, filled cemetery used since at least the 1860s.
    I walked to the right side and followed the map as I moved through low-lying less-well-off-people's stones, mostly more modern ones not earlier than the 1930s (I'm wondering if they all were replaced like Dell's?) and stopped to look around in the far corner.
    I didn't see it. I saw similar stones and walked around to read their faces, but it wasn't there. I became worried I had improperly read the map, but I moved left to the next section and realised that each rectangle on the map did not correspond to a single grave, but a set of graves-- typically 4 each.
    Several feet to my left, I saw what looked like the headstones in the photos I had seen on the site for the cemetery. There was his grave and his wife's grave, surely.
    I walked up and my heart seemed to pause a moment. My eyes moistened. There he was, old Dell Baribeau, who had died at about age 39 in the Traverse City Asylum for the Insane in the year 1901-- not 10 years after he had gotten married to his wife Florence, who never remarried but lived till 1963.
    He was under my feet, under the leaves which I cleared away, under the grass. And there was his wife, whose headstone was sinking into the ground as it was on the slope of a small hill. I moved to hers, adjusted it, looked at Dell one last time and took a walk through the large cemetery.
    I found Dell, and the next day I brought his original marker to the graveyard and took a photo of it with his grave. What I have not found is why or when he went to the asylum, why he died, why his wife never remarried, nor anything else about their lives.
    It's a sad story of a Canadian immigrant. I'm sure he was long forgotten about, just like his story, but now I will always remember him albeit I never knew him.

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    Comments

    1. SpiritBear, 8 years ago
      You can see my original post here:
      http://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/194962-ashes-marker?in=activity
    2. OlofZ OlofZ, 8 years ago
      So glad you went there! Touching story. /Olof
    3. SpiritBear, 8 years ago
      Thank you again for all of your help, OlofZ.
    4. SpiritBear, 8 years ago
      LOL, thank you, CindB.

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