I know that it has been awhile, again, but the good news is that I have gathered a lot more information over the past few months. All I have to do now is to categorize all this stuff into several coherent posts. So I thought I would start out somewhere familiar: Cathedral Cemetery, Scranton, PA.
You may recall me talking about the Davis connection that took me years to figure out. Sometimes all it takes is one or two little tidbits of information to find the connection, and then the landslide of info that makes you wonder why you did not figure it out a long time ago. I am not going to go crazy telling you the story again, but the Davis family has lived near my Brady family since the 1860's in Gordon, Schuylkill County, PA. Then they turned up in Scranton and I was able to figure out that Mrs Davis (Catherine) and Mrs Brady (Bidget) were sisters (Convey). Pennsylvania Death Certificates on Ancestry.com really helped out making the connection. Some of the Davis children died in Scranton. Delia and Mary E Davis lived at 1392 N Washington Ave at the time of their death. That address is now Andy Gavin's Pub and Eatery, and is allegedly haunted. One of the sons, James also died in Scranton, as did his 10 year old son, Carl. They were all buried in Cathedral Cemetery, unfortunately Carl was the first to be buried there.
On one of my visits to my sister, I drove to the cemetery on a Saturday morning and checked at the office for burial locations. They were extremely helpful, to the point where I felt bad that they spent so much time helping me. My goal was to locate the Davis plot.
The lady in the office actually made a copy of the file card and a map so that I could find the plot, and I walked out to search for the plot. I was walking around for awhile and the only Davis headstone that I saw was huge and was marked with just "DAVIS". Story of my research. But I kept looking and that is when the familiar pick up truck went by. It belongs to the cemetery and is used by employees to get around the cemetery because it is huge and would take forever to walk through. The truck is also used to help wandering people find what they are looking for.
The man got out of the truck and said "Did she give you a map?" He walked over and I handed him the map. Within a minute, he walked past the huge "DAVIS" headstone and pointed to a smaller, acid rain eroded stone and said "here it is."
The small animal on the stone depicts a lamb (he said this was popular then when the decedent was a child) I assume this represents the innocence of a child. But it was so worn that I couldn't make out the name on the stone. Until I looked from an angle, then you can barely make out the name "DAVIS".
Actually, I don't know how much this picture helps, but if you enlarge it a little bit, you can make it out.
There is no way that I would ever have found this, if it hadn't been for the man in the pick up truck. I returned to the office with a Brady to find, but this was the find of the day. So buried in this plot are James Davis, his son Carl, and his two sisters: Mary E. and Delia Loretta Davis, but no other names were added to the stone. I guess that says it all.
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