ROOTS & BRANCHES

As someone who’s just old enough to recall when Memorial Day was on May 30, not some floating date in late May to accommodate a Monday holiday, it sure seems like the holiday is coming around way too fast this year.

Since I’m one of the many genealogists who live for visiting cemeteries, placing flowers on some graves is always part of my holiday plan except for rare times when I’ve been taken out of town.

I’ve also decorated the grave in Northampton County of my mentor John T. Humphrey.

This year I’m likely to add going to the Old Reformed Graveyard in Jonestown, Lebanon County, since one of my girlfriend Katy Bodenhorn’s ancestors is buried there.

Last Memorial Day weekend, D/2 cleaner in hand, we stopped by and sprayed a few tombstones of my forebears. I expect we’ll be doing that again—probably checking up on some of those sprayed last year as well as cleaning a few new ones.

I’m also a big fan of what I call the “all-American cookout”—burgers, dogs, baked beans, and cole slaw, so that will be on the menu sometime during that weekend.

One year I ambitiously set out to place roses at as many ancestors’ graves as possible but I don’t think I’m up for that this time around (My friend Justin Houser has gotten further doing something similar with his ancestry, I think!).

I was also planning to be part of a crew putting flags out on veterans’ graves at the Bern Cemetery Company burial grounds, but another member of the company’s board already took care of that!

Instead, maybe I’ll blaze a trail marking the graves of my direct-line Beidlers.

The immigrant, Johannes Beydeler, is buried at St. Luke’s cemetery in Trappe, Montgomery County. His son, my fifth-great-grandfather Conrad Beidler, through my grandfather Claude Franklin Beidler, are all buried at different St. John’s churches that are or were once Reformed in Berks County—Conrad in Gibraltar, his son Peter at Hain’s church, Peter’s son Heinrich in Sinking Spring (though his stone is not extant), Heinrich’s son Henry William at Host church, along with Henry W.’s son (Franklin) and grandson (the aforementioned Claude F.).

My father, Richard Lee, is buried at Bern along with some three dozen of my mother Mildred Mae Hiester Beidler’s direct-line ancestors (If I’d do the same for my mother’s surname line, it would be pretty easy—all seven generations are either on the new or old cemeteries at Bern, part of those many direct-liners!).

In years to come, maybe I’ll concentrate on my Revolutionary War ancestors.

Counting any of them who served in the militia, I have more than two dozen of those folks. Maybe I better get out my chart and a map and start planning the most efficient route!