My Great-grandfather - Photos Discovered!

My Mom cried when she saw the photo you see here. My brother showed it to her on line a few weeks ago. The gentleman is her grandfather – my great- grandfather – a man neither of us had ever seen. He died before my Mom was born. This is a blog about how we came to see this photograph - or more accurately, its a blog about a Cemetery Traveler blog I published in 2012 entitled,  “Graves of Lost Siblings.”

The blog was about accompanying my Mom to a cemetery near where she lives in northeastern Pennsylvania to visit the graves of her grandparents. She had not visited the place in fifty years. I wondered why. When we arrived, she sprung the news on my brother and I that her parents had lost three children, all younger than her. Its quite an emotional story, and you’re welcome to read it at this link. However, my current point is the fact that a distant relative came upon the blog about our visit, which led to a family reunion of sorts!

In May, 2015, three years after I posted the blog, my Mom received a letter from a cousin whom she had not seen since they were children (perhaps in the late 1940s). The cousin, Cheryl, was doing genealogical research on her family, the Jones-Stealey family, and came across my blog. She was quite surprised to have found this, simply by Googling the names “Jones” and “Stealey.” The information I had provided seemed to have filled in some gaps in her research. My Mom’s ancestors’ names were Jones and Stealey, all of whom were emigrants to the United States from Wales in the early 1900s.

Elizabeth Maria (Stealey) Jones

The 1932 photo here (from Cheryl’s “Jones-Stealey Family” private Facebook Group) is of my Mom’s grandmother, my great-grandmother Elizabeth Maria Jones (Stealey was her maiden name). My Mom knew her – Elizabeth died in 1959, a year after I was born (I wonder if she ever held me?). What brought my Mom to tears, however, was the photo above of the gentleman in the hat. As I mentioned, this is her grandfather – my great grandfather – who neither of us had ever seen.

His name was Daniel Parry Jones, and he was born May 6, 1881, in North Wales. The boy on his knee is one of his four children – Richard, the eldest. Richard was my grandfather’s brother, my Mom’s uncle. This photo may have been taken around 1910. (As a photographer, I am rather intrigued by the props and background in this formal portrait - I can't even tell what they are! I think you'll agree that it is beautifully composed and rendered.)

I had always been told that my Mom's ancestors were from Wales, but that was all I knew. This new information is fascinating to me. Cheryl’s family research shows that my Mom’s grandfather, Daniel Parry Jones and Elizabeth Maria Stealey arrived in the United States on September 6, 1905, aboard the S/S Majestic. They sailed from Liverpool, England. The couple was married on November 17, 1905, near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (where I spent the first twenty years of my life). Daniel was a coal mine worker, as so many Welsh were at the time. He died in 1920 (more than twenty years before my Mom was born) and Elizabeth later remarried. So the only grandfather my Mom ever knew was a step-grandfather, a Robert Berwick.

The Jones family plot, Evergreen Cemetery, Shavertown, PA

Its interesting that the headstones in Evergreen Cemetery (Shavertown, PA) show that Elizabeth is buried with Daniel, her first husband, rather than with Robert Berwick, her second. But maybe not so odd – Robert is buried with HIS first wife, Pearl! I wonder if that’s standard burial etiquette? The grave markers are all in the same area of the cemetery, by the way, not twenty feet away from each other.

The Berwick family plot, Evergreen Cemetery, Shavertown, PA

Here is a photo (below) from the family Facebook page that shows my great-grandparents, Daniel and Elizabeth Jones, with their four children, Daniel, Elizabeth, Richard, and Mildred. The younger Daniel (at left in the photo) was my grandfather, my Mom’s Dad. It really is awesome to see these photos, which had been pulled out of desks and trunks from all over the world. It gives one a sense of connectedness to the larger human family.

My Great-grandparents and their children

Cheryl has been locating and posting these fascinating images by contacting people in the U.S. and Wales who are descendants of the Jones-Stealey families. She started the Facebook site to share photos and information. We greatly appreciate Cheryl posting them, and thank Dilys and all the other family members who have been contributing to this wonderful family history!

I intend to scan some of my Mom's old photos, and post them on the family page. People do like tangible links to their past. This is a wonderful example of how such things can bring people closer together. Every once in a while one of my blogs leads to something like this and it gives me a great feeling to know I’ve helped in some way!

Graves of Lost Siblings

In a couple weeks I’m planning a trip, the trip of a lifetime. A few years ago, my Mom let it be known that she was in fact, not an only child. She had two brothers and a sister. They were all born seven to ten years after her, and all died shortly after birth. My Mom also let it be known that they were buried in a cemetery in Shavertown, Pennsylvania (near where she lives in northeast PA), the vicinity in which I was born and raised. I’ve asked her to take me there, to see the graves. I’m writing this before the fact. I’m not at all sure what I’m in for. So keep your hat on, we may end up miles away from here.

Since my Dad died eight years ago, my Mom has been talking. This may seem unusual. However, my Dad was overbearing to the point where he monopolized all conversations and didn’t allow other people to speak − and this was one of his better qualities. Our lives basically revolved around his family. My Mom’s family was seldom mentioned, and never visited – the living or dead.

So after he died, my Mom started to talk. It’s been great. I’ve learned wonderful things about her family – my family. The most shocking thing was the existence of Robert Daniel, Daniel Robert, and Joyce Elizabeth − and the fact that she knew where they were buried.

I didn’t know any of this back in 1981 when my first wife was pregnant with our first child. It died in utero and had to be aborted.  My mother, after the fact, wanted to have a tree planted in the baby’s memory in a local park. Both my ex-wife and I thought that was ludicrous. We just wanted to forget the horrific experience. About twenty years later, my mother told me that she had gone ahead anyway and had that tree planted. I figured, whatever, if it means that much to you, fine. I forgot about the tree until she began telling me about her lost siblings.

I realized in a flash how meaningful it was to her to plant that tree. She needed something like that to hold on to the memory of what, at the time, would have been her first grandchild. People cherish things they’ve lost in all sorts of ways, and far be it for me to criticize any of them. Over the past thirty years I've provided my mom with FOUR wonderful grandchildren, all of whom she loves and adores. Perhaps even more than she would have if she had not lost the first.

My mom, Beverly Snyder, at the grave of her grandparents

So the fateful day arrived when we planned to visit the cemetery where her siblings are buried. We did this yesterday – my Mom, my brother Tim, and I. After literally months of ninety-degree weather and near-drought conditions in this part of the country, this is the day it rained like hell. I made the wet, hundred mile drive to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the general area in which my Mom lives. We all jumped into my brother’s car and drove out to Shavertown, where Evergreen Cemetery resides. I lived around here for the first nineteen years of my life and never knew this cemetery existed.

My great-grandparents' grave, Evergreen Cemetery

My mom, it turned out, had not been to Evergreen since 1945, when her newborn sister Joyce Elizabeth died, and was buried here. She surprised herself by remembering approximately where the plots were, but we had to search a bit for the actual grave markers. First we found the Jones plot, in which are buried her grandparents, Daniel and Elizabeth Jones. Seeing my mom standing on her grandparents’ graves and looking teary was heartbreaking, as she said that my deceased father had not allowed her visit these graves. Daniel and Elizabeth had a son, Daniel Jr. (who is not buried here), who became my mom's father. Daniel Sr. died in 1920 and Elizabeth later remarried Robert Berwick, whose family plot is about fifty feet away. My mom’s siblings are all buried at the larger Berwick plot.

Brother Tim and my Mom

Until I saw the headstones, I thought it unusual (or even uncreative) to name your first-born boys Robert Daniel and Daniel Robert. But seeing the names engraved on the stones explained all: Daniel was the children's (including my mom) biological grandfather and Robert was their step-grandfather. (My middle name, by the way, is Daniel.) As I said, I always thought my mom was an only child. Her parents Daniel Jr. and wife Anna tried to have more children after my mom was born (in 1938), but the children did not live. Daniel Robert contracted pneumonia and died shortly after birth. Robert Daniel was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and died at birth. (My twenty-one year old son Christopher was also born with the cord wrapped around his neck, but as the delivery took place in a tertiary care medical center in 1990, he received better medical care and survived.)

My mom was six or eight years old when her brothers were born (and died) and does not remember much about the situation. She was ten, however, when her sister Joyce Elizabeth was born. She remembers the baby had a dislocated hip, among other problems, and died shortly after birth. Although the boys were buried at the Berwick family plot, she was not present at the burial. She does remember, however, being present at Joyce Elizabeth’s burial. She said “I remember them lowering that little white casket into the ground.” I just about broke down when she said that. 

Tim and Mom at the Berwick plot

Standing on their graves sixty-seven years later, she added, “They were all beautiful babies. I wonder what they would have looked like if they lived.” I suggested, "Like you?" She smirked and said, "What, short and fat?" None of the children’s names appear on the Berwick stone, for whatever reason. A gigantic evergreen shades the plot. As I was standing beneath it with my family, feeling firmly present in my past, I thought about that tree my mother had planted for my almost-firstborn. I can’t imagine ever being strong enough to visit it, wherever it is.