Ned and Jennie had four children.
Hattie was born in 1885, Irene in 1889, and my grandfather, Edwin Ray, was born in 1891.
Ned and Jennie’s fourth child was born on August 29, 1900, and died sixty-one days later. Her name is Clara Hazel Hoskins. Her life was short and painful. Her death certificate indicates that she had been born prematurely and died as a result of “impoverished blood.”
Ned and Jennie are buried along with other ancestors in the Fleming Rural Cemetery, a few miles from the family farm in Scipio Center.
According to the death certificate, Clara is buried in “Fleming.” However, Jennie’s obituary, written many years later, claims that Clara’s “burial location is not known.” There is no marker for Clara among the markers for her parents and grandparents in the Fleming Rural Cemetery, nor is there a marker at the other nearby cemetery where her ancestors are buried. No undertaker is identified, and no date of burial is recorded.
There are also no pictures to remember her by. All there is to remember her by are two pieces of paper found in the records of Cayuga County: one certificate of her birth and the other of her death.
I have visited many cemeteries to fill in gaps in my family’s history. I write this while on a train, traversing New York from the Hudson to the Niagara Rivers to visit another cemetery.
Kathy and her father and brother are buried there.
I postponed this trip for too long because I did not want to revive the emotions I knew would be triggered there. Over time, the sorrow of loss has been replaced by fonder memories of adventures and milestones we shared. It is time to visit for a while and remember and give thanks for those.
I need to visit another grave in the coming months. It belongs to Anne, my mother’s mother, and is located at Section 5, Range J, Plot 171 of the Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Coram, New York. I don’t remember visiting that cemetery during our many trips to Long Island when I was younger.
She died in 1956, having survived tuberculosis at a younger age. The cemetery is close to where she lived when she married Edward and gave birth to my mother.
Anne married Edward in 1934. After Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army but died at sea, killed with everyone else on board by a German U-boat.
Weeks before he died, he sent this telegram.
Like Clara, his burial place is unknown, and we remember him only through pieces of paper.
Finding North 