A Gravetokker- is someone who takes it upon themselves to scrub and clean headstones, especially when its people whose stories they are telling or researching. They do it for free, and for the preservation of the stone and all its history.
As a genealogist, and history buff from way back, I get excited about old things. Family heirlooms, tiny pieces of history that I stumble across.
Today is what I would classify as an awesome day. I was able to do something that I have wanted to do for years but couldn’t see to find the time to just get there! I was conversing with a friend one morning about my good intentions when he suddenly offered some extra muscles and his help leveling. I jumped on the offer. I couldn’t pack the bed of my truck fast enough. Where is “there” you ask? A local Cemetery. Yes, I like those places. It’s not about the deceased, or anything remotely ghoulish. I like seeing the names, and dates and some of the unique, older headstones.
I believe, I have a very rich family history. Rich in the sense of absolutely cool findings, ancestors who were strong, good, upright, wholesome and hardworking people. Allow me a moment, to jump off the trail and give you a little insight to this old town and why its cemetery matters to me.
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Nicholsville Mich, is a small little town, well it used to be. About one mile north from Marcellus, Mich. It its day, it was a booming little town. First sawmill built in 1835 and was up and running by December of that year. In 1840 they had a town doctor. By 1844 Nicholsville consisted of the sawmill, two houses and a school, that months after being built caught fire.
By 1851 the NICHOLS brothers, Jonathon and Marshall passed through town and decided to buy the sawmill, erected a grist mill and built homes. The town name was then changed to Nicholsville. Soon there was a post office, a hotel, and a restaurant. By 1875 the town population was over 100 people, contained 25 homes, two general stores, a blacksmith shop. Jonathon Nichols was considered a very jovial man, a good friend to the poor and downtrodden.
Originally this town had the prospect of a bright and booming future. However, when the Michigan Central Railroad went passed by it in 1848, and then Gand Trunk Railroad passed it by in 1871 and created stops in the towns of Decatur and Marcellus, the small town of Nicholsville suddenly became an island town.
In 1860, when Douglas was running for Presidency against Honest Abe Lincoln came the call for 75,000 troops to crush the rebellion in a month. The little town of Nicholsville alive with patriotic enthusiasm answered the call. Every able-bodied man left all the businesses at a standstill. Nicholsville gave their all, while the brave faced woman left behind bore the sad, hard burdens of everyday life alone during those four long years. These men left the warmth of their homes, jobs paying three to five dollars a day to take up the hardships of camp, marching, firing lines, and all for 13 dollars a month!
What came from that old boom town? These men who answered the call and came home to finish their lives. Rocky Woodmansee became a great educator and leading citizen in Lambert Oklahoma. Marshall Nichols was a leading railroad man in Kansas with a cultured wife and a fine family. Fred Row was a wealthy banker in Hill City Kansas, Charlie Thorpe became a regimental surgeon in the U.S. Army with rank and pay of a Major.
Elmer Thorpe became a medical expert and married Buffalo Bills Oldest Daughter. Rollin Thorpe is a leading surgeon in Denver and runs up to Cripple Creek often where he is the president of a gold mining and milling company. There are many others too numerous to mention. My point is, this small town gave their all, and in doing so, reaped a beautiful harvest despite the fact that the trains past them by and turned them into a ghost town.
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On this day, we packed some gentle cleaners, scrub brushes, and a plastic sprayer full of warm water and stopped at the Nicholsville cemetery to clean the headstones of my ancestors. My family.
My Great, Great Grandfather Jim Riley lied about his age to join the great Civil War. He was only 17 at the time. (More about him and what really made him famous in a later post. ) When he returned from the war, he married Miss Martha Nichols in August 1865. Together they had nine children. When Martha died in 1903, She was buried in the Nicholsville family cemetery. Jim remarried in 1905 to Miss Clara Marsh. Her mother also lived with them. As they all left this world, they were buried in a line together in Nicholsville Cemetery. Martha lays to the right of Jims (who passed in 1919) Clara lays to the left of Jim, and Clara’s mother lays to her left.
Of the nine children Jim and Martha had together, one of their son’s Fred married a woman by the name of Eva Orilla Polmanteer, their daughter, Doris Martha Riley, is my father’s mom, and my grandmother.
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Below are before and after photos of cleaning and straightening the old headstones of my family. They have almost 121 years of biological growth, algae, lichen and moss covering their surfaces to the point that you could barely read their names, and those growths will cause the stone to decay. This was not done in a disrespectful manner at all. It is with great reverence and love that I chose to do this, and we tended to these stones as if they were made of glass. We even brought along a shovel and lifted one stone that was sunken into the earth and propped it back upright by retrieving some small rocks from the edge of a field. Our intent was not and NEVER will be to make them look new. I wanted them visibly clear for future generations who might care to search history on their own sometime. We can only hope.
A few of the stones, have begun to deteriorate to a state that you cannot read their name as well. Like my Great Grandmother Eva O. Riley. (Her birth name was Eva Orilla (meaning Rippling water) Polmanteer. Then she married Fred Riley. It is her name that I chose to write under when I began writing and publishing my books.)
This day will live on in my heart for years to come. Not only for the improvement that we made to the headstone, but for the time my friend took out of his day, his schedule to help lift and adjust the headstones, and he helped scrubbed on them when he didn’t have to. They were not his people. His kindness here, I will never forget.
