A family history lesson

Upon reading Gran’s obituary listed on page four of the Perry County Times, it seemed like everyone in town dropped by for a visit to get one last glimpse of the matriarch from Liverpool’s founding family by early afternoon.

Evelyn told the boys to go sit on the porch and be seen and not heard.

“This is boring,” Paul blurted out from sheer boredom. “We have absolutely nothing to do.”

“No one said we couldn’t take a walk,” Robert noted as he hopped off the wood railing nodding his head before descending the porch steps with the others following in lockstep.

The little band of merrymakers cut through the back yard and up over the hill toward the cemetery ridge. When they see a couple of men digging a hole, Cecil asked what are they doing.

“They’re digging Gran’s grave for tomorrow when they put her in the ground,” Robert stated.

“They can’t put her in the ground with the worms,” mentioned Fred moving his little legs as fast as he could to keep up with the others. “Cause Gran didn’t like worms.”

“You’re a silly goose,” Leroy laughed as they reached the gravel road not far from the grave diggers. “Although her body may be in the casket, that’s just a shell; because her soul’s in heaven.”

“What’s a soul?” Fred scratched his head as they stopped in front of the large family plot of gravestones surrounding a towering granite obelisk.

“Everyone has a soul,” Cecil noted remembering his Sunday School lesson on the previous Sabbath. “It’s kind of like a spirit.”

“You mean like the ghost in the parlor,” queried Fred with a shiver.

“Not exactly,” said Robert sitting his little cousin on one of the gravestones to tie his shoe. “Everyone has a spirit or heavenly body and depending on whether you were good or bad will depend on where you go – heaven or hell.”

“Well Gran was good so she went to heaven,” Buck interjected.

“But getting back to your question about putting Gran in the ground,” Robert redirected. “When people pass over to the Great Beyond, we bury them in the ground; and these gravestones mark the spot where people are buried.”

“Not everyone’s buried,” Leroy noted walking from behind the granite obelisk. “When my mother’s friend out in California died, they burned her body and spread her ashes over the ocean.”

“They burned her body,” Paul shot back as if someone pricked him with a pin.

“That would hurt,” quipped Fred as the other boys burst into laughter.

“No silly,” stated Buck while leaning against another gravestone on the opposite side of the gravel road. “We just told you that when you die your spirit goes to heaven or he…. the bad place down below; so your body is just a shell, and you won’t feel it.”

“I don’t care,” Paul interjected while wagging a finger at his siblings. “When I kick the bucket, I want to be buried in the ground; so none of you better try and burn my body.”

“There’s a lot of tombstones around this big tower; so, who’s buried under them,” Cecil inquisitively asked.

“That tower is a huge granite monument,” Robert responded.

“What’s it say on top?” Fred cocked his head looking at the large stone.

“Huggins,” Leroy said while attempting to touch the engraved surname at the top of the monument. “That’s the family name of everyone buried here.”

“That was Great-Grandma Huggins’ last name,” Cecil mentioned.

“That’s right,” Robert praised his cousin’s response. “Since she was married to Charles Huggins, she’s going to be buried next to her husband.”

The dark haired lanky young man walked over to the headstones on the front side of the monument and pointed out a couple of them. “Jacob and Catharine Huggins were Charles’ parents; so they were your great-great-grandparents.”

“What about these other gravestones – John, David, Jacob and those two in the back – Margaret and Jessiah?” Paul queried while walking around to look at the other markers.

“They were Jacob and Catharine’s children,” Leroy interjected. “Your great-grandfather Charles Huggins’ brothers and sister.”

“Mema was named after her grandmother,” Buck surmised.

“Margaret and Jessiah died young,” Cecil noted while standing on the backside of the monument. “She was only eight years old and Jessiah was two-and-a-half.”

“They most likely died of Typhoid Fever or another disease that spread through the area back in the day,” Robert reasoned.

“David was only twenty-eight years old; and his brother John was twenty-seven,” noted Buck while standing at the front left corner of the family plot.

“I’m not sure what happened to John,” mentioned Leroy while pulling up his socks. “But David was a schoolteacher in Iowa; and he was killed in a wagon accident.”

“They had six kids just like our family,” Paul noted after counting the gravestones.

“They had more kids than that,” Robert recollected. “They just aren’t all buried here with their parents. If memory serves Jacob and Catherine had eleven children altogether.”

“I’d hate to be the youngest in that family,” Fred pulled on Robert’s trousers and raised his arms.

“Why is that?” The tall lanky young man picked up his little cousin and placed him on his hip.

“By the time it was their turn to take a bath, the water surely turned to mud,” Fred looked like a deer in headlights.

The little tyke learned how true that was later that evening when he was the last of seven boys to take a bath in the metal tub.

Awhile later when the boys walked down the hill back toward the house, Mom was outside to see off the last of the visitors for the day. “Where have you boys been?”

“We were having a family history lesson,” Buck proudly stated.

This story, the fifth of six about my father’s family set during the summer of 1948 in Perry County, Pennsylvania, was taken from my book “Little Town Along the Susquehanna” which can be found on Facebook.