30 June 2009

Tombstone Tuesday: Jonnie & His Infant Sister

Jonnie & His Infant Sister,
Children of W. S. & M. A. Lightfoot.
He Died Aug 28, 1854,
AE 21 Mo's 1 Day,
She Sep 2, 1854,
AE A Few Hours

29 June 2009

Military Monday: 2nd Lt Richard W. Johnson

Richard Wooten Johnson
Aug 30, 1917
Aug 13, 1943
2nd Lieutenant U.S. Army Air Force
481st Bombardment Sqdn.

23 June 2009

Leon S. Dure Tries His Hand at Farming

Leon S. Dure (1874-1948), son of George A. Dure, is buried in his father's family plot in the Cabiness Ridge section of Rose Hill Cemetery. The following article tells how Leon, a banker, decides to give farming a try.

7 June 1910
Macon Weekly Telegraph
"VETERAN AND TYRO MEET TO COMPARE
Leon S. Dure Has a Fine Little Farm and Shows it to the Mayor.
HIS HONOR MAINTAINS A DISCREET SILENCE
Then Takes Him Over to Have a Look at a Real Sure Enough Farm.


The veteran and the tyro met yesterday. The experienced farmer was invited by the amateur to view a farm that the latter was cultivating, and which promised extraordinary return.

About six miles from Macon, out on the Zebulon road, Leon S. Dure, the banker, bon vivant, and enterprising city man, has a farm of some one hundred acres. He bought it because his tastes sometimes ran to the bucolic, to the golden fields of grain and whitened patches of cotton, to say nothing of the pastoral delights of the farmer. And then he had an eye to the future.

Time was coming, he thought, when the price of living in the city would soar with aeroplanes and monoplanes, and when commercial [c]apacity would choke the growth of grass in the city, and by having a farm he could hie thither, and there in the cool shade of his spacious veranda he could drink spring water from a gourd and cool his perspiring brow with a collard leaf. Thus he could look back to the hard lines of the city, and snap his fingers if the stocks fell several points.

As he swept his eye over his growing crops and watched the chickens scratch for fishbait, and the pigs amble about the lawn, he felt satisfied that his farm was progressing as finely as any well-fed farmer could desire, so far as he could see, but he wanted some regular farmer to pass judgement on it. He invited Mayor Moore, whom he knew to be an experienced farmer, to go out with him, and hence the meeting of the veteran and the tyro.

They entered the farm by way of the cotton patch. The cotton had grown up since the last visit of Mr. Dure, and he pointed it out to Mr. Moore as his potatoes, remarking that he thought it was a remarkably good stand for sweet potatoes that had been planted on the full of the moon.

After the point had been settled that Mr. Dure was not converting the ground into a park, and was really conducting a farm, the party passed on to the oat patch, and here arose a question in Mr. Dure's mind whether it was oats or wheat. The old negro in charge of the farm was called on by Mr. Dure, and through him it was learned that the patch was one of oats.

City Duties Arduous.

Mr. Dure apologized for his seeming lack of knowledge of grain, by saying that his city duties at present were so arduous that he was not paying the attention to the farm now as he would in the future. But there were many things that came up to puzzle him, just when he had company. For instance, it developed that he could never gather but one squab from the pigeon ranch at a time. He had given a great deal of study to the cultivation of pigeons, but this was one of the things he had not learned. The only way he could account for the single squab was that the hen pigeons invariably laid one large egg and one small egg. The large egg hatched, the smaller egg did nothing. Why this was thus, he could not say, and it was the first time that he appealed to Mayor Moore for light.

The mayor felt a delicacy in volunteering any advice, but when the hogs were called up, and the heads of the flock waddled up looking pale and emaciated, the mayor asked if he ever provided them with water. There was no water visible. Thereupon the man about the farm was asked about the watering of the hogs, and he pointed to the creek. He seemed to think that if the hogs were not amphibious they could go without water.

Mr. Dure was asked what he had gathered from the farm so far. It was some time before he could think of what had been produced, but he finally remembered that one goose and some onions had been laid on his town table, and he had hopes of gathering some Irish potatoes before the summer is gone.

Leaving the cotton and grain, the pair rambled through the cultivated huckleberry patch, the strawberry beds and the pennyroyal layouts, fed English walnuts to the pigs, patted the fatted calf on the head, and fished a squab of so from the pigeon roost, and then drove over to Mayor Moore's farm on the Houston road. There Mr. Dure was given some information about the transplanting of four-leaf clover and spinach. As he looked upon the waving fields of the ripened wheat, the giant cornstalks in their garniture of rich dark green, the cotton way up and drinking the sun's rays, the ambling pigs disporting themselves about the place, the chickens lustily crowing, and everything about a first-class farm looking in fine fettle, Mr. Dure heaved a sigh and said: "Never mind; you wait a year or so, and I'll show you a farm that will make this look like a pewter dollar."

All of which remains to be seen."

08 June 2009

Another DURE Family Plot, but This Time with No Tombstone in Sight

When doing some research for George A. Dure, I visited the official Rose Hill Cemetery website to conduct a search. I plugged in the DURE surname and found something I did not expect. Adrienne Dure, George's mother, is also buried in Rose Hill. I guess I assumed she would've been in the Geo. A. Dure family plot I had already transcribed. Since she was not, I didn't think she was in Rose Hill at all. That, my friends, is what I get for assuming.

According to the Rose Hill site, Adrienne was buried in the Central Avenue district, Block 1, Lot 121. Using the map posted on the site, as well as my personally copied map, and the map posted at the cemetery entrance, I had a pretty good idea where this family plot was. I just found it odd that I did not recall seeing the DURE or MAUSSENET name in the area before. (Maussenet is the other name prominent in this plot.) Not that I know where every name can be found in Rose Hill, mind you, I just know I have walked that particular area many times before.

Armed with my new knowledge, I set out the other day to find the Dure-Maussenet family plot. It took me a little longer than expected, but I found it! It's a good thing that burial site was marked, or I would've never been sure of whether I had really found it or not. Why do I say this? Because there was not one tombstone in sight on that lot! The only marking was a stone with 'DURE' engraved in it.




If you look closely, you will see many brick-covered grave sites.


Not one tombstone seems quite strange. I know that Adrienne Dure was a property owner and, in 1860, she had a personal estate of $6,000. I know that her son-in-law, Edward Maussenet, was a jeweler and watch maker and seemed prominent in the community. Why no tombstones? Also buried in the plot are a couple of children of George and Julia Kendrick Dure.

I was reminded of a very important lesson when looking for the grave site of Adrienne Dure: just because you don't find a tombstone in a particular cemetery does not mean an individual was not buried there. And! Just because you transcribe all the stones in a cemetery doesn't mean you have recorded all of the burials. Of course, this is something I already knew, but it is always good to be reminded. Tombstones sometimes carry more information about a person, and they sometimes can even give you a "feel" for a person. However, burial records for a cemetery are just as important to the researcher who cannot locate a stone.

The transcriptions of the burial records for this lot are a little difficult to decipher, but here is what I can figure out. According to the Rose Hill Cemetery site, the following individuals were laid to rest in Block 1, Lot 121 of the Central Avenue District:

- Mary Daly
- Adrienne Baulard Dure - b. 5 Dec 1788, d. 31 Dec 1871, bur. 5 Jan 1872
- Jasper Dietz Dure [s/o Geo. & Julia K. Dure] - b. 29 Dec 1868, d. 3 May 1870, bur. 8 May 1870
- Julia I. Dure [d/o Geo. & Julia K. Dure] - b. 14 Aug 1866, d. 29 Oct 1868, bur. 3 Nov 1868
- Miss Hilda W. Humphries - bur. 23 Sep 1979
- Adrienne Maussenet - d. 2 Mar 1863, bur. 7 Mar 1863
- Edward Maussenet [son-in-law of Adrienne Dure] - d. 10 Jul 1866, bur. 15 Jul 1866
- George Maussenet
- Maria There[x?]se Delia Dure Maussenet [d/o Adrienne Dure, w/o Edward Maussenet] - b. 7 Dec 1823, d. 14 Apr 1863, bur. 19 Apr 1863 [I wonder if she died from complications from the birth of Adrienne Maussenet?]

I'm not sure of the plot owner, but I would imagine that either a child of Edward & Maria Maussenet or George & Julia Dure was the first burial.
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