A picture is worth a thousand words...

One of the frustrations of working with the Reilly Cemetery has been a lack of photographic evidence. I have been told of photographs of the site as it was but haven't actually seen any...until today. A reader was kind enough to send along a picture of a relative, taken in the early 1950s, standing by a monument. This is great because IF I can match the features in the background I might be able to identify which monument goes where and put a name to the grave! A big if, yes, but I'll be having a good look around tomorrow when I'm at the cemetery (after I do the less fun work first-- hunting and finding are my rewards for the bug bites, the scratches, the dirt and the incipient sun burn-- note to self, more bug repellent and more sun screen for the AKME Junior Archaeologist kit). My very great thanks for the picture JT! So folks, if you have pictures taken at the Reilly Cemetery that predate the consolidation of the monuments and before the pine trees were planted, I want to see them very much.

I've been asked several times about the location of the Presbyterian church that served the community before the brick church was built at Leslie's Corners in 1882. I've heard many different ideas of where it stood so I really cannot say with any certainty. So far I have not found anything physical evidence that would indicate its location, but the church is not the focus of my project so I haven't spent much time on it. I will keep looking, mostly out of curiosity, but I have neither the tools nor the education to do much more than walk about keeping my eyes peeled. I will go through the written records after the mapping is done and see if there isn't something more indicative than I have come across so far.

A note for the curious...unless someone specifically says to use their name on the Internet, I will not post the names of any contact, any volunteer, or any person who volunteers information as I feel that privacy is terribly important. I try to remember to cite published sources but I may miss some here and there; it's not an intentional omission.