Journey to the Past: Green Lawn Cemetery Section 113

I've been posting about the amazing journey I took to Columbus, Ohio to seek after my ancestors on my mother's and father's side. Perhaps I'm writing more than anyone would ever want to read. However, my dear mother and a few genealogy obsessed friends wants all the gory details. Plus, I love digital scrapbooking and I see a digital scrapbook solely on the trip in my future. So, here's another installment of a short trip that resulted in a wealth of information.

I decided to start at the northern most part of the cemetery and work my way down the map. So, at 7:30 am I was ready to get to work. What I didn't expect to see at the cemetery this early in the morning were other people. I mean, who goes to cemeteries this early in the morning? I saw a young woman and her dog in the cemetery. She may have been out for a walk or visiting a relative's grave, I never asked. I wondered what her story was and why she was in the cemetery that early. Did she have a relative that she visited regularly or was this day special? Her presence was intriguing.

However, I had a date with section 113 so I proceeded. I was on the hunt for Marion O Bush and his wife Nellie Colwell. Their daughter Nelly Ann Bush married my grand uncle Robert Comfort Zumstein. I figured it wouldn't hurt to snap a photo of her parent's markers.

Location of Bush plot on Section 113 map; Green Lawn Cemetery, Columbus, Ohio(I know the paper 'looks' like it's oriented wrong.  However, I am showing the section
oriented to North rather than the page text)

I spent all of 5 minutes locating Marion and Nellie. It helped that this map was simple to understand and that the Bush's had a LARGE monument.

Bush family monument
Visit FindAGrave.com for more info on this plot

I loved the duct taping of the flowers to the top of the monument. Someone was being creative. And this monument will stand out to me forever more because of the duct tape (my hubby is a Red Green Show fan, need I say more?). Once I found the family marker, I looked around to see if there were any additional names that I recognized. I only recognized the persons I was originally looking for, so no new family members. However, I was pleased and took Marion and Nellie's photos.

Find A Grave Memorial # 69636133

The early morning light felt soft and wonderful. Unfortunately, it was REALLY hard to see the photos in the LCD screen of my camera. Perhaps if I had, I would have tried to compensate for the bright light cast on the top of the grave photo.

I'm aware that the best time of day to take gravestone pictures is between 10 and 11 and then 1 and 3. However, when you have one day in a cemetery far, far from home. You do the best you can. A 'bad' photo is better than no photo. When I take photos as a volunteer near where I live, I promise to spend more time getting a 'good' photo.

I was thankful for the trip to the cemetery the day before, as I was able to pick up a paint brush of sorts (actually a brush used to wipe off bases in baseball) and a scrub brush. I was able to use to them carefully to remove debris from stones before taking a photo. I was worried about being gentle, so hopefully I didn't do any damage. And sadly, I didn't do it on every stone because of my worries.

I proceeded to take photos of two rows of head stones before leaving Section 113. I actually had 16 useable photos when I was finished. Add this to the 52 additional usable photos from Section 82 on Sunday. I was feeling awesome! I didn't know if these volunteer photos would be needed. However, Green Lawn has 945 photo requests on FindAGrave.com and thousands of memorials without photos. If they aren't needed, perhaps I would take a better photo? Who knows. I finished with this section and was off to Section 93.

This is another installment in a lengthy multi-series post about the fantastic research trip I took to Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio. If you're just joining the this series, you'll be able to see every post under the label Research Trip.