Another graveyard disappointment.

I visited the County Courthouse in Paris, Kentucky. This is the county seat of Bourbon County. The Millersburg Cemetery is in this county. I asked if there were records on the graves in the cemetery. They gave me a phone number to call. I was informed that there are two cemeteries in Millersburg. The second was older and not used. It was likely that Samuel Munson was buried there. With my heart in my throat I drove to the cemetery. It was on the highway about a mile north of town. I tramped all over for an hour with no luck. The pictures below indicate the terrible state of condition of the cemetery. Somebody mows but that is all. It is like the cemetery is slowly disappearing. There are dozens of stones that are unreadable. I do not think that it has been used since the other cemetery was opened in 1860.

I have given up on finding gravestones for my great grandfathers buried in Kentucky. I am a hundred years or so too late. I have learned that there is soft marble that deteriorates as fast as sandstone. I have two grandfathers. My natural grandfather, James Mart Munson, gave my father up for adoption by his older brother, Charles Morton Monson. Notice the different last names. James Mart was buried in 1939 in Covington, Kentucky. His stone is in good condition. Charles Morton, my adopted grandfather, was buried in Kansas in 1919. His stone also is in good condition.

I have eight great grandfathers buried in the United States. I have only found one gravestone of the eight. That is the stone for my 8th great grandfather, Thomas Munson. The stone is in the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut. The stone was in storage for years in the basement of a church. His bones are somewhere under the green in downtown New Haven. However, I have seen the places where my great grandfathers lived and I have studied a lot of their history. 

It has been a disappointing gravestone trip but it was successful in many ways. The main reason for the trip was carrying the ashes of my son, Christopher, to Arlington, Virginia.