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| Old Richfield Church |
This trip was very different from those childhood
visits. While we did visit family, we mainly
visited sites from my parent’s childhood.
We were able to see the old abandoned church where my mom attended as a child. Both of the homes where my parents were born
still stand. We saw what is left of my
grandfather’s sawmill and the filling station where my other grandfather worked. For many of the
sites, only a portion of the building remained, serving as a place mark for
those ancestors’ lives, reminding us that they had really been there.
I loved the trip and I was reminded of why we as genealogists
need to step away from the books and microfilm readers occasionally and walk where
our ancestors walked and imagine what it was like when they were living. It’s there that we feel the very closest to
them and learn something that books can’t provide.
We visited the museum located in Sanford, Colorado and I was
so glad that we did. It is a small
museum, but packed with pictures, newspaper clippings, books and all kinds of
memorabilia. I saw pictures that I had
never seen before of grandfathers and others who had lived and died before I
was even born. The volunteer that was
there was so kind and helpful.
One of my favorite stops, and the last thing that I will
mention in this post, was our visit to the Old Manassa Cemetery. I love old cemeteries and this one is
definitely that. Most of the burials are
from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and it is located outside the small town
of Manassa, Colorado whose population hovers around 1,000 people. We knew that we had family buried there and
were anxious to locate them. Inside the
gate is a lengthy list of unmarked graves located within the cemetery, but there
was no listing for the headstones that still exist, so we walked the cemetery. Among those listed on the plaque for unmarked
graves were three Ganus babies, one belonging to my great grandparents, Sarah
E. Faucett and William Franklin Ganus ,
and two belonging to my great grandfather’s brother, John Thackason Ganus and his wife Mary M.
Chisenhall,. Only Parley L. Ganus, son
of Frank and Sarah, had an actual headstone there. As I stood before his little grave, I couldn’t
help but think of his parents who had also stood on that very spot. I could imagine their grief as they buried
their little boy just a few weeks shy of his first birthday.
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| Parley's headstone |
I wish that I knew more.
Why did Parley die? In fact, why
did all four of those Ganus babies die? They all died within four years of each
other, most during the cold winter months, which can be unbearably cold in the
valley. Did the deaths of those four
babies contribute to my great great grandparents, John and Olivia Ganus and
their five sons, Frank, John, Roderick, Robert and Newton and their families all moving
soon after to Oklahoma? I know that even if I find the answer to those
questions, I will still be left wanting to know more. It seems that no matter how many questions are
answered, there are always more and so I keep searching. In this blog, I plan to share the things that
I learn about my ancestors and about research and I know that in the process, I
will learn more about myself.