The Lives and Times of My Ancestors - 1

On my return trip home from a business trip to Western New York State to inspect a dam and meet with a project team, I stopped in the sleepy Hamlet of Rushford, NY in Allegany County.  My mother's side of the family, both father and mother, had numerous relatives that hailed from Allegany County, but my mother's mother's family lived around Rushford.  I wandered through this small cemetary, no larger than the 1/3 acre residential lot that I live on, looking for gravestones with the names "Metcalf" and "Persons", the family names I recalled.  My brother, Bob, is the geneology expert of our family and I credit him with adding valuable family history content to this blog. 

I found the gravestone of my mother's grandmother, Ellen "Nellie" Persons (1861 - 1926), and grandfather, Charles Metcalf (1855-1935).  My mother's mother (my grandmother) told us the story her grandmother told her - that she, as a 4 year old, remembered the day that her father, returned from service in the Civil War.  Who knows how old she was when her father had to leave home to serve in the Union Army?  Who can imagine how joyful that moment must have been?

In the prior generation, Levi Metcalf (1815 - 1892) married Cornelia English (1829-1921) who's parents were born in Ireland and came to America during the potatoe famine.  Cornelia was the first American-born English, which happens to be an Irish surname.

That experience left me with several impressions:

1. Cemetaries themselves, though filled with monuments, are monuments to the Christian faith held by our forefathers, and are a testiment to their belief in the resurrection.  Jesus' words from John 11:25-26, come to mind: "I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me, will live even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?" 

2.  Although I never met these people, my life has in some ways been effected by their lives.

3.  The story my grandmother told me, that was relayed from her grandmother connects me backwards into history through my relatives.  Thought of in this way, the Civil War does not seem far away in time, but rather much closer.  Time becomes compressed.  

4.  My forefathers were effected significantly by the events of history.  Civil War, famine, World War I, the industrial revolution and more.  They suffered hardships, and overcame hardships. 

5.  We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1-3) who have walked by faith ahead of us.  Some of these faithful are family members who we never met but yet they are a part of an eternal cheering section.