Tombstone Tuesday - September 24, 3013

This is Prairie Grove Cemetery in Fort Wayne,  Indiana. We stopped here to try to locate the graves of several Davis family members. Adaline Davis and Columbus Davis who I believe to have been children of Benjamin C. Davis and his first wife Letishia Robinson Davis.   Benjamin married Margaret Smith after Letishia died.  I have never been able to find where Margaret is buried so I thought maybe I would find her here.    I was not very prepared for this trip.  I knew there were Davis here but I did not find any of them  Looking at findagrave this evening, I am surprised that I did not find any because there are probably 30 buried  here but there are over 6000 burials in the cemetery.  

What I did find in the Cemetery was rather ironic.  We parked the car near the chapel and the first gravestone I walked up to was for James Oberley who was a member of the 142 Indiana Infantry.  this is the same regiment that my GGGrandfather served in.  We are related to Overly's and several of the Overly families changed the spelling from Overly to Overley or Oberly or Oberley.  So I could not help but wonder if this man was related and how Ironic it was that I walked right up to his grave out of 6000 plus graves in this cemetery. 

This is the stone provided by the government for Civil War Vets.

This stone reads James Overley died January 22, 1881 at the age of 52.

Are they the same person?  As I have looked through the Civil War records I have seen James's last name as Overly, Overley and now Oberley.  I wonder which is official or are we talking two different people. In the cemetery these looked to be the same grave.  I did not question the differences until I returned home and looked at the photos on my camera.

James Oberley 

Born:  1829
Died :  January 22, 1881.

I will continue to look at the records to try to sort this out.

Happy hunting,

Jan Smith