Nine years of nature

On a recent visit to Sandy Corners Cemetery in Dublin, Ohio, I stopped at the grave markers for the Davis family. There were two weathered obelisks, one for H. Davis (d. 1878) and one for his wife, Sarah (d. 1877).

Between the tall markers was a small, damaged stone that was difficult to read. In fact, I could not even make out the name, but based on the few lines I could read, I understood it to be the marker for a daughter of H. and Sarah. I snapped a picture, hoping to figure out the details of the inscription after transferring the image to my computer.

No such luck.

No matter how much I zoomed or enhanced my photo of Unknown Davis, I could not read the name. On top of that, the line revealing age at death was completely missing. Time for plan B: Search the Internet for another source of the gravestone inscription.

Bingo! Her name was Loria.

I found a photo of the white marble marker, easily read, on Leona Gustafson’s website, a site I had visited many times before. The big chip had been missing from the top of the marker when this photo was taken, but there was little lichen (moss? algae?) on the stone. David Gustafson took the photo in 2001.

Leona and David Gustafson have photographed and transcribed thousands of gravestones in abandoned and inactive cemeteries in and around Franklin County, Ohio, preserving valuable information for generations to come. In a 2002 article in The Columbus Dispatch, Leona said, “Every one of them, eventually, will be gone.”

Take time to explore Leona’s website: http://www.genealogybug.net/Franklin_Cemeteries/. 



Thank you to Leona and David Gustafson for permission to post the 2001 photo of Loria’s marker.