Part OneMy trip up north was a semi-success, but no complaints. I was on a mission to find Bob, or at least some part of Bob. On my last day at Green-Wood Cemetery, I thought I had hit the jackpot. Four broken nails, some choice words muttered under my breath, I came back with the Barney/Montgomery family plot. And a few good leads for the next time.
I left my hotel quite early to make the trek into Brooklyn, which was an adventure in itself. As I came up to the gates of this cemetery, I was totally awestruck. It has to be the biggest cemetery I have been yet. Fortunately, they have a handy computer where you can look up where you need to go. Keeping in mind that not all cemeteries are in nice neat little rows, and of course, no GPS data, it took a considerable amount of time. I counted steps from three different markers and kept coming to the same stone, but no Montgomery on it. I decided to give that one a rest and look for the Martha A.B. Montgomery I had found, she was conveniently hidden in some shrubs, and she wasn't the toddler daughter of Bob either. I went to the front office and met with Theresa and exchanged information. Voila! Out came the books and we were in business. No Bob, no daughter, no brother, but Bob's mother Mary W. Barney and Henry Sr. Just they were never added on the stone. I decided there should be a law about adding names to stones. We got into a discussion as to what it says on the cemetery card as opposed to the articles that ran in the NY Times. Theresa was fabulous in looking up cremation records for Bob or relatives and she had no idea that the people in that plot were related to Bob and Elizabeth.
By 4pm I was out of time, and the pearly gates were closing, so I zipped back to 24397 to take some photos. I was pretty much on cloud 9 too but bummed that I wouldn't be able to make the new leads come to life until my next trip. Sitting in 5pm traffic in Manhattan made me forget any disappointment I had.
Green-Wood Cemetery
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