Dusty Diary searched the Highland Cemetery grave index in the Ypsilanti Archives to see if 1874 Ypsilanti teenager Allie McCullough might, by chance, be listed.
She was.Dusty D felt a tremor of amazement, and instantly yearned to visit her grave and pay her respects.
For new readers: this blog is serializing Allie's 1874 diary, written in the last year of her life. New diary excerpts are posted every Friday. We have come to know Allie as a bright, sociable girl who loved visits from her girlfriends Carrie and Joe and reading papers down at the Lyceum. She was also periodically ill, with a disease that would cause her eventual tragic death.
Allie was listed as buried in section 23, in the north half of Highland Cemetery (pictured at top of post). Armed with a map, Dusty D entered the ornate gate, feeling solemn and a little sad.
Numbers for the various sections are nailed on cemetery trees, helping to puzzle out navigation. DD rolled her bike past ornate pedestals and humbler, eroded graves. I saw a nailed-up number for a section near section 23. I was on the right track! It must be close...and then, there it was.
First glimpse of the McCullough family plot.
Dusty Diary read the big central memorial with amazement -- there it was, McCullough. But what was the tiny, tilted gravestone in the background?
It was Allie's grave.
Here it was, the final resting place of the girl whose words Ypsilantians were reading in 2009.
I examined the grave. It seemed odd that it was so short, and that it contained only the word "DIED" in a descending script without any of the usual additional information. Had the family been poor and unable to afford a larger stone? Why was Allie's grave so small?
Next to her grave was one for Allie's sister Marion. I noted the tall, curved-top style with the legend "MARION" carved in relief on top, just as Allie's grave had her name carved on top. Marion's grave bore an inscription about her death date and her age at death, whereas Allie's had none. This was a puzzle.
As I gazed upon the two graves and compared them, I saw how rough and tilted Allie's grave was compared to her sister's. A slow suspicion dawned.
I searched the back of Allie's grave and noted the rough, uncarved bottom of the stone upon its plinth. This was never carved. It was broken. Allie's stone was incomplete. It had originally resembled Marion's stone but had suffered a break sometime between 1875 and 2009. This little cap was all that was left. Someone had placed the little cap, still bearing Allie's name, back on its plinth. The rest of the stone, with Allie's death date and age at death, carefully carved by some stonecarver of over a century ago, was lost.
As Dusty D absorbed this astounding discovery and stood back for a moment, the rest of the family plot came into focus.
Seven McCulloughs are buried here, including Allie's mother and father, her sister Marion, and Benjimin, Mary, and Elmer, who were all born within a time span that could mean they were Allie's siblings as well, but which DD has not yet confirmed.
If Benjiman, Mary and Elmer are Allie's siblings, then that means that Allie's mother witnessed three of her five children die before her own death--all three cut down at age 27 or younger.
Allie's father's grave: 1819-1883.
Mary, 1851-1919, and Benjiman, 1867-1894.
Elmer's grave, 1863-1923.
A view of Allie's and Marion's graves with their mother in the foreground.
After I left, one thing haunted me.
It was the tiny clump of moss hidden on the back of Allie's grave.
It represents two things.
One is the force of time and life moving on, in the 134th spring after Allie's death.
The moss's tiny roots are slowly eroding Allie's tombstone, and by extension, all community memory of her, despite her faithful diary entries.
The moss also seems like a miniscule promise of persistent life.
On inhospitable stone, whose carefully hand-carved information was long ago shattered and lost, a small, lush greenness, hidden in back, grows and thrives.
It is as tiny, and elegant, and full of life, and poignant, as, hidden in the Archives, Allie's small black diary.
It took lots of visits, one with me trying (and succeeding, dang it) to write on wet paper in the rain. Here's tour #2 of Highland Cemetery. There's a pdf you can just print out and zoom!--off you go. (Humbly) My gift to the people of Ypsilanti. Oh, heck, I just made it because I'm interested in grave iconography.
