This past week, I spent a few hours photographing headstones at Birmingham-Lafayette Cemetery in Chester County and was amused to see that a few more graves were in the process of being consumed (if that isn’t too insensitive of a way to put it) by the very old trees that shade the older sections of the burial ground. Though many of the graves in this section of the graveyard date back to the id-1800’s, the trees are likely quite older and well-established.

The first of these is a shot I took 10 years ago and, even then, I could not identify the stone. If I recall correctly, there is a picture of the stone in the book about the meeting, Two Hundred Years of Quakerism at Birmingham, 1790-1940, and in that case, I believe the stone was still readable. Of course, that also means that the tree had already started its course of consumption as early as 1940. Trees eat slowly. To the upper left, you can make out that the nearby stone appears to be of a Taylor. Though I don’t remember exactly where this stone is located, it is definitely to the right of the main path (if you enter the yard from the Meetinghouse side). Though many if the old burial grounds in the area have their own hungry trees, Birmingham seems to lead the contest in numbers of grave consumed, having at least four that I have photographed so far.

The next few pictures were all taken on this week’s trip to Birmingham and I can at least partially identify them, working from the old cemetery listing done back in the 1930’s.

Could it be possible for whole families to disappear into the trees? In the case of the Jones family of Birmingham, that appears to be a distinct possibility. The stones of  John Jones and his sister Elizabeth, are slowly but surely being covered over by the thick roots of  the ancient trees, making one wonder of other stones have already vanished from sight!

John and Elizabeth were two of the children of Benjamin Jones and his wife Rebecca Eavenson, both well-known families of the area.

John was born August 25, 1788 and died in July of 1858, just shy of his 70th birthday. I don’t believe John ever married, but if he did, his spouse is not among those buried in this row at Birmingham. In fact, none of the spouses seem to be buried in this particular row, though several of the Jones children did marry. Maybe their spouses had heard about the nature of those trees…

John’s sister Elizabeth did marry, but her spouse, Joseph Fox is not buried near her, as far as I can tell. Elizabeth was born January 4, 1777. Elizabeth tree-bound tree would probably be enough of a challenge to read as it is, but buried partially within the roots of a tree, makes it even more challenging than usual. What little data remains visible does jive with the information found in the old Birmingham listing for Elizabeth, so we’ll assume it’s here stone. If the couple had any children, I have yet to find traces of them.

On the old Birmingham listing, John and Elizabeth are listed right next to each, so it’s quite possible that the same tree is involved in both cases, and yes, those roots are extensive!

A little further up the row, we find poor John Huey’s stone, just only being consumed but knocked down first! Though it appears right -side up in the picture, the stone is actually laid down and facing away from the trunk of the tree. The picture was taken by resting the heel of the camera against the trunk of the tree, to make the picture more readable. John Huey was born January 26, 1779 and died May 1, 1848. His wife, Phebe [Martin] is nearby but safe, so far, from the grasping roots of her husband’s captor! Most of their five children are buried in the same row. The Huey name was a common one found in the yard at Birmingham, with many descendants scattered throughout the yard, all the way into the modern day.

Though I had hoped to be able to photograph all of the burial ground at Birmingham-Lafayette while I was there, the heat was simply too oppressive to stand so I cut my journey short by a few hours. I did manage to get over 800 shots, but will have to make a return trip to photograph the rest. So far, nearly 400 of the photographs appear in my online genealogy database at http://genroots.genwatcher.com, so I’m nearly halfway the cataloging process. Hopefully, I’ll finish adding them to the site this week, but free to browse in the meantime!