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Showing posts from March, 2012

Sunday’s Obituary – A Little Irish for St. Patrick’s Day

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[Ellicottville, Cattaraugus County, New York] From the Ellicottville Post , Wednesday, September 30, 1896: Obituary Charles Cotter, aged about ninety-eight years, died at his residence in this town, Thursday at 8 o’clock. Mr. Cotter was born in Brandon, county Cork, Ireland, in about the year 1798. When twenty-one years of age he started for America and after a long and tedious voyage of twelve weeks crossing the Atlantic he landed in Boston, Mass., then a small town, where he made his home for several years, afterward spending a great portion of his time in the South. He would tell many interesting stories about those cruel slavery days. In 1840 Mr. Cotter was united in marriage to Mrs. Mary Duffy in the city of Buffalo, where they resided for a time. In 1852 they came to Ellicottville and settled on the farm where he resided until the time of his death. Mr. Cotter was a kind neighbor, always ready to help others. He was a good Christian man, a true member of the Roman Catholic Church

Wordless Wednesday - More from the Heritage Album

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Here's a couple more from the heritage album I described in my previous post here . These are of my grandfather and his parents:

Tombstone Tuesday –Roman Catholic Symbolism

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This weekend, my friend and I drove up to Cheektowaga, just south of Buffalo, New York to see the tombstone of her second-great grandparents, Daniel & Anna Kreher Reinhardt. (I talked about my research on this family here .) It was a blustery cold day, but there was no snow on the ground. There are cemeteries for at least a mile or two on either side of the road, Pine Ridge Heritage Blvd, which we traveled on to get there. We first turned into the Roman Catholic Polish Cemetery by mistake (St. Stanislaus). We got back on the main road and kept going about another half a mile, passing a Jewish Cemetery until finally we got to the United French and German Cemetery. We knew which section to start looking in. It was Section R, to the left of the small St. Ann’s Chapel built in 1872. After walking along for a bit, my friend turned in and almost immediately walked right up to the stones of her ancestors. She had never been there before. My research and explanation that I knew it was a