03 Out of Place

 In September 2019 my wife Patti and I were on a genealogy-inspired tour from Detroit to Boston. The Brewer family (one of my lines) had, in 7 generations, gone from England to the Boston area in Massachusetts (mid-1600s), then to the Berkshires in the western part of the state (mid-1700s), and on to New York (1790s), and Michigan and Wisconsin (mid-1800s).  And so we were going back in time, as we travelled east. According to findagrave.com, a few of my Brewer ancestors were supposed to rest in the "Brewer Family Cemetery" outside Augusta, Oneida County, New York. This cemetery was not quite what I had expected. 

Brewer Family Cemetery, Augusta, New York

The GPS coordinates brought us to a field in a pretty area of farmland, and about 100 yards into the field there it was – a small plot segregated from grassland full of cow patties by a crooked wire mesh fence, one prominent monument, a few small headstones still in place, most scattered about the tiny lot. The main monument, inscribed to Curtis Brewer and his wife Luroxy, had the headstones of many in his family propped against it.

My G4 grandfather David Brewer Jr. moved to this area from the Berkshires in Massachusetts in 1793-94 along with his first wife Deborah Hall; my G3 grandfather Allen Brewer was born here in 1800. Allen married Lovinia Tefft and had 3 children with her, including Harriet Brewer my G2, remarried after Lovinia died, and eventually moved away to Michigan, leaving some family behind to further populate the cemetery. David Brewer's three wives are in this cemetery (Deborah, Lucy, Catharine), he's probably there too. Life was hard on these women; Allen's first wife didn't make it out of New York alive either, and she is here, but he is buried near Port Huron where we started this genealogy journey.

Curious, as I write this, I trace out the descendants in the FamilySearch tree, and by the 1900s it appears that all the male Brewer lines had moved on, further west in New York, to New Jersey, Washington, California... This cemetery stays, decays, represents the Brewers here of the 1800s, even as we descendants have found new places. So the place has lost its people, and the people have lost this place, like the stones perhaps a bit misplaced?

A bit more:

We might have started in Fairwater, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, where my great-great grandmother Harriet Brewer is buried alongside her husband Austin Pardon Kenyon, but we had been there many times. So we began with her father, buried about 10 miles from Marysville where I lived in Michigan, along the St. Clair River, when I was 2 to 6 years old. I don't believe my father knew he had a relative so close.

And we might have ended in Watertown, where my sister now lives, and where we believe our earliest Brewers lived when they first came to America from England. But we did cover the 4 generations in between.

The start of our trip, Caswell Cemetery, near Kimball, Michigan,
at Allen Brewer's grave (my G3 grandfather)

Where we ended up: John Brewer (my G6 grandfather),
Woods Cemetery, Monterey near Tyringham, Berkshires

Lovinia Tefft, my G3, "Died July 15, 1828, Lovinia,
wife of Allen Brewer, age 25 years"

Deborah Hall Brewer, my G4: "In memory of Deborah Brewer,
Wife of David Brewer who died Feb 6, 1807, Aged 42 years & 8 Months"