Why, you ask, is such an ordinary headstone her “Headstone of the Week?” You’ve seen hundreds just like it, and it is a common shape and just a plain old headstone, after all.
Well! The thing that makes this my headstone of the week, is the fact that I stumbled across it accidentally while I was looking for another, and it happens to be my 6th great grandmother! Not only is it my 6th great grandmother, but a grandson of hers that I never knew existed is buried with her!
I had been to this cemetery behind Elizabethtown’s Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church on numerous occasions but had never seen this, until I started studying the ones that are very hard to read! The ones written in German and worn from years and years of weather. . . .those are the ones I concentrated on this visit.
I cannot translate her information, word for word, but it basically says:
In Memory of Magadalena Axer
Wife of Michael Axer, Sr.
Died June 16, 1816
The bottom part of the stone gave me all kinds of information!
Michael Axer Smith departed this life on the
29th day of January AD 1832
Aged 8 months and 27 days
This three line blurb gave me another branch of the family. What this told me was:
- Conrad Smith who married a Catharine Axer, was indeed, a member of my family. I had found information on a marriage for the couple years before but wasn’t sure which “Catharine Axer” it referred to.
- The stone also told me that Conrad and Catharine had a child that didn’t live to maturity and
- the parents were either unprepared for a burial of one so young, or they couldn’t afford a stone for their only child.
Magdalena had never known this grandson and now he was her’s for eternity, and that is why Magdalena Wilhelm Axer’s headstone is my
Headstone of the Week for Week #7