Here an Obit; There an Obit

Since John King had been such a help to this writer on the Mayo Craig biography, I asked him to dip into the Lukin gene pool again and help me with the bio for Elizabeth Jackman Craig, Mayo Craig’s grandmother. (Readers, you may not care about her but she is buried at Moffett and I have been tasked with writing biographies of everyone --all 300 people --buried there. Don’t feel sorry for me, because Nancy King has completed all of Bethel, and is working on Denison Cemetery and Marilyn Wagner completed Wright Cemetery and is doing Bell now. Any help from descendants of people buried in the Lukin cemeteries will be enthusiastically welcomed. Heck, if you are a genealogist without people there, we would appreciate your help…..)

Anyway, back to Elizabeth. Elizabeth Jackman Craig was the daughter of Allen R and Sarah Jackman. She was born November 8, 1833 in Wabash County Illinois. She married Amos Craig about 1855 and the couple had 8 children, all of whom survived childhood. After her husband’s death in 1890, she and three of her adult children moved to Vincennes, Indiana. By that time, she was blind.

John said: MOFFETT CEMETERY was deeded by my Gr-Gr-Uncle Henry King, who then sold his farm to the Moffett's. The 2d wife of Henry King was Ann (Jackman) King, sister of Elizabeth (Jackman) Craig. The Moffett Cemetery was once part of the Ruark farm, and folks were buried there before Henry & Ann (Jackman) King bought part of the Ruark farm.

Then he sent me a newspaper clipping printed in the Vincennes Commercial November 27, 1907

That was all well and good but I already had a notice of her death printed in the Lawrence County News November 28 1907.

Same woman obviously, but did she die on Thursday or on Friday? And did she die of “dropsy”, a now obsolete word for edema which was then almost always fatal, or did she have a stroke, not always fatal? And was she buried at Bethel Cemetery or at Ruark Cemetery? Oh, writing Bios is so easy.

The entries for Find a Grave, based on Irene Black’s Cemetery book, I suppose, show that Amos, Elizabeth, John R, a son, and now apparently Mayo Craig, a grandson (Thank you, John) are all buried at Moffett. There are no photos of their tombstones, so they are either, so dark you can’t read the stones, or have fallen over and become buried and can’t be located. That is always bad because a piece of history has been lost.

The cemetery volunteers will try to find the stones and clean them if they are there, but they might not even be there. Mayo’s obit says he was buried there but if he doesn’t have a tombstone, shouldn’t he have one, as a veteran of the Armed Services? Does anyone know the requirements for having a stone placed on a veteran’s grave? And would you be willing to help us procure one from the government, if there is not one marking Mayo’s grave?