Ancestry Saturday: Who Is Buried Here Anyway?

Smith Cemetery in East Mead Twp, Crawford County, Pennsylvania has a mystery.

A cemetery transcription from 1959 indicates Catherine Ritner Smith is buried here and, one can safely assume, had a stone in 1959, albiet one hard to read. Instead of birth and death dates, there are question marks.

Those aren't the only question marks in this case.

My third great grandmother Anna Catherine Rittenauer Smith was, undoubtedly, buried here. This transcription isn't the only reason that makes it very likely. The transcription indicates next to her is her husband. Further, it indicates her husband, Jeremiah, is the son of James. These elements in the 1959 transcription match the findings of modern researchers, including me for linking Jeremiah and Catherine Smith.

The dates in the transcription, 1858-1939, clearly don't match the Jeremiah who was the son of James and the husband of Catherine though.


Complicating things more is a gravestone where the transcriptions would predict it to be. There's no stone for Catherine any more. The modern one for a Jeremiah Smith, though, has those dates from the 1959 document. There's more.


A stone exists for Jeremiah Smith, my 3G, in nearby Blooming Valley Cemetery. The news article mentioning his death said he was to be interred at "the cemetery in Blooming Valley."
 

A 1938 burial card for him on file at the Crawford County veterans office would cause one to believe he had a stone there at least that far back.

What's going on here?

Clearly, there's a mix-up.

Here's my hypothesis.

My research shows Catherine died about 1875. Evidence is she died before Jeremiah.

It seems likely she got buried where Jeremiah's multiple ancestral family members got buried--Smith Cemetery.

Further, some record, maybe even a gravestone, was created for the future burial of Jeremiah. That would have been next to Catherine and in the same row as Jeremiah's father and mother, James and Ruth.


Then, in 1878, Jeremiah, living with family out of town, dies. He gets buried in Blooming Valley, the town he founded in 1845, instead of the family plot outside of town.

Time passes. Then, in 1959, someone misreads the headstone or records at Smith Cemetery, thus creating an inaccurate set of dates for history.

More time passes and someone, wishing to document the burial of a founder of the nearby town or a veteran, takes it upon themselves to create a new stone.

That someone uses the 1959 reading to create a new stone. For whatever, reason, they ignore the 1838 supposed birth date doesn't match his war service or his town founding.

That's my hypothesis.

Anyone have another?