Uncle Ralph

My great-great Uncle Ralph rests in East Cleveland Township Cemetery. Only one person I have ever known met him, and by the time I was old enough to have asked Great Grandma about her family, her dementia was so severe that I couldn’t have trusted the answers. I have one photo of him, in a barely salvaged photo of my great-great grandparents and their children that is so poor that it has been reinforced with line drawings.

Everything I know about him apart from his name, I have learned from sources outside my own family. He’s shown up on a few genealogy websites, and one day, after realizing they had him listed as dying in Cleveland, I put his name in the Cleveland Public Library’s Necrology File, and discovered that he was buried in East Cleveland Township Cemetery.The Cemetery’s burial cards are partially scanned, and from them I found more.   He was born in December of 1892 and died in 1920 at the age of 27 of tuberculosis after spending time in the Warrensville Sanitarium. He left behind a wife named Hilda, but no one seems to know where she went after his death.

I’ve been to the Cemetery where Uncle Ralph is buried twice now, but I haven’t found him. I haven’t even looked really hard. Now the first time I went to East Cleveland Township Cemetery, I didn’t know anything more than Uncle Ralph was buried there, so I’ll give myself a pass. But the second time, I had looked at a map and had details right down to the lot number. But I didn’t look.

I’m afraid.

I’m scared I’m going to go to the cemetery with the map, find the right spot, look down, and find nothing there. I don’t want him to be lying in an unmarked grave, and I don’t have the financial wherewithal to do anything about it right now if he is. I already know that my great great grandfather Lavergne Cook rests in an unmarked grave in Fort Junction, Colorado.

I’m dreading finding out the same thing about my great-grandmother’s beloved brother.