A Grave Concern: Sidney Guy Sea of Chicago

I’ve wondered about this marker since the first time I found it – why would a man, clearly of some money to have such a nice grave slab, be buried in Cleveland if he was from the city of Chicago? Now that I have access to the Plain Dealer archives through my library card at home, I did some digging. Sea’s wife and her family were from Cleveland. In 1880, Sea married Nellie Seymour at her parents’ home in Cleveland. At the time, the local paper reported that Sea was with the firm of Field, Leiter, & Co. When he died in 1895, Sea was actually in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sources:
“Personal Mention,” The Plain Dealer, 4/8/1880, pg. 4.
“Deaths,” The Plain Dealer, 4/6/1895, pg. 1.

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The Importance of Place

If you look at the vast majority of tombstones, there isn’t much information there. So anything that is on there must be important. Particularly in older graveyards, there is a significant emphasis on place – place of birth, place of residence, or place of death.

In Erie Street Cemetery, we are provided almost a map of movement westward with the grave of Esther Clampett, formerly of New Jersey and then Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Kepplers were immigrants from Germany and France.

Immigrant John Cubben was born on the Isle of Man.

Does place hold the same significance for us now, in a world where I could visit the places listed on all three of these markers in a matter of days with an ambitious flight itinerary and money for the tickets?

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