Are the two of us 4th cousins truly guilty of the great offense that we committed? The invasive, personally assaulting crime that polite society prefers to call… Trespassing?

Yeah… Like… “Forgive us our trespasses…”

Trespassing? That kind of Trespassing

Walking on someone else’ property without permission?

Guilty??? Of that kind??? Of Trespassing???

Treading upon someone else’s property seems to be a very minor infraction to say the least. But then again, somebody felt it was necessary to put up a bunch of printed-on-card-stock notifications around our ancestor’s graveyard that say, “POSTED NO TRESPASSING… blah, blah, blah… PROSECUTED to the FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW… blah, blah, blah…”

And then… the two of us 4th cousins proceeded to traipse upon the very piece of ground that was outlined by said signs? (cue Arlo Guthrie)

Then. For. Certain.

We are guilty of the crime that we like to call… Trespassing!

Period!

End of Story…

Not…

I feel a strong sense of reverence for my ancestors — now that I’ve come to know them. A spirituality, if you may, that is probably not uncommon in Native American practices and beliefs. I love to gaze at nearly unblemished views of Finger Lakes area landscapes, and know that my ancestors would not be at all confused by what it was that I was looking upon. Today, there are a few artifacts and a handful of buildings from those past times yet remaining.

Of all of the sites to visit that have been on my ancestral research “List of Places to Visit,” the final resting place of my 3rd great-grandmother has always been at or near the top of the list. Years ago I found the obituary of Lucy Ann (Beebe) Sherwood Culver (1822-1901) on FultonHistory.com and that enabled me to connect five generations of my ancestors through the four surnames of Beebe, Palmer, Sherwood and Davenport. I knew that on June 23, 1901 my ancestral family, including grandfather Clyde Burton Davenport, 1st great-grandfather Fred Seward Davenport, and 2nd great-grandmother Maria L. (Sherwood) Davenport had all congregated at this very same exact place to pay their final respects to our 3rd great-grandmother, Lucy Culver.

So it must be the same with my cousin. Her 2nd great-grandfather, Dr. Orlando Beebe Sherwood (1840-1908) was certainly a fixture in the community, and his mother would not be buried without his attendance. Glenda’s grandfather, Harry Sherwood, was a pall bearer and it is very likely that Harry’s wife, Edith (Coddington) Sherwood, and their son, Glenn Orlando Sherwood (Glenda’s grandfather) were among those who gathered that day in McIntyre Settlement Cemetery.

Earlier in the day, my wife, Lynn Nichols, and I had cruised around the Cayutaville – Mecklenburg – Enfield – Newfield area to see how much of the past was still present. I was pleased to see many houses that are being lived in today that certainly would have been in existence in 1872 when Lucy Culver helped to create the Cayutaville Quilt. There was one house from that era that I was hoping still existed. And locating it was actually another top item on my “Ancestral List.”

This image appears in the book, History of Tioga, Chemung, Tompkins, and Schuyler Counties, New York : with illustrations… p. 618.

The people pictured are Grace Culver and Enos Culver. Each has a tile on the quilt. It is most probable that Grace Culver along with her sister-in-law, Lucy Culver, were the mainstays behind the creation of the quilt.

Grace (Evans) Culver was a sister of Elizabeth (Evans) Sharpe —  the mother of quilt recipient, Irene Lydia Sharpe. Betsey Sharpe died in 1864.

Enos Culver and Charles Culver were brothers. Charles’ first wife, Adoline (Evans) Culver, was a sister of Grace (Evans) Culver and that means that she too was an aunt of the quilt recipient. Adoline Culver passed in 1865.

In 1867 Charles Culver married his widowed next-door neighbor, Lucy Ann (Beebe) Sherwood — our 3rd great-grandmother.

The caption indicates that the house was the residence of Mrs. Grace P. Culver of Mecklenburg. I suppose that one could tell story after story based on the perceived activities of the people depicted in the image. I choose to romanticize and feel that the artist has portrayed this as a place where people gathered for tea and other social and family functions, formal and informal. Among those gatherings could very well have been some kind of a quilting bee, or even… the final assembly of the Cayutaville Quilt.

I felt that it was an important place for me to find — should it still exist. A home where you know for certain that an ancestor – or two or three – had once upon a time visited. Had once upon a time stepped over the threshold. Had once upon a time broken bread. Had laughed. Had grieved.

Online, the evening before, I examined two 19th century maps and compared them with Google Earth. I determined that there were two sites on the same road just a little southwest of Mecklenburg where this house might still exist. As we drove past the first location I was about 99% certain that we had found it. But just to be sure, I requested that we at least drive to the second location.

Nope. That was not it.

We “K-turned” (for about the four thousandth time that day) and went back to the first house to take some pictures.

To me it is obvious that this is the very same house and property that was pictured in the 1879 history book. So much of the scene remains enough unchanged that I’m sure that if it were to be seen today through my ancestor’s own eyes, there would be little doubt about what it was that they were perceiving.

“What time is it?,” I asked Lynn.

“2:15,” She replied. “Why?”

“Beause we’re meeting Glenda around 2:30 at A.C.’s,” I said, attempting to calculate whether or not we had enough time to visit Lucy Culver’s grave — the next item of possible things to-do that were on my list of things to-do that afternoon.

“Oh,” said Lynn.

“Okay, then. Let’s try to get to the place I warned you about this morning… and I know it seems confusing,” I continued, repeating the information from earlier in our motel room in Horseheads. “On Google Maps it looks like McIntyre Settlement Cemetery is right in the middle of an ugly clump of trees off to the north of Strong Road just a few hundred yards from Rte 6. I honestly don’t know if we’ll be able to see a single thing, or if it’s even the right place at all.”

“Oh,” repeated Lynn with an ever so slightly discernible ‘here we go again into an unchartered cemetery’ tone-of-voice — one that over the years, I’ve learned to appreciate… on many levels.

Using only my memory of the 1850 vintage maps that I’d studied the night before, I navigated our way from the old Enos and Grace Culver residence to where I thought the cemetery was most likely located. I drove north on Route 6 making a right hand turn onto a well-groomed dirt and gravel road called Strong Road, that led us eastward for about 2 tenths of a mile to where there was another dirt road, narrower and not-so-well groomed, leading to the north for what appeared to be, at the most, another 2 tenths of a mile.

We took the left turn and proceeded cautiously northward. Rows of fully mature six-foot tall stalks of cow-corn were growing in a field on our right side. Thick, new-forest growth and ferns were evident a bit uphill and to our left. As we passed through slowly, we could on occasion perceive objects in the early autumn afternoon backlight that appeared to be tombstones.

And of course, quite visibly, there were posts planted in the ground bearing “No Trespassing” signs which had been placed evenly distanced from one another along the edge of the new forest undergrowth on our left.

Just before the end of the farm road there appeared to be a rarely used and overgrown pathway leading up to the plateau level of the cemetery. Sensing that time was growing short, I continued to drive past the path to the end of the road, rather than take on a trespassing violation at that particular moment in time. The farm road culminated near a second corn field allowing me to make yet another K-turn which turned us around so we could return to Strong Road. From there we went south on Route 6 toward Cayutaville to meet up with Glenda Sherwood at Dr. A.C.’s grave at the appointed hour.

Our 3rd great-grandfather, Dr. Amaziah Church Sherwood, (1815-1860) was Lucy Ann Beebe’s first husband and the father of all of her children. Neither Glenda nor I know who his parents were. When Dr. A. C. Sherwood died in 1860, his widow, son, and four daughters moved from Trumbull’s Corners to Cayutaville, into the home of Lucy’s father, John Beebe. Charles Culver, his first wife, Adoline, and Rene Sharpe (the quilt recipient) lived next door.

It had been a little more than three years since Glenda Sherwood and her son, Nick Cross, first met Lynn and I at Dr. A. C. Sherwood’s gravesite. Then, we were attempting to channel our 3rd great-grandfather. Trying to cajole him into giving us some kind of a hint or clue as to who his parents might have been. What we got was a picnic-in-the-cemetery-ruining surprise thunderstorm and a couple hours in the living room of Robin Andersen of Trumbull’s Corners where we learned about the time in 1855 when our 3rd great-grandfather had delivered the Ervay Quadruplets of Newfield.

Since that eventful afternoon three years ago we have met at other locations in order to capture multi-generational pictures of Glenda’s family with the quilt. We have traded countless emails and pictures. We have each spent enormous amounts of time and energy learning just about everything we can possibly learn about 19th century Cayutaville, and our ancestor.

We followed one lead that took us on a journey to the founding of Churchville near Toronto, Canada. For a while we thought the creators of Church and Dwight baking powder would provide the answer to our brick wall prayers. And, most recently, we have been hot on the trail of Henry G. Sherwood who was a leader in the formation of the Mormon Church — close enough to the inner circle as to have been among those who secretly buried Joseph Smith. But to this date, we do not know who Dr. A. C. Sherwood’s parents were.

Lynn and I arrived at the corners in Cayutaville where the Methodist Church now stands. About a quarter-mile to the west from there is the Cayutaville Cemetery. The first headstone that one sees upon entering the graveyard is that of my 4th great-grandmother, Lydia (Palmer) Beebe (1784-1856). Several yards or so behind her stone is the gravesite of her son-in-law, Dr. Amaziah Church Sherwood (1815-1860). I was saddened to see that since my last visit a year ago, his headstone had become dislodged from its base and was now laying on the ground. I made a feeble and almost humorous attempt to try to wright the monument myself but ultimately the weight of the stone caused me to be unsuccessful in this effort.

Glenda pulled up to the cemetery a very short time later. A few years ago I had found a Rootsweb.Ancestry.com hosted webpage called, “Cayutaville Memories.” The page is a collection of vignettes of the Cayutaville Church and vicinity, with local names and some genealogy from Henrietta States, Christine Leonard, Dorinda Ryan, Viola Harvey, Marilyn McCarty, and Gert Chapman that was compiled in the 1980s. Glenda and I had planned to follow the path that Christine Leonard had described. I had a printout of that section, and it seemed fairly easy to follow.

Glenda parked her vehicle in the vacant lot located across the street from the Church and next door to the house that was the former residence of Glenda’s great-grandparents, Harry and Edith (Coddington) Sherwood. Glenda’s father, Glenn Orlando Sherwood, had spent many summers of his youth at the home of his grandparents. Glenda joined us in our car and we drove to where the “Cayuta Lake School used to be located” — the literal beginning of our tour.

We went slowly northward along the road from the lake to Cayutaville, stopping from time to time in order to read and re-read the words of Christine Leonard. I would have to say that for the most-part we were successful in determining who lived where along the road. Certainly a good percentage of the structures and homes that we were able to see were probably in existence at the time when our ancestors lived there in the last half of the 19th century.

And I think we were assured that the large white house that is located in the Catherine half of Cayutaville just south of the corners on the east side of Route 6, was probably built by our 4th great-grandfather, John Beebe. This is the house that our 3rd great-grandmother returned to after the death of her first husband, Dr. A. C. Sherwood. This is the house that was located next door to where Rene Sharpe lived with her uncle and aunt, Charles and Adoline Culver.

We hadn’t taken a lot of time to complete this little excursion. Maybe forty-five minutes, perhaps an hour. I was a little unsatisfied with what we had accomplished, and I had a sense that Glenda wanted something more to explore.

“Have you ever been to Lucy’s grave?,” I asked, finding it little bit amusing that she and I refer to our distant ancestors in such a familiar fashion as to call them by their first names or nicknames.

I assumed that Glenda probably had been there at some point since Cayutaville was a place that she’d known for all of her life and had visited many times. So, I was a little bit surprised when her response to my question was, “No. I don’t think I even know where it is. Have you ever been there?”

“Well…,” I began, with what I was hoping would be the appropriate sound of hesitancy in my voice as to both gain Glenda’s interest and secure her agreement to what it was that I was about to propose. “Lynn and I were just near where I think McIntyre Cemetery should be. But it seems kind of overgrown and there are a bunch of No Trespassing signs. We drove past and I think we might have seen a couple of tombstones. But I’m still not one-hundred percent sure if it’s the right place. Do you want to go check it out?”

“Of course! Sure! Let’s go!,” she said — without any hesitation what so ever.

I made another K-turn and began heading north on Route 6 towards Strong Road where Lynn and I had been exploring earlier that afternooon.

Just as I had done before, I turned East on Strong Road and went about a quarter of a mile, then turned North onto the little farm road that bordered what I believed was McIntyre Cemetery. Proceeding deliberately along the farm road between the cornfield and the barely perceptible cemetery, we once again spotted what hauntingly seemed to be headstones barely visible among the ferns and undergrowth that were taking over our ancestral burying ground. We arrived at the place where a footpath had once been that lead up a small incline and along what was most likely the eastern border of the cemetery.

The three of us got out of the car. We each took notice of the many No Trespassing signs. Concerned about the fact that we were about to purposefully walk upon someone’s posted property, I had to ask, out loud, “Are we sure we want to do this?”

“Let’s just go up the path a little ways and see if we see anything,” suggested Glenda.

She lead the way up the slight incline tramping on the long grasses that had bent over the walkway. After a few dozen yards the path leveled off, and just beyond that point was where the footway veered to the left, into the cemetery. Glenda looked up and came to a sudden stop.

“Look at that!”

And there. Only about a hundred feet or so away from us was a six-foot tall monument rising above the nest of thickly growing ferns and stickery things that surrounded its base.

“Anybody who’s gonna see us is gonna know we’re in a cemetery. What are they gonna do?,” Glenda asked, and I don’t think she wanted an answer. “Besides, I wore long pants in case we ended up doing some exploring.”

Almost at once, Glenda began making her way towards the gravesite. “She must have been an amazing woman”, my cousin said as she looked back in my direction. She continued to zig-zag her way through the fescue and prickers and ferns towards the monolith-like obelisk that seemed to be consuming every ounce of our attention.

“No doubt!,” I panted, while making a futile attempt to keep astride of my cousin as she charged her way through the brambles and thickets to the as yet unidentified grave ahead of us.

“LUCY A… WIFE OF… CHAS CULVER!”, Glenda said loudly as she read the words from that first visible monument that we came upon in all of McIntyre Settlement Cemetery that day.

No longer caring for my own well-being, I began to take chances with my footing amidst the pricker bushes that affronted me and my bared legs — being clad in shorts and a golf shirt — and picked up my pace in order to get to the monument as quickly as I was able.

What a great stroke of luck. There are 170 people buried in McIntyre Settlement Cemetery and we found our ancestor right off. Glenda had already backed away from the site a bit in order to take a few pictures of the monument before I had been able to reach it myself. She took a few shots of me standing next to our ancestral shrine. Glenda and I then exchanged places so I could capture a few images of her next to Lucy. And, since it’s 2017 and, the picture style of the day is the “selfie”… We got some selfies of Glenda, me, and Lucy to commemorate the occasion, and at the same time embed a “date-stamp” of sorts into our imagery for historical purposes.

On June 20, 1901 my great-grandfather, Fred Davenport, and Glenda’s great-grandfather, Harry Sherwood, along with four of their cousins, had lowered their grandmother, Lucy Ann (Beebe) Sherwood Culver, into her final resting place in McIntyre Settlement Cemetery. I’m sure that the dozens of relatives and friends who gathered on that day, in that place, were quite saddened by her passing.

Today, one-hundred and sixteen years later, my 4th cousin and I were able to be together on hallowed ancestral ground to rejoice in the life of Lucy, our 3rd great-grandmother. And to rejoice in the existence of the quilt that she helped to create almost one-hundred and fifty years ago that forever connects me and my cousin to a little known 19th century community known as Cayutaville.

All good times must come to an end, and such was now the case with our excursion into the McIntyre Settlement Cemetery. We processed back down the little path towards the car.

“You know, I’m a little angry with the Culvers,” Glenda confessed to me. “It seems like they took Lucy away from us and made her a Culver instead of a Sherwood.”

I chuckled a little bit at this because from time to time I’ve had the same feeling as my cousin. It seems like I look upon Lucy as though she had two lives. Life number one was spent being my 3rd great-grandmother and life number two as the second wife of Charles Culver. The reality of the situation was a lot more complicated than that. Lucy’s son and one of her daughters remained in Cayutaville to raise families that included several of Lucy’s grandchildren. Two of her grandchildren remained in Cayutaville and raised their families there. In a lot of ways, Cayutaville changed from “Culver City” to “The Sherwood Forest” during Lucy’s lifetime. And it is more than likely that my great-grandfather, Fred Davenport, and Glenda’s great-grandfather, Harry Sherwood, called Charles Culver, “Grandpa.” Never-the-less the fact remains that Lucy was laid to rest in the same location as her second husband, Charles Culver (1814-1879) and his first wife, Adoline (Evans) Culver (1812-1865), in a graveyard located on Culver family farmland three miles outside of Cayutaville.

We got back in the car, K-turned, and drove slowly once again past the cemetery and the “NO Trespassing” signs, and on to Cayutaville to return Glenda to her vehicle.

And as I was driving, I couldn’t help but imagine what I would have said to a judge — had we been arrested for trespassing.

“Yes, your honor. We are guilty of the grave crime of… Trespassing!”

“Period!”

“End of Story…”

Not…