On Sunday we decided to take the kids to the beach. The beach in CT is different than the one in CA where you drive up, get out, and walk to it. You actually have to have a pass to get in and it cannot be paid for at the gate, you must buy it at the civic center in town which is about 5 minutes away.
If you get to the beach before 5pm, you have to pay $6 per person plus parking. If you get to the beach after 5pm you only have to pay for parking. It was 4:40 when we arrived at the guard station. With a 5 minute drive to the civic center, and a 5 minute drive back we had a few minutes to kill before going back to the guard station after 5. We had passed an old church on the way to the beach that had a cemetery that was adjacent to it. I am a sucker for old cemeteries. They are fascinating to me and I love paying my respect to people who have come before me.
As we walked onto the cemetery grounds we saw a family name that matched a family name of our neighbors back in UT. The family name is Wogskch - not a name that you see every day. Brett told me to take a picture of the headstone and send it to our friends. I got out my phone and took a picture and sent a txt message to Amy. I didn't think anything more of it and did not see a response until we got to the beach.
My text message back said "Oh my gosh! They have to be related. There are no other Wogskch's! And they are all from New York and Connecticut."
Over the course of several minutes I learned that they knew that his grandparents were buried in CT somewhere, but they didn't know where. I committed to go back to the cemetery after we were done walking around the beach.
When we returned to the cemetery I took pictures of all of the headstones that were linked to this family marker. Turns out that these graves were of his great-grandfather and great-grandmother and her parents. There is not a marker for the grandmother so I promised to go back again on Monday to see if I could find a map to the cemetery that might help me find his grandmother.
Monday morning I was able go back again and go into the adjacent church and ask for a cemetery map and any information that they had to give me. What I found was so fascinating. Grandma was buried on top of Grandpa in a a double-depth grave. There was no marker for Grandma. I was able to acquire a copy of all of the burial certificates and the deeds to the plots of land that they had purchased for $18 each.
I feel very fortunate that we were able to find this information for our friends. It was a random stop at a random cemetery in Stamford, CT. I can't help but feel that someone else had a part in it all.
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