The Family Cemetery & Isaiah Basford Huff Mysteries

This will be two posts in one.  First off, Kim and Shelly and I went out back yesterday with Kim's metal detector again looking for evidence of the Basford Family Cemetery.  This time armed with  evidence derived from Wayne, who took me to the spot that was shown to him by my grandfather a handful of years before his death.  At that time Grampy was looking for remnants of a page wire fence that he recalled being around the cemetery.  Unfortunately, we found no remnants of page wire, even with the metal detector.  We did find two bent spikes that COULD have been used to nail wire to a tree.  They were found in the ground maybe 30 feet apart, in areas that you could make the argument COULD have been two corners of the fencing...not much to go on as far as proof.
If you have not seen this, I think you'll find it interesting.  The following link is of the deed from Nathaniel Basford to James Basford which mentions the cemetery.  Unfortunately, all of the descriptions are from the grave of his daughter Maryetta, whose headstone is in the barn.  And since it is very difficult to read, I'll translate as best I can as follows:

Note that this is a deed from 1857 transferring the property from Nathaniel to his youngest son James and it mentions that Nathaniel has lived here 32 years.  So he would've bought the first piece of this land in about 1825!

"Reserving however a piece of ground four rods square commencing at the north side of the grave of my daughter Maryetta and extending southerly four rods and easterly two rods from the centre of said grave and extending westerly two rods fromt he centre of said grave, making sixteen square rods of ground for a family burying yard."  (a rod being 5 1/2 yards or 16 1/2 feet)  Four rods equaling 66 feet.

So while coming back to do some more research, Shelly and I notice something that I had only paid minimal attention to before; that being the fact that Nathaniel's eldest son, Isaiah, ends up being adopted by his maternal grandfather, Moses Huff, at the age of seven.  Why in that day in age especially would you "adopt out" your eldest son, at the time still retaining three daughters?  This occurs just a few years before Nathaniel buys the first piece of what becomes the family farm and about a year after his second son, Reuben, is born.

A Different Time

I spent a fair bit of time a couple of weeks ago scanning about half of the deeds that relate to the farm (all that are available predating the 1970s.)   One of the oldest of them indicates that the initial piece of land was bought as early as 1825, although we don't have that particular deed.  As a result of going through those, I also found some other interesting documents.  What follows is a real estate description filled out by Lamont Basford when he (and/or his deceased older brother's wife) was trying to sell the farm.  Thankfully that never happened.  What's more interesting than the fact that they were thinking of and trying to sell the farm is the description of what comprised the farm and what was on it approximately 100 years ago.  Since James and Fernando died in 1915, I'm assuming this was filled out shortly after that.

 

 You'll notice at the bottom "Give reason for selling" "to settle estate" and the asking price was $6,000, $3,000 being the least he would take.  As I'm writing this and looking over this document and the ancestry tree that Aaron has done, it's interesting to note that James Basford, who owned and built much of what we know as the farm today, and his son, Fernando, died in the same year of 1915 (and James' wife having died 9 years previous).  So it's likely the impetus to sell and "settle the estate" is by Addie, Fernando's widow.  Strange that it's her husband's youngest brother who filled out this form.  If this document is from 1915 or 1916, that makes Stanley (Fernando's son) 19 or 20 years old at the time, though it's my understanding he'd never lived "here" growing up. 

  

Since this piece is about a document relating to family history, I wanted to let you know I updated a prior post that had several obits posted.  At the very bottom of that post you'll find the update.  You can get to that post by continuing to scroll down to the post entitled My Great Grandparents (plus one) or click the link.  And this is as good a place as any to update you about my (and now Kim's) ongoing search for the family cemetery out back, near where the original cabin was.  After being out there this past weekend with my mother and Uncle Wayne, I'm feeling pretty good about where both of those were.  As soon as Kim can come back with her metal detector, we'll hopefully find some confirmation of the spot of the cemetery.  I'll keep you updated.

My Ancestors' Graves

On Saturday, July 30, Dad and I went to the Roger's Road cemetery in Troy, as well as the Detroit Village cemetery. We cleaned up a couple of the stones in the Troy cemetery and took photos of them.  We took photos of the stones in the Detroit cemetery as well.  I wanted to share the photos of the stones of the ancestors in my direct line.  Another time I will share the photos from all of the other Basfords in the Detroit cemetery.


These first two photos are of my great-great grandparents, buried in Troy.

These next two photos are of the gravestone of my great-great-great grandfather and his in-laws, parents of Addie Merrill (my great-great-great grandmother).

These next photos are the graves of my great grandparents and the other set of my great-great grandparents, buried in Detroit.

This next photo is the grave of my great-great-great grandparents, buried in Detroit.  Notice how young Rosa was when she died, a year after my great-great grandfather was born.

The next stone is of my great-great-great-great grandparents, buried in Detroit. It's pretty cool to have found the grave of my four times great grandparents.

I also took many photos of other Basfords buried in the Detroit cemetery that are not in my direct lineage.
And finally, the last two photos are of the headstone of my five times great grandfather.