St. Columba Cemetery at "Lake Five," Wisconsin, USA: Interesting Contributions...

Be careful in recording information for your family history...

...and that includes being careful as you record information from this St. Columba Cemetery Blog.

The information for this blog was taken primarily from the headstones themselves. However, mistakes could have been made in the transfer of information from those headstones, plus possible mistakes from the information provided in funeral home and newspaper obituaries.

So, please try to verify the information provided on this blog with other sources as much as possible. Maximizing verification is probably a good approach to any and all of the information you receive regarding your family history.

Two cases in point took place at this blog recently:

1- An obituary for a deceased husband gave his wedding date as March 27, 1928, but then the obituary for his wife gave her wedding date as March 3, 1932. Obviously, there has been an error that will need to be corrected by checking newspaper archives or checking with family members who still reside in the area. Thanks go out to the observant family member that caught this error and e-mailed a request for clarification.

2- On another entry, information from an obituary and the names listed on a headstone led to the false assumption that a mother and infant daughter had died at the same time and had been buried at the location of the headstone. However, only the mother had died and the infant daughter, now a grown woman, came upon this cemetery blog and e-mailed to correct the mistake. Here is the article she contributed to her local genealogical society:

"Don't Bury Me Yet!"

by Joyce Kadow

"I recently stumbled onto a Web site for the cemetery in which my mother is buried. Her headstone read 'Maichle/Kadow.' Her maiden name was Margaret Maichle. She married my father, Edmund Kadow. My mother died two weeks after I was born.

Along with the transcribed headstone inscription on the Web site, there was a notation. Someone had seen the two names and assumed that two people were buried in one grave. Someone thought that when my mother died, her newborn infant died too.

'Hey, wait a minute! That infant was me! I'm still here!'

I immediately sent an email to the administrator of the Web site. I let him know there is only one person in that grave and it is not me!

I soon got an email from him. He straightened out the records.

'I'm sorry we buried you,' he said."

Headstone Restoration Work

Anyone interested in doing restoration work on their family's headstone should "click" on the letter "L" along the right side of this screen and then scroll down to view the "Lilley" headstone that was restored by a great-great-grandson, Joseph Dunn, with the help of his family and a friend.

Mr. Dunn is available for consultation on your restoration plans. Please e-mail this site at okeane.robert@gmail.com to receive Mr. Dunn's contact information.

Vince Sennott Adds Some Cemetery Background and Local History

Life-long resident and life-long member of St. Columba Parish (now St. Gabriel Parish), Vince Sennott, is a great resource for local history. He was kind enough to take a "walking tour" of the cemetery that was videotaped. He also provided more commentary later at his home in July of 2008. The following information was shared by Vince:

There was a creamery located on the north side of the cemetery, just north of the middle driveway where local dairy farmers would bring their milk. Washington County owned the property after the creamery went broke during the Depression. Some of the original foundation of the creamery had to be broken up and removed by church members when the cemetery expanded to the north.
The gap in the southeast corner of the cemetery that has many missing headstones was due, in part, to several local drivers accidentally plowing into the headstones as they traveled north on County Road "J" (that road is now State Highway 164), usually late at night and possibly full of drink. [The cemetery is located on the northwest corner of the intersection of County Road "Q," running east-to-west, and State Highway 164, running north-to-south. The intersection was slightly offset. The part of "164" coming up from the south was a good ten feet west of meeting up directly with the part of "164" coming down from the north. So, driving north on "164" from the south and not seeing the stop sign and jog in the road, a driver would proceed directly into the southeast corner of the cemetery.]
Another reason for missing headstones was caused by neighborhood cows occasionally breaking the fences that ordinarily kept them within their pasture. Vince told of an earlier priest announcing at the Sunday morning Mass that people noticing a missing headstone for one or more of their ancestors could probably find the stone on the pile of excess dirt in the northwest corner of the cemetery where a few of the men in the parish had placed them after getting the cows back in their pasture.
Vince noted that Mrs. Vogel, who lived with her family during the warmer months at a mansion on the north side of Lake Five and whose family was a part owner of Milwaukee's Pfister and Vogel Tannery, was disturbed enough by cows grazing in the cemetery that she provided a sturdy iron fence around the cemetery grounds to keep out future encroachments.
At one time, four-to-five semi-truck loads of broken headstones and the stone walls of the creamery's foundation were hauled out and used somewhere as fill.
Traditionally male parish members dug the graves as needed---first, by pick and shovel, then with tractors with back-hoe attachments. Fred Lubbard and a Mr. Rankin came to mind as men who dug a lot of the graves. They would often run into huge rocks when digging the grave that they would try to break up if possible. Rocks that would not break or were too large to work with required the diggers to dig the hole that much deeper to bury the rock under the six foot depth.
The last of the Kelly's (Catherine and Raymond?) owned two farms east of the cemetery along the north side of County Road "Q" that are now the Narr and Warnecke farms. The Donnelly home on the east shore of Lake Five was the location of the first church services before a church building was constructed on the northeast corner of the "Q" and "164" intersection. Dunn's lived on the Jim Sennott farm originally. Ryans lived near Plat. The Riley's, Maggie and George (single siblings), were on the farm right across from the Sennott farm near Lake Five. The Melville farms were just west of Colgate, on the south side of "Q."
Usually a family would purchase an over-sized burial plot. The family stone was placed in the middle of the plot and family members would be buried on all four sides of the headstone, including infants who were technically buried outside the official cemetery grounds, south of the cemetery where lilac bushes used to grow.
Vince's parents were Francis Sennott and Stella (Burke) Sennott. Stella was from nearby Erin Township and her parents were Joe Burke and Mary (Coffey) Burke. Vince's grandfather was James Sennott Sr. and his great-grandfather was Peter Sennott who donated the land for St. Columba Church.
Vince's uncle, Jim Sennott, worked up the cemetery to get a lawn installed because the grasses were getting quite high and there was brush growing up as well. Typically, the cemetery would be mowed once or twice a summer with a scythe.
The Nelis farm was on Hillside Road, east of the cemetery. None of the family ever left the area and none of them married. When they were tearing down the old buildings in the 1940's they found $35,000 in cash hidden in the walls.
Sullivan's and Flynn's owned the land on the northwest side of the intersection where the cemetery is located.
Father Zimmer, who is buried in the cemetery and is the only church member to go on to the priesthood, was in the military and got malaria. He had to stay in bed for a long, long time. His brothers, Dr. Joe Zimmer and Dr. Jim Zimmer, along with Joe Boos, never had a furlough in their four years of military service.
Sylvester Fleming, an attorney, was always trying to figure out who was buried at the large "Fleming" headstone. Other Fleming family members are buried further north with individual or family headstones.
One of the Flynn's was stabbed while working to dig the Erie Canal. The Sheridan's owned the farm on the southeast corner of the intersection of "Q" and "164." They were probably related to his Sennott family. There was a house on that southeast corner that was the post office for some time.
Vince's surname is of Irish origin and is spelled differently on various headstones, including Sinnott and Senott.
Ed McCartan owned the farm north of the cemetery. Paul Koch [pronounced: "cook," locally] owned the tavern at Lake Five after Patrick McCarten owned it.
Gilbert Schmitt is the man who currently places small, US flags at all the gravesites of veterans in this and other local cemeteries.
In the old days, someone would go to the church when someone died and ring the bell the same number of times as the person's age.
At the burial, if people in the community felt the deceased person had done something very wrong they would not take the casket through the cemetery entrance. The casket would be lifted over the fence for the final burial. [We left the walking tour of the St. Columba Cemetery with the hope that we would not need to have our caskets lifted over the fence.]

Your Contributions Are Most Welcome

New family history materials have recently been shared for the JAQUEST and ENNIS families. Their work is added to the individual descriptions of each family. Family members who were working on their family histories e-mailed additional information that was then put in with the original listing of one or more family members. You are very much welcome to add family information at the entry of your family members.

Contributions may be edited and will be credited to you (unless you prefer to be anonymous). Your input could include condensed family trees and/or favorite stories about your ancestor or the St. Columba / Lake Five community.

Order for Visiting a Cemetery

(...from a free brochure from the nearby church, Queen of Apostles, in Pewaukee; the excerpt

from the Book of Blessings was prepared by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy)

Greeting

Leader: Praise be to God our Father, who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Blessed be God for ever.

R/: Blessed be God for ever.

Leader: My dear friends, we gather today to pray for our brothers and sisters whose bodies lie here in rest. They have passed from death to life in company with the Lord Jesus, who died and rose to new life, and are purified now of their faults. We pray that God may welcome them among all the saints of heaven.

Reading of the Word of God

Leader: Brothers and sisters, listen to the words of the first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians: 4:13-18.

We don not want you to unaware, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore, console one another with these words.