#52Ancestors52Weeks...Week 19 Theme: Preserve....Preserving the Hurd Burial Plot in Virginia City (Bluett, Hurd, Burrows)

 

 Silver Terrace Cemetery, Virginia City, Nevada. Hurd Plot in foreground, mine tailings in the distant background. Facing south. I used the mine tailings as a reference to help find the location of the plot. 

Photograph taken September 14, 2023 by Patti Alden

  The theme for this week is Preserve....this is the perfect week to share the location where my three times great grandparents William Hurd and Harriet Bluett Hurd were buried.  If you have been following the "saga of the cemetery", you know that going as far back as the mid 1940's relatives on this side of the family  have been searching for this location, with no luck. I am happy to say we now know exactly where the Hurd plot is!  This information needs to be preserved for future generations. 

  

 

  This last summer I took a trip down to Bowers Mansion with my daughter and son-in-law to look for family heirlooms (Bowers Mansion label on the right will take you to the post).  While there I discovered that a Bluett relative had visited previously, and left a folder of information on the Hurd family with the curator.  In the folder Mr. Bluett also left his email address!  I reached out to this cousin in early September, and got a reply the very next day.  It turns out his great grandfather James Wellington Bluett and my great great great grandmother Harriet Elizabeth Bluett Hurd were brother and sister!  We exchanged several emails and I found out that he knew where the gravesite was located and that he had visited in 2019.  Amazing!

   My new found cousin sent me three pictures he took of the gravesite, but no other information on the exact location.  The Silver Terrace Cemetery in Virginia City, Nevada, is a large pioneer cemetery made up of many smaller sections and covers quite a lot of hilly, gravelly  ground.  Most graves are covered in sagebrush and weeds.  If you go, wear good hiking boots and watch for snakes! 

  My next step was to use his photographs and find geographic markers, fences, trees and homes that I could match to google satellite maps of the cemetery.  I also watched a Youtube video someone made of a drone flyover of the cemetery.  From there I knew where to start searching.  My husband and I drove up to the cemetery on September 14, 2023 and found the plot within a short amount of time.  It was located in the corner of the Odd Fellows section; plot B4-021-OF to be exact.  

   Plot B4-021-OF was a mystery!  Unfortunately this information provided only a general location. And, I wasn't sure this was our Hurd family member.  Until I had Mr. Bluett's photographs I didn't know the exact location, or who was buried in this plot. 

 From the Tombstone Transcription Project from Storey County, Nevada. 

 The exact location is in the bottom right hand corner of the Odd Fellows section near the white picket fence. Unless you know what to look for, you might walk right by the plot itself. 

Looking east. Picture taken by Patti Alden September 14, 2023

 The plot is outlined by a pink stone curb surround.  The stone is of unknown origin (this needs more research).  The plot is large enough that it would hold two people; I would surmise that William Hurd and Harriet Hurd were both buried here.  William died in 1876 and Harriet died in 1893.  Only Harriet's burial location was recorded with the county. 

  Under a clump of sagebrush we could just make out HURD.   

Picture by Patti Alden, September 14, 2023.

 Picture by Patti Alden, September 14, 2023.

  It looks like the letters were painted in black at one point, or this is black mold or lichen which may be removeable. More research is needed there!

 

 This is a picture sent by B.Bluett, taken in 2019.  It was not as overgrown as it is now and the lettering was easier to read.  Facing east.  I used the black iron fence, the white picket fence and the tree as references.  

  If you want to visit the Hurd plot, take Cemetery Road going north,  park in the cemetery parking lot and take the farthest trail on your right down the hill.  Go through the little gates leading into the Odd Fellows section (google maps lists it as Masonic Cemetery).  

Front Gate Silver Terrace Cemetery Virginia City, Nevada 

Picture by Patti Alden September 14, 2023.

  This is the view looking north up the hill.  The Hurd plot is behind the plot with the iron fence rail. It needs some TLC.  

  Some synonyms of the word preserve are: Conserve, maintain, save, safeguard, care for, shield.  My first goal was to record and preserve the exact location of the Hurd plot.  Going forward, our family's next step might be to clear the plot of weeds and sagebrush.  I have contacted the Comstock Cemetery Foundation and have permission to do so anytime. That would be minimal preservation that is doable at this point in time.  Beyond that, I will need to do more research into the type of stone that was used for the curb surround, and see if the black is paint or mold or lichen.  Do we want to remove it? Paint in the lettering again? I am just not sure.  The Cemetery Conservators United Standards advocate for "less is more" and "do no harm".  Things to think about. 

  The simple burial plot of my great great grandparents is mixed in with more ornate and elaborate marble headstones, as well as now unreadable wooden markers.  And how many grave sites are lost entirely due to time and vandalism? There is a beauty and serenity in this cemetery in the midst of the sagebrush and weeds and ever present wind.  Each grave tells a story and has become part of the history of Virginia City. The Hurd family was certainly a part of that history and I have told many of their stories in previous posts.  I am very grateful that I was able to contact a new cousin who had information that was not passed down on our side of the family. It amazes me how bits and pieces of vital information are lost in just a few generations and how fragile oral history is. 

 Remember Miss Alta Powers who was almost buried alive after a cave in near the cemetery? She was going to put flowers on her Grandmother's grave.  It was the grave of Harriet Bluett Hurd.  I wonder if the stone surround was put there before or after this event? 

   

3 June 1935 Nevada State Journal

Alta Powers was the daughter of Hattie Hurd Powers, sister of my great great grandmother Elizabeth Jane Hurd Burrows.  

The Mexican Mine was located near the cemetery. 

    So, it is time to get the family together for another trip to the cemetery. We will need some basic gardening tools and a little time to clear the weeds and sagebrush.  And maybe leave some flowers!  At least we know where we are going this time. 

 

References:

The Tombstone Transcription Project for Storey County, Nevada    http://usgwtombstones.org/nevada/storeycem.html

Cemetery Conservators for United Standards 

https://cemeteryconservatorsunitedstandards.org/

53Ancestors52Weeks Week 7 Theme: Unusual Source. Or, How a Weird Tale Solved a Family Mystery (Harriet Bluett Hurd)

 3 June 1935 Nevada State Journal

  This week's theme is "Unusual Source".  Genealogists use many sources to find out facts about their relatives' lives:  Census reports, birth certificates, death certificates, funeral records and city directories can give up a great deal of information to a family historian and help create a basic outline or timeline of a person's life span. But, these resources can be a little "dry".  How do you add a little personality to the dry facts? 

  One of my favorite resources lately has been local newspapers.  They give wonderful and  personal details that  help make people that lived their lives long ago all the more real.  You can really get a feel for  their personalities, their beliefs, their interests and sometimes even hear things in their own words if they are quoted. You may be really  lucky and get to see a photograph! 

  Using newspaper articles as a resource is not that unusual in genealogical research. But,  newspaper stories can  give up unusual details that might help answer questions that have gone unanswered through the usual methods.   I found out something very unusual from a little snippet  in the Nevada State Journal just the other day, when I was searching for articles about another cousin, Alta Powers.  It was certainly a weird story, but it helped confirm a fact that I thought was true, but couldn't prove with the usual resources. 

  For the last several years I have been researching my Hurd/Bluett families that came from Pennsylvania to California and Nevada in the mid 1800's.  They were a hardy bunch that ended up living in the mining town of Virginia City, Nevada.  My Great Great Great Grandmother was Harriet Bluett Hurd.  She and her husband had a total of 10 children, and she came to the west from Pennsylvania not once, but twice.  The first trip the family made was across the Isthmus of Panama and up the coast to San Francisco, and then by stage to Nevada City, California.  Her husband died in a mine accident in Virginia City in 1876, after the family had gone back to Pennsylvania and made yet another trip back out west to settle in Virginia City.    She lived there with her remaining children until her death in 1893 at the age of 58.  

  I had several nice resources on her life to work from, including 40 years worth of US  census records, census population records from Pennsylvania, and local County birth and death records.  I even found several newspaper snippets about her trips to visit family in Nevada City, and her last illness and eventually her death.  I did not, however, have any records of her place of burial.  I had many records of her children's final resting places, but not hers nor her husbands.  The family story was that she was buried in Virginia City, but no one could locate her actual grave. 

  My mother tells  the story of how she and her uncle and grandmother (my GGG Grandmother Harriet's granddaughter)  drove up to Virginia City, Nevada  from Nevada City, California (a day trip to be sure) in the 50's.  They went to the cemetery trying to find where the grave was.  My mom recounts the story..."I can see all of us tramping around the cemetery with the wild winds whipping the long grass around.  Spooky, especially when you are a kid!"  I too, have been tramping around that cemetery looking for relatives, with no luck.  And yes, the cemetery can be spooky with its constant winds, weeds and sagebrush. 

The Silver Terrace Cemetery Virginia City, Nevada.  From Travel Nevada.

  As I was looking for articles with the name of Alta Powers (I had been researching her story at the time) on Newspapers.com during their latest free weekend,  this headline jumped out at me. GROUND COLLAPSES AS RENO GIRL PUTS FLOWERS ON GRAVE. What? Whose grave? Was she Ok? I didn't even have Harriet Bluett Hurd on my radar that day. As I read on, the article gave the exact relationship to the deceased...her grandmother.  That would have been Harriet Bluett Hurd!  It also gave the location of the grave as "near the old Mexico Mine" in Virginia City.  Well, that would have been very close to the vicinity of the Silver Terrace Cemetery.  The grave was probably over one of the many tunnels from the mine, and the ground gave way.   And, thank goodness, my first cousin 3x removed was ok after the ordeal. 

   Considering that there are hundreds of unmarked graves in this cemetery, and at that time the ground was still under threat of collapsing, I will probably never determine the exact location of her burial.  But, now I do know that she was, in fact, buried in Virginia City in 1893.  Her husband is most likely there, too.  Too bad this very strange and weird story didn't get passed on to my Great Grandmother! 

  

Relationship Reference:  Me->Margaret Hansen Boothby->Harold Hansen->Vere Burrows Hansen->Elizabeth Jane Hurd Burrows->Harriet Bluett Hurd

Alta Powers was the daughter of Hattie Hurd Powers, whose mother was Harriet Bluett Hurd. Harriet was a younger sister of Elizabeth Jane Hurd Burrows.