MT VERNON CEMETERY FEBRUARY 10, 2011

I took another swing through Mt. Vernon today. I was hoping to get
some interesting pictures because of the bright sun perhaps causing
more shadows from the tombstones. So I drove through the back entrance
and around on the outer perimeter by the fence near the railroad tracks
stopping the car to take shots here and there:

Now there was one monument that got my attention because of its ornate
detail so I took a few more pictures, including a closeup of the detail and of
the inscription plate:

I drove on through and out of the cemetery, then went and did some laundry.
Later this afternoon I loaded the pictures onto my laptop and then uploaded
them to a new album on Facebook. Tonight I took a closer look at the name
on the inscription: Joseph E. Kimball. I took a quick look at Rootsweb to see
what information I could find on him, because I do have Kimball ancestry from
the Ipswich area of Massachusetts.

And i was, as we geneabloggers say, gobsmacked.

Joseph E Kimball was married to Susan Ford Dunham, daughter of Brigadier
General Henry Dunham, whose family plot I stumbled across a few months
back. And Henry was the brother of Cornelius T Dunham whose plot I discovered
yards away from my parent's burial site last fall. And there were other Dunham
cousins buried at the top of the hill at the other end of the cemetery. I've blogged
about all of this in the "A Family Reunion of Sorts" series on my genealogy blog.
 
But what are the odds that I'd find all of these distant unknown cousins all buried
in the same cemetery with my parents? I've never been all that superstitious, but
suddenly, I'm thinking it was more than luck that led me to all these graves.