For the Observer-Reporter

newsroom@observer-reporter.com

It is an infant's gravestone, carved with all the solemnity of the late 19th century - fluted top and a lamb etched above the name - Lawrence A. Adamson, son of James E. Adamson and Elizabeth Nancy Hoge Adamson. The dates show how short life can be - Jan. 31, 1899, to Oct. 7, 1900.

How this marker, lost for 69 years, found its way to a Washington County auction house, then, amazingly, back to the family, thanks to a tip from a long lost relative in New Mexico, is a story William Van Druff of Mt. Morris is only too happy to tell.

"My family doctor calls me the gravedigger," Van Druff admits with a hearty laugh. His reputation for rescuing family plots from multiflora roses and weeding them back into respectful resting places began with the Van Druff family cemetery in 1994, but hasn't stopped there.

In 2005, Van Druff made the news with his rescue and restoration of the long-forgotten gravesite of George Wisecarver, wagon master for George Washington and early settler in Whiteley Township.

Now his penchant for the past is being piqued once more with this old family stone, misplaced since 1939.

"The way I got hold of it was through a relative we know in New Mexico - Jerry Adamson. He's into genealogy and found out about it being at the auction house and called us. I went up to Three Rivers Auction and got it, and it's in the back of my truck right now," Van Druff said. "We're just not sure where to put it."

Finding where little Lawrence A. Adamson lived and died is a journey through time, back to the days of pioneer family farms, when all aspects of living and dying happened close to home. Children were born at home and Bibles duly recorded the genealogy, even as family members were laid to rest in quiet groves on family property.

Later, as the 20th century shortened distances with automobiles, family cemeteries became a thing of the past. For Betty Adamson Van Druff, family history is a partially documented tale that is now being fleshed out by genealogical tips from third cousins once removed like Jerry Adamson.

Before Elizabeth died, Betty remembers her father saying, she convinced the family to move her children to be with her at Greene County Memorial Park. Since the cemetery doesn't allow gravestones, the stones got left behind, perhaps behind a barn, or tucked away in a shed to be forgotten.

"This is a mystery to all of us. My wife Betty is an Adamson and her older brother Chuck was there when they moved the children's bodies in 1939. Chuck was 15 years old at the time, but now he's not sure which cemetery they were taken from. The stone either came from the Smith Adamson Cemetery on the Jefferson Road or the family cemetery in Morgan Township near Lippencott. There were two boys buried there. Buddy Adamson was born March 24, 1901, and died Jan. 16, 1902, but we haven't found that stone yet. We're still looking," Van Druff said.

Now that one has returned, the question remains: where to put it?

"We'd like to return it to where the boys were first buried. We're just not sure whether the family was living at the Adams farm near Lippencott when the children were born, or if they were living on the farm over by Browns' Creek, between Carmichaels and Rices Landing. If they lived there, then it was probably the Smith Cemetery, but we're just not sure," Van Druff said.

Genealogy, once a labor of letter writing, long distance phone calls and driving to distant courthouses to search old deeds and records, has evolved into a powerful tool, complete with DNA tracking, Internet access and the determination of thousands of passionate history buffs who share information and discover long-lost cousins. The whereabouts of the offspring of pioneer families like the Adamsons, who migrated from places like Greene County, is turning into a startlingly large family portrait.

"I can tell you that I'm related to every Adamson in Greene County!" Jerry Adamson declared. "I got interested in genealogy in 1982 when I met cousins in Kansas at a family reunion and we didn't know how we were related. So I started doing some research and got hooked. I've been looking for that stone since 1992. It shows up in papers by Dorothy Hennen, who inventoried grave markers in Greene County."

When Three Rivers Auction Co. came across the stone in an estate sale, the company did an Internet search of the Adamson name. "They went online and found a lady on a genealogical site who knows me, and that's how they found me," Adamson said. "They were surprised when I called them right back. They contacted me April 29, and I called Bill and Betty Van Druff."

His Adamson family Web site is a wealth of information and very active, tracking over a million hits since it went online. Adamson, a retired civil engineer, travels the country doing research and meeting cousins wherever he goes. The story of the Adamson family is the story of Western expansion of frontier America, driven by family dynamics.

"We're still not sure which cemetery to put the stone in. My husband has been to both and hasn't found the base stone. We'll just have to go with what feels right," Betty Van Druff said.

For more information on Adamson family descendents, go to www.adamsonancestry.com.

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