Red, White and Blue Skies

We left New Brunswick under the bluest skies we’d seen on any morning of the ride. It was going home day – back to the United States – Eastern Standard Time zone, dollar bills not coins and road signs in English, not English and French. It was also the genealogy leg of the trip. We were headed to Buckfield, Maine, the birthplace of two of Jason’s Brock ancestors, via Lincoln, Maine, the final resting place of another.

Most of the morning was spent riding through rural – no strike that – wilderness Maine. The homes, if you can call some of the ramshackle buildings that, were few and far between. Lincoln was the first city, and I use that term only because they had more than one traffic light and a few retail stores, we went through since we crossed the border at Vanceboro, Maine. At a construction slowdown I saw a cemetery on my right with a center hill and lots of appropriately aged headstones. I leaned into Jason and said, “There it is,” but he shook his head negatively citing the GPS. We pulled into Tom Horton's for a coffee (we had sun and blue skies, but the temperature never reached 60), an egg sandwich and a regrouping. The North Lincoln Cemetery, where Find-a-Grave indicated David Brock, Jason’s 3x great-grandfather was interred, was at the intersection of Military and Town Farm Roads and in the opposite direction of where we were. Coffee break complete, we headed off to find it.

The North Lincoln Cemetery is easy to miss if you’re not specifically looking for it. The yard is down a side street without any large or visible signage on the main road to mark it. It was a small yard with an abundance of white limestone headstones, so finding David, we thought, would be a snap. We were wrong. Both Jason and I walked and rewalked, maneuvering between every row of stones, but no Brocks were to be found. The cemetery was well manicured and well maintained, so it wasn’t likely that the stone had been damaged (others had clearly been repaired) or removed. It was simply missing.

“Let’s try the other cemetery,” I suggested, disappointed that we’d rerouted through Lincoln for naught. We headed back to the center of town.

A small sign was posted at the side entrance to the second cemetery – Lincoln Cemetery, so Jason drove in, following the grassy road to the front and center section of the cemetery where the oldest stones seemed to be located. I looked to the left and the right as we slowly motored through, wondering how I was going to find 4 headstones in such a large burial yard, if they were even there, considering this was not the cemetery they were supposed to be interred in.

Jason parked the bike and put the kickstand down. I jumped off and rested my helmet on the mirror, turned right and gasped. “What?” Jason asked, concerned. “There is NO WAY this happened!” I cried. In front of me, in the cemetery I choose, right where Jason parked, were the headstones of David Brock, his sister Betsey Brock Buck and her husband, Cyrus, and their mother, Susannah Brock.

Sometime after John Brock III, Jason’s 4x great grandfather died in 1822, his wife Susannah Crandall Brock removed to Lincoln. According to the 1850 census she was residing there with her daughter Betsey, David’s twin, her husband, Cyrus and their family. I hoped to find some Crandall headstones, since Susannah was born in Lincoln, but to no avail. More research is still needed on her branch of the tree. David and his family removed to Lincoln by 1840, according to census records, and they were in Bangor by 1855. I’m not certain when he returned to Lincoln, but his headstone states that he died there.

We headed to Buckfield, the small Maine town where John Brock III, his brother William and sister Martha once lived. David Brock was born there, as was his son, Alvan D. Brock, Jason’s 2x great grandfather. I have a copy of John’s will, (which included two sons I didn’t know he had) but no record of exactly when he died or where he is buried.

Buckfield Village Cemetery (also known as Damon Cemetery) is a large cemetery, but knowing that we were looking for mid-1850’s deaths, we headed toward the older gravestones. We (okay - Jason) found John Brock and his wife, Tamar Farar Brock. John was the son of John III and brother to David. We also found the headstones of several other Farrar family members and the stones of William, John III’s brother and his wife, Sarah Brock.

John Brock III and Susannah’s sons, with the exception of Leonard, who predeceased his father, left Buckfield as they matured and married. Only David remained. He married Judith Farrar, who died shortly after giving birth to their son, John in 1828. In January 1830, he married Livonia Coburn. After David died, Livonia moved to Lovell, ME to live with her daughter, Julia. She lived in Abington for a number of years and died of pneumonia in Medford, Massachusetts in 1888. I’ve not been able to locate where she is buried.

It was a fascinating day, but always so much more to discover.

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