September 5, 2008 - Fairbury, NE to Wichita, KS

The main goals for today were seeing a cemetery in Fairbury where a gggg grandfather of mine is buried, Nebraska and then heading to Wichita, Kansas.

The cemetery was over two hours southeast of Kearney. As usual, it took a little longer than the prediction.

I wanted to see this cemetery on my trip through Nebraska last year. However, when I attemped to get there, a yogurt truck overturned on I-80 and closed the interstate down. The radio announcer was advising people to take alternate routes. I did not have a GPS at the time so I was nervous about that. In addition, tornadoes were spotted in the area. So, I decided this was a "must see" on this trip even though I was exhausted and waiting to get to Wichita, Kansas.

I remember speaking with a caretaker last year. He told me there was an "old section" in poor condition and that many graves either did not have headstones or the headstones were in disrepair. To further complicate things, the cemetery records burned in the 1920s. The individual I was looking for last appeared in the 1880 census. Very little remains of the 1890 census (also due to a fire) and this individual did not appear anywhere in the 1900 census.

When I arrived to the cemetery, at first I thought I would just walk through the old section and spot the surname. But, this is a huge cemetery. I drove around and found workers. One of them had access to the records. He located a plot with the right surname. He told me there was likely nothing there in terms of a headstone. But, when we got there, it was like striking gold. The headstone was completely intact and mentioned my gggg grandfather. My gggg grandmother also did not show up on the 1900 census, but she is not listed anywhere. The stone has room for her and has other names on it.

My gggg grandfather died in March 1888 according to the headstone. I would later learn that the blizzard of 1888 began in mid-March and killed hundreds of people in the areas of Nebraska and the Dakotas. It is likely that my gggg grandfather was one of the first to die from this. He was just under seventy. He had survived a journey from Pennsylvania to Nebraska at some point in the 1870s.

The rest of the trip involved heading south to Wichita. It was mostly along I-135 in Kansas. I had driven this road last year so it was kind of the same.

When I finally got to my friend's home, I was so happy to be done sightseeing for a while. It was great to be able to do something different.