Scott and Venus Andersen continued their 2014 Spring clean up work today at the Dean Cemetery in Ross County.
They shared good news of their unexpected success in locating stone fragments that have now solved the mystery of the identity of a 10 year old boy who died in 1820. The main gravestone of John Milton Hare had been broken. Missing key pieces with his surname and death year had been long buried nearby. Thanks to their probing work, some of those pieces were unearthed today. Thus, John Milton was really John Milton Hare!
Notes from Scott:
"We spent a long day at the Dean Cemetery.
Burned
a good portion of the brush from trees that were cut down last fall,
but there is still a long way to go before that project will be
complete. I'd say there's at least another three days of work, just
doing that.
Good
news; we made another find. I was cleaning up an area along the north
fence line that has an old tree stump. There had been a very large
rotting log laying in this spot, and as I moved it, I noticed another
little stone poking out of the ground. A little brushing with a wisk
broom revealed that it had carving on the face of it.
When I saw the carving on the
stone, it immediately reminded me of one of the broken stones in the
big pile at the middle of the yard. This one has been a bit of a
mystery, as only the left half of the stone existed, with the
inscription;
John Milton
Son of Daniel and Sar
Died 22 Sep
I was never sure whether his last name was Milton, or if that was a middle name.
You
can see in the photo that the stones match perfectly. We dug
further and found that the base of the stone is complete.
We got out the prober, and poked around the surrounding area, and found a few more pieces of the stone."
The stone's
transcription is:
Son of Daniel and Sarah Hare
Died Sep 22 1820
in his 10 year
