Butternut Ridge Cemetery

Butternut Ridge Cemetery
Butternut Ridge Cemetery First Burial 1821

Thursday, December 1, 2011

The Mystery of Mr. and Mrs. Coe.



     Lot 217 Is owned by Mr. Henry Sanford Sr.  Buried on this lot are Abigail Caswell his first wife she died 13 April 1841 28 years old.  Samuel Beckley he died 10 Oct 1840 29 years old. Both of them have headstones.  Mr. Coe and Mrs. Coe were the other two buried in the lot. They have no headstones.  The first two were easy to figure out?  (back to this Later). 

       First we had to figure out what were the first names of the Coe Couple.  Since we already have a Merton Coe and a baby Oscar Coe, we started there.  They were both children of Oscar Coe Sr. Checking on Oscar we found in the Coe Ridge Cemetery listing so it wasn’t him.  We did a census on Oscar and found him to be the son of Samuel Coe and Sarah Smith.  Further research showed that Samuel was the son of Ephraim Coe and Nancy Robinson of Berlin CT.  
       We did notice when we were checking the actual census for Samuel and Sarah that they were the next door neighbors of Mr. Henry Sanford Sr.  I also found in the Grindstone Advertiser transcripts (A Local Newspaper ‘1868 -1884” that the SW Cuyahoga Genealogical copied out the pertinent Births, Deaths, and Marriages) that Samuel Coe died suddenly in 1875 from smallpox.  We have found quite often that neighbors would provide a lot for a sudden death of a neighbor.   
     Back to Samuel Beckley his headstone says that he is the son of S and S A Beckley.  In researching his parents we found they were Samuel and Sophronia Adaline Beckley.  Another article in the Advertiser had the obituary for the passing of Samuel Beckley.  Mr. Beckley was born in Berlin CT in 1791. Before he left Connecticut he married Sophronia Adaline COE on 5 May 1815. They left for Ohio in 1821. The article also stated that he died in the home of his son in law Mr. Henry Sanford Sr.  Polly Beckley was Henry’s second wife. Polly Beckley's mother Sophronia A Coe is the Sister of Samuel Coe.  We have always thought that Butternut Ridge Cemetery was at least 60% related