The other day, when I visited Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn to check out the Tierney and Beattie grave sites, I discovered something VERY odd.  First, our family does not seem to be into entering subsequent family members deaths onto tombstones.  We seem to just add them to the graves.  Only the first to die seem to get listed.

I found the same thing over at Green-Wood Cemetery.  Only Henry and Anna Lewis are listed on the headstone there.  BUT THERE ARE 8 OTHER LEWIS FAMILY MEMBERS BURIED THERE!  

Now back to Holy Cross…  There is a nice big Tierney headstone at the site of James F. Tierney and Sarah Beattie Teirney, but only James is listed… and it is on a side stone, next to the main stone.  There may be other Tierneys there too, but according to the office staff there, I need to pay a fee to the cemetery to research it.  Needless to say, I already sent in the request!

Now at the Beattie headstone, I found the first grave that is as I expected it to be.  A nice big stone with lots of names on it.  Even one I have no idea who it is.  At the bottom of the stone is a fairly recent inscription (1977) listing a Philip F. McCarthy (b. 1856, d. 1971).  As far as I know, we have no McCarthy’s in our tree.  So was this a mistake?  Did someone change their name?  Is he a family friend?  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll find out more when I get some information back from the Cemetery.