Over the past month I have accompanied my father to two church graveyards. On the first occasion he wanted to visit the grave of paternal great grandparents who had died in the middle of the nineteenth century. The headstone is made of Welsh slate and originally rested on four squat stone legs. The two at the front of the grave have been removed or disintegrated with the result that the stone now lies at a slight angle. The term for this style of headstone is I think, "table."
Neither great grandparent lived to a great age passing away when aged thirty seven years and forty two years respectively. Their daughter and only child Anne, (my father's grandmother) and who was born in 1842 was made a ward of court and was subsequently brought up by a distant relative who resided in the vicinity of Ballyshannon, Co Donegal. Family history would have it that her guardian somehow managed to get her funds mixed up with his funds but that any unpleasantness was resolved by a house being built for her and her husband.
Our second cemetery outing was to St Columb's Parish Church, Moville, (Moville Lower).This time my father wished to visit the grave of a youth by the name of Jack Bennett who had died on 1st August 1941 aged fifteen as the result of a swimming accident. His father William Bennett was the local chemist. My father had attended the funeral almost seventy six years ago. He and Jack were both pupils at Foyle, Jack a boarder and my father, two years his junior, a day boy.
