Last June I went on a business trip with my husband back to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Both of us have ancestors who lived in Pennsylvania in the 1700 and 1800’s so we decided that we would extend our business trip by a couple of days and go and see the towns and areas where our ancestors had lived. The evening that we landed in Philadelphia we drove up to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and spent the night there because that is the area where my ancestors are from. We got up early the next morning and started on our journey to locate every old historical marker and old monument that we could find that might have something on it about my ancestors. We were lucky and did several markers and even an old monument that had some of my ancestors’ names on them. We toured an old home and old church in the area where my ancestors had lived in the 1700’s.

Then to finish the day off we headed to an area called Union Township, Pennsylvania. There were two cemeteries in Union Township that I wanted to visit because quite a few of my ancestors were buried in those two cemeteries. The first cemetery that we visited was called the Marvin Cemetery. It was a tiny cemetery that was on an old dirt road in a farming area. I found the headstones of my great, great, great Grandfather Zerah Marvin and his wife Rhoda Ann Williams Marvin and several of their children in this tiny old cemetery. It was humbling for me to think about the lives that they had lived so long ago in this farming area. There was an old house next to this cemetery and it still had the name Marvin on it.

By this time it was getting late in the day and we still had one more cemetery that I wanted to visit where my Williams ancestors were buried. My husband and I drove for awhile down another dirt road and were finally able to find the Scott Cemetery where my 5^th great Grandfather Jabez Williams and his wife Martha Jane Soverhill Williams and many of their children and grandchildren were buried. Thanks to “Find a Grave” I had the pictures of all of the headstones that I wanted to find in this cemetery. My husband and I were able to quickly find the area where most of my Williams family ancestors had been buried and I took pictures of all of those headstones. Then we searched for about 7 more headstones and were able to find 5 of them when it started to rain. My husband said that he was cold and wet and wanted to be done because we had found all but 2 headstones and we still needed to drive for 2 hours to get back to Philadelphia and it was getting late. I told him that there was a headstone of an “Infant daughter of Smith and Sarah Williams” that I really wanted to find. I had been looking for that headstone off and on during the entire time we had been at the Scott Cemetery but I hadn’t been able to find it. The picture of the headstone on Find a Grave was very difficult to read and I thought that if I could just find this headstone and see if I could read it and see if it was near the headstones of my Williams family ancestors’ graves in this cemetery, I would be able to seal this infant daughter to her parents Smith and Sarah Williams. Smith and Sarah Waltman Williams and their 3 other children’s temple work had already been done several years ago. So in the rain my husband and I searched for this headstone. We walked back to where most of my Williams Family was buried and searched for the fifth time in this area for the Infant Daughter’s headstone. Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw the word “Infant.” I told my husband “I think I found it!” and we both couldn’t believe our eyes because we had both looked at this headstone several times before but it was so old that we couldn’t read the writing on it. But now because the headstone was very wet from the rain, we could read the words, “Infant daughter of Smith and Sarah Williams. Died January 16, 1850.”  This headstone was very near my great Grandfather Jabez Williams and his wife Martha and several of their children’s graves so I knew that this little infant daughter was definitely a member of my Williams family ancestors.

Two weeks after my husband and I found this headstone, we went to the Draper Temple and sealed this “Infant daughter Williams” to her parents Smith and Sarah Williams. The spirit was so strong during this sealing that the temple sealer even asked about who this Infant Daughter was. I know that Smith and Sarah Williams wanted their infant daughter sealed to them along with their three sons that had already been sealed to them so that they could now be a complete eternal family. –Alison VanLeeuwen