I met with their granddaughter, May "Evelyn" Abell about 2001. She was the oldest daughter of Benjamin Harrison Abell, 4889-1965. She told me when she was a little girl they would go up and weed around the family tombstones or wooden markers. She said about 80% or more were wooden makers, including Ben and Elizabeth Anne's daughter, Jessie Sweet, who died of TB. Anyway, she said that in the late 1960's or early 1970, a man who had land adjoining the cemetery thought no one visited the cemetery anymore. (It is in a rather remote area.) So he pulled up all the markers he could and plowed it under for a wheat field. When she went up to visit she was shocked and angered.
She contacted local authorities who she said, 'couldn't be bothered,' and apparently didn't want to get on the wrong side of the man in questions (I don't know his name.) So she wrote a scathing letter to the local newspapers in Kamiah, Lewiston and Boise.
After that, the cemetery was returned to just that, a cemetery, but most of the markers had been burned or destroyed. And now, no one really knows where which grave it. The only markers remaining are those the man could not pull out of the ground, including the stone markers for Ben and Elizabeth 'Annie' (McLane) Abell.
The cemetery is in a beautiful spot. Entering, you are facing SW and the Bitterroot mountains that form the Idaho-Montana border. At least that's what I think I'm looking at.... and this Virginia boy could be wrong. I've been several times. It's in an area that gets very dry late in the summer. I never stay long, as every time I go in, there is fresh bear scat..... and I know it's fresh, because it's not had time to dry out in that very dry air.
There is a cemetery committee for the upkeep, but I don't know anything else about the, except, the last time they had changed the fencing, adding a new cattle resistant gate. It's open, but while one end stops, the other end had a "C" shaped attachment that makes it so you have to walk around the loop, and it's too tight for cattle to get through. But that doesn't stop the bears. I'll attach some other photos to the Find-A-Grave site.
Have you been to this cemetery, or just hosted these pages? Are you an Abell descendant? I published a hard back book on the Abell family, or this branch, in 2001. You can find it listed in the catalog at the Library of Congress Library of Congress
This actually covers mostly from his parents on down. His parents were Jabez A. Abell and Susan Miller. (Susan's sister, Margaret Miller Edmonds, 1818-1892 is the grandmother of Ernest Miller Hemingway, 1899-1961.)
But it goes into his ancestry, by pointing at books done about 1901 and 1940 that go into much more detail. The 1940 book only lists three of Jabez's sons, so this book was meant to expand from there.
My line to the couple in the Willow Ridge Cemetery,
Ronald Dean Mosher, 1959-
Jesse Dean Mosher, 1927-2012
Jesse William Mosher, 1901-1986
Annis Ruby "Ruby" Abell, 1882-1960
Elizabeth Anne McLane, 1848-1921
m. Benjamin Franklin Abell, 1848-1915
I met with their granddaughter, May "Evelyn" Abell about 2001. She was the oldest daughter of Benjamin Harrison Abell, 4889-1965. She told me when she was a little girl they would go up and weed around the family tombstones or wooden markers. She said about 80% or more were wooden makers, including Ben and Elizabeth Anne's daughter, Jessie Sweet, who died of TB. Anyway, she said that in the late 1960's or early 1970, a man who had land adjoining the cemetery thought no one visited the cemetery anymore. (It is in a rather remote area.) So he pulled up all the markers he could and plowed it under for a wheat field. When she went up to visit she was shocked and angered.
She contacted local authorities who she said, 'couldn't be bothered,' and apparently didn't want to get on the wrong side of the man in questions (I don't know his name.) So she wrote a scathing letter to the local newspapers in Kamiah, Lewiston and Boise.
After that, the cemetery was returned to just that, a cemetery, but most of the markers had been burned or destroyed. And now, no one really knows where which grave it. The only markers remaining are those the man could not pull out of the ground, including the stone markers for Ben and Elizabeth 'Annie' (McLane) Abell.
The cemetery is in a beautiful spot. Entering, you are facing SW and the Bitterroot mountains that form the Idaho-Montana border. At least that's what I think I'm looking at.... and this Virginia boy could be wrong. I've been several times. It's in an area that gets very dry late in the summer. I never stay long, as every time I go in, there is fresh bear scat..... and I know it's fresh, because it's not had time to dry out in that very dry air.
There is a cemetery committee for the upkeep, but I don't know anything else about the, except, the last time they had changed the fencing, adding a new cattle resistant gate. It's open, but while one end stops, the other end had a "C" shaped attachment that makes it so you have to walk around the loop, and it's too tight for cattle to get through. But that doesn't stop the bears. I'll attach some other photos to the Find-A-Grave site.
Have you been to this cemetery, or just hosted these pages? Are you an Abell descendant? I published a hard back book on the Abell family, or this branch, in 2001. You can find it listed in the catalog at the Library of Congress Library of Congress
This actually covers mostly from his parents on down. His parents were Jabez A. Abell and Susan Miller. (Susan's sister, Margaret Miller Edmonds, 1818-1892 is the grandmother of Ernest Miller Hemingway, 1899-1961.)
But it goes into his ancestry, by pointing at books done about 1901 and 1940 that go into much more detail. The 1940 book only lists three of Jabez's sons, so this book was meant to expand from there.
My line to the couple in the Willow Ridge Cemetery,
Ronald Dean Mosher, 1959-
Jesse Dean Mosher, 1927-2012
Jesse William Mosher, 1901-1986
Annis Ruby "Ruby" Abell, 1882-1960
Elizabeth Anne McLane, 1848-1921
m. Benjamin Franklin Abell, 1848-1915
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