Index by: Story Name: Mother Tanner's Christmas Tree My Great-Grandpa Charles My Mother and Santa Claus Boone County Cemetery The Little House on Russell Street Transistor Nights Main Character: Ashbrook, Thomas L. Griffith, Charles Logan Lockbaum, Alice Virginia (Finnell) Shears, Robert Lee "Pappy" Tanner, Bill Tanner, Grandpa and Mother

 

Let me tell you a story (I hope I don't bore you!)

I grew up in a neighborhood in Florence between I-75 and KY 18 behind Boone County High School. There were several acres of undeveloped land next to my subdivision and the school -- lots of woods and abandoned farm fields. Me and the kids from the neighborhood played there for years.

There was an old, rotten house in the woods and over the years, we would find things like old shoes, bottles, wagon wheels, steel animal traps, etc. One day in 1984 (I was15), a bunch of us kids were playing manhunt (team hide and seek), when I discovered two headstones in a thick clump of vines and bushes that I was hiding in. The manhunt game stopped right then, and over the next few weeks, we (kids) cleared the area of vines and weeds, and the girls transplanted wildflowers by the headstones.

One headstone read "Charles Wesley" born January 16, 1861, died at one year, six months, and five days old. Another very small headstone was illegible, another was also illegible and broken into pieces, and another we found face-down, almost completely buried but perfectly legible (after using a scrub-brush) read: Thomas L. Ashbrook Born May 19 1817, Died August 4 1844 - son of John and Sarah Ashbrook.

We (my family) moved away that year but I moved back to Boone County when I got married in 1993. I was divorced in 2002, and bought a house near where I grew up. One day last year, my son and I were riding our bikes around Florence - we randomly went into a cemetery next to Florence Elementary School, and walked around (my son wanted to look for soldiers).

It hit me like a brick wall when I saw the same headstones that I had found in a clump of vines, 23 years earlier, about a half-mile away. Whoever moved the graves even brought the headstone that was broken up!

The old farm fields have since been developed, and I can't find any record of these graves being moved, nor can I find a Thomas L. Ashbrook in any Boone County census.
I told this story to my kids and we have adopted Thomas Ashbrook, Charles Wesley, and the two unknowns as family. We have left flowers on several occasions -- now I just wish we could find anything out about who they were.

If anyone is interested, I can send pics of the headstones with exact dates.

John