roberteenoch@gmail.com For many years the Daughters of the American Revolution have marked the graves of Revolutionary War veterans with markers as shown above. It was probably a bronze marker such as this that once recognized the service of Spencer Sharp. (Photo Provided) In more recent years, the local chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution began recognizing the graves of Patriots with the granite marker. (Photo Provided)
For many years the Daughters of the American Revolution have marked the graves of Revolutionary War veterans with markers as shown above. It was probably a bronze marker such as this that once recognized the service of Spencer Sharp. (Photo Provided)
jmancini@newsandsentinel.com From left, Thomas Butcher and his mother and father, Janet and Tom Butcher of Michigan, pose at the gravestone of Payton Butcher at the Kincheloe-VanDiver-Butcher Cemetery within the Poor Farm Cemetery but pre-dating the Poor Farm Cemetery at West Virginia University at Parkersburg. The Butchers, researching their family ancestry, were in Wood County last month. (Photo Provided) The gravestone of John Barnett at the Barnett Cemetery near the 4-H grounds in Wood County. Barnett, an early settler of Wood County, died in 1852. May is Remember a Rural Cemetery Month in Wood County. (Photo Provided) Mary Mount Barnett, the second wife of John Barnett, died in 1861 and is buried at the Barnett Cemetery near the 4-H grounds. Hers and her husband’s stones are down and broken. (Photo Provided)
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The family grave plot of a Revolutionary War veteran. Unfortunately it is an example of what nature, and modern times, have allowed many rural cemeteries to become. Though this cemetery has been “cleared” several times, it is the lack of help with routine maintenance that allows Mother Nature to quickly reclaim what should be sacred grounds. The photo will be identified next week. (Photo Provided)
May is Remember a Rural Cemetery Month.
In 2013, in an effort to help the Wood County Rural Cemetery Alliance and the Wood County Historical and Preservation Society preserve and restore rural cemeteries, the Wood County Commission resolved that the month of May would be “Rural Cemetery Remembrance Month.” We will again use items in Look Back to draw attention to the scores of “forgotten” cemeteries that dot the countryside throughout Wood County, most of which are unkempt. Unfortunately, those interred in these neglected cemeteries, have, for the mo
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Harry Kurtz, a member of the 1949 Big Red football team holds, the game ball from their victory over Clarksburg Washington Irving. Their victory was dedicated to Jimmy Rollins. The ball was signed by every member of the football team. Kurtz would later marry Jimmy Rollins’ twin sister, Joan. (Photo by Bob Enoch)
The item that follows was taken from “Highlights on Sports,” by W.A. (Bill) Babcock, and appeared in the Oct. 20, 1949 edition of The Parkersburg Sentinel:
Jimmy Rollins and the 1949 Clarksburg Washington Irving Football Game will be remembered by the Big Red football players and all the fans who saw the game. The fans did not realize at the time the significance of the part which the desperately sick Jimmy Rollins had in that game, but everyone who saw the game could not help but be aware, in retrospect, of the effect on the players of the telegram received by Coach Scott at half time advising him of Jimmy’s death but expressing the belief t
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The aircraft shown above was “parked” at Guinn’s airfield along Gihon Road in south Parkersburg for a few years. (Photo Provided)
Before opportunities of simulated flight offered by modern computer games, few children had the opportunity to fulfill the childhood dream of flying. Most kids had to imagine looking over a crowded instrument panel, and could only dream of peering through the blades of a propeller.
But, for a few years, beginning in the late 1940s, the kids living in the Gihon Road area of south Parkersburg, were in “kid heaven;” they had their own P-51 Mustang.