Lillie's Grave 1893 or 1902? New thoughts on old pictures.

The grave of Lillie Paulson, Olivia Texas. (1893?  1902?)

Last summer several of my cousins and I descended on Calhoun County Texas to “investigate” and found information both supporting and challenging earlier assumptions. Since then I’ve also combed through many additional historic records. Before moving on to the Iowa and Minnesota pictures in the collection, I’ll share that information in a series of posts “New thoughts on old pictures”

This is the “twin” of a photo in the first post of this blog.  

The tale of Lillie Paulson’s death is told there in the post: "The Beginning "

The photographs show a fresh grave with “Lillie” on the wooden marker. Funeral wreaths and flowers lay on the grave. Off in distance, we see a house.   In the photograph from the earlier post, owards the center left,  is at least one additional grave marker of the same type. (This might be impossible to see in the reduced bpi in this post)

Here’s what we know:

This is the grave of Lillie Paulson (born Jan 17 1888, died Dec 14 1893): Confirmed.

A copy of one of the pictures has been found in a family history and it is labeled as the gravesite of Lillie Paulson, the daughter of Paul and Elina Paulson.

Lillie died December 14, 1893 in Olivia Texas.  On checking the church record for Eden Church of Olivia Texas we find Lillie’s death recorded and also the information that her parents were “received” into membership in December 1893, the same month that she died. This is rather interesting. Generally a group of people would be received into membership at the same time. The church was established in August 1893 and the first members received into membership at that time. The next "group" were received January 2, 1894. Only the Paulsons are received into membership in December 1893.  One wonders whether this might have had something to do with Lillie’s death (or her impending death.)

Location of Photo:  Confirmed. 

The location has been firmly, and without doubt, identified as Olivia Cemetery in Calhoun County Texas.  While the marker did not last, the cemetery was platted and records kept, first by the Damstrom family and then by the Olivia Cemetery Association.  Lillie’s grave record and those of some older graves included their names but no dates or additional information. Thus we were able to locate the grave, and could see the brushy area where the house in our photograph once sat. Descendents of the house’s residents and neighbors verified that the house in our picture was, indeed, the same house as that which once sat next to the cemetery.  We do not know when the house was built. We know it was present by 1903 (a family member brought a copy of a photograph of the house with the notation – “Damstrom Home 1903.” The Damstrom family moved to the area about this time. The land on which the house  once sat was previously owned by Charles Swenson, Lillie’s uncle (Elina Paulson’s brother).

As to the additional grave that appears in one of the photographs - Lillie died in December 1893. Two members of the community are recorded as dying before her. And this information is in line with an additional grave seen in the photograph. At present – there are no early graves to the far front of the cemetery – in fact this area is probably part of the road.  There is a record of these being relocated and they now lie behind Lillie’s towards the back of the cemetery.

Date: Questions remain.

The question is – is this the initial burial, or is it a reburial?

On first analysis – the answer seems obvious. Lillie died in December 1893. Her family became members of the Eden Church during the month of her death. The cemetery adjoined Eden Church. We would assume that the grave decorations would be more common in an initial burial rather than on moving the grave. The only other graves in the picture are in line with the information that 2 other members of the community died shortly before Lillie.

     But wait:

The cemetery property was deeded to the “Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church” in November 1895 – 2 years after Lillie’s death.  The Eden (Swedish Evangelical Lutheran) church goers met in the school until 1911 when the church was built next to the cemetery. Charles Swenson (Lillie’s family member) owned the land where the house sat – but not until 1896 when he traded another plot that he owned to J.D. Mitchell for the one adjoining the cemetery.

According to the cemetery history – there is no record of anyone being buried there until 1902 when Anna Bernadine Wilson was buried there. Several graves were relocated “from outlying farms” to the cemetery about that time, including one for a young girl, a “Ruth Paulson” for whom we can find no family record. Could this be our Lillie – just with a mistaken name?  The cemetery history has been revised a bit  since the original application for a historic marker.- The oldest marked grave is that of Christine Cavallin, 1897. But I’m not sure whether her grave was relocated to the cemetery or whether she was buried there.

           

All of this is complicated by the troubled early history of the Olivia Colony.  In 1892, CJE Hatterius, an Swedish Lutheran pastor from Galesburg Illinois, arranged to purchase the Olivia Colony area from J.D. Mitchell, a Texas rancher. The arrangement involved a risky (as it turned out) land contract – in which Hatterius had the land platted into 80 acre sections and planned to sell these off to eager Swedish American colonists. The number of “eager” settlers did not meet expectations. Hatterius could not make the payments – and all the land was foreclosed on and resold back to Mitchell in early April 1895 as a single unit. All earlier deeds and arrangements were vacated. Settlers simply lost all the money they had invested in the land and their improvements.

            Still it was not a complete disaster, Mitchell was still eager to sell. (He and his wife had moved their family to Victoria, Texas.)  He had a group of eager buyers in those settlers already living on the land. Careful legal contracts were drawn up and Mitchell began to sell the land back to the settlers individually on payments, using the same plat that Hatterius had had prepared.

    So – when does the cemetery date too?

            The land which Mitchell deeded to the church for a cemetery in 1895 – may have been intended for that use from the 1892 date when Hatterius had the land platted. The lot (14,8) on which it sits is cut across by a “bayou” and the section to the east of the Bayou – according to the 1895 deed -- is owned by one Lizzie Williams.  In the original plat map it is unclear whether the land west of the bayou was originally intended as public land, but one suspects that it might have been.  The earliest graves don’t have a “later date” in the cemetery record – they don’t have any date. So our Lillie might have been buried in the location of planned church cemetery.  Especially since her parents were likely NOT intending to stay in the area.

           

And the photographs?

We do know that our photographs predate 1908. In 1907, a second house was built across the road.  This would have been in the “line of site” in our photograph and it is not there.

So 1890s?  1900s?  The results remain inconclusive. 

When I first began researching and discovered that the Paulson family only lived in the Olivia area from 1893 to mid-1895, I assumed any pictures of Olivia were taken during those years.  Since then – I’ve been able to verify that family members returned and took pictures – at the LEAST – in 1902/3 and 1907.  That’s an important lesson about being careful of one’s assumptions.

Still, given the complexity of the land record, and the fact that the land could not have been deeded earlier than May 1895 for a cemetery (as JD Mitchell didn’t own it before then); and given that the view seems to be in line with an early date; and given the grave decorations which seem more appropriate for a recent death than a reburial...

I’m inclined to believe that these photographs might well date to 1893 and that the cemetery might have “come to Lillie” rather than Lillie being brought later to the cemetery.  But I could be wrong in my inclinations.

One final note: Lillie’s grave is unmarked no more. Since I can’t get to Texas to take a photograph, here is the drawing:

Identifiers:
Related Post: The Beginning
Negatives: Paulson332 (1200 bpi tiff downsized to 400 bpi jpeg for this post)
   (also Paulson002: the picture from the earlier post)
Place: Olivia Cemetery, Olivia (Calhoun County) Texas
People:
  Lillie Paulson (Jan 17, 1888 - Dec 14, 1893)
Sources:
  Eden Church Record (accessed through the Evangelical Lutheran Church Archives)
  Calhoun County Court Records, Deed books
  Swenson Family History