I belong to several family clans, the Campbell, Ewing, Livesay, and Austin. One of the staff members of the Livesay Society gave me a lady's (which turned out to be a relative) name Ruth Basham. It turned out she only lived four blocks from my mother's home. Ruth is 88 years old and I am 50 years. Her father, Robert Erfraim Livesay, and my great grandfather, William Fountain Livesay, were brothers. She told me about Napoleon, Missouri and the Old Arnold Cemetery. I went to Napoleon and asked at the Post Office for directions to Arnold Cemetery and I also obtained a list of the graves in the mail from the County Clerk in Lexington, Missouri.
When I arrived at Arnold Cemetery, I found most of the old section was all my ancestors, the Ewings, Renicks, Livesays, and Fishbacks. When I came to William Young Conn Ewing's grave, I noticed his headstone was cracked in half and laying flat on the ground. I had found out he was in the War of 1812. Therefore, I ordered from the Government a new Bronze Marker. It took a lot of paper work and about a year before the marker arrived at my home. I tried to find a caretaker to set the headstone. I checked in all of the surrounding cities including Lexington, Missouri. No one knew who to contact. So more time had gone by and I felt guilty having this grave marker still at my home. In the Spring of 1993, my sister Norma Ulledahl and her husband, and I set out to set the grave marker. The cemetery is in the middle of a cornfield with no running water or electricity. We set the marker but we left the old one. We didn't think we should disturb it. We said a prayer and put two flags and a flower on the grave. I tried to get the local paper interested but at no avail.
Last Spring, in 1994, we went again to the cemetery to decorate all of the graves with flowers. The caretaker was there and not to happy with where we had put the marker. I told him I didn't know how to find him and he was then more agreeable. He said in order to mow the grass all markers had to be in a line so he was going to reset the marker and remove the old marker. Since he was going to throw the old marker away, I brought the old William Young Conn Ewing marker home with me and it is in my backyard. He had died in 1852 some 143 years ago. I met another relative from my Ewing line and he has several pieces of silver that had belonged to our common ancestor William Y. C. Ewing. What a small world.
Posted June 1999