I particularly enjoyed writing the article about the expansion of Green Cemetery that sits along Route 219 in the town of Great Valley because Ezra Smith is buried there. He was my paternal great-great-grandfather who made Great Valley his home from the mid-1800s until his death in 1880.

His beautiful marble headstone that was once white has an odd inscription on it. It says he died June 2, 1880, but instead of his birthdate, the inscription says he was aged 56 years, eight months and 16 days. I wondered if that was a customary way to word a headstone back in the 1800s, so I did a little research. I discovered it was a traditional practice to inscribe a tombstone with the deceased’s age in years, months and days in Colonial America.

Ezra and his family first showed up in the Great Valley census in 1865 and his father, Jedediah, came later. Their son, Winthrop, who was my great-grandfather, also shows up in the same census at age 5. Judging from the house numbers listed on the 1870 census, I’m pretty sure Ezra, his wife Abbie and their family lived in the Willoughby area in a log house.