Tombstone Tuesday - Mystery of Maineville Solved

While I was visiting my 2nd cousin, Bill Strubbe, in Cincinnati last weekend, he asked me if I could tell him why our great grandfather, Henry Wersel, was buried in the Maineville Cemetery in Maineville, Ohio. He'd been curious as to why our Henry and his family would be buried nearly 26 miles outside of Cincinnati, while the rest of the Wersel family is all buried in cemeteries in Cincinnati.


Bill's wife Kim is the family genealogist, though Bill shares an enthusiastic passion of learning about our family. The three of us drove out, on a gloriously sunny winter day, to explore the Maineville Cemetery and see if I could glean any clues from the experience.


This is our family plot: 

As you can see, the large stone says, "Burch" and there are four headstones for Burch family members. On the opposite side of that stone, is "Wersel" and there are eight family members buried there, including Henry:

Without having my database available, I wasn't able to make sense of the connection between the two families at first. However, when I got back to Bill & Kim's and started looking at the pictures, this is the one that peaked my curiosity:

As I looked at it, I had one of those wonderful "AHA!!" moments. Charles Wesley Richards was the younger brother of Virginia (Richards) Burch and Laura (Richards) Wersel! 

Virginia Richards had married Wallace Burch, a businessman who had grown up in Maineville. Their son, Richards (note it's spelled with the family 's'), died when he was only 19:

I suspect that the Wallace Burch purchased the lot at the time of his death, thus creating the space for his wife's family.


Bill was so excited when I told him my theory. As I left on Sunday, the last thing he said to me was, "...and thanks for solving the mystery of Maineville!!"