A couple weekends ago my parents were able to fly out for a visit.  My  Mom has been wanting to visit this cemetery just outside Burlington WI  ever since she found out we had ancestry buried there.  So we took a day  to journey down to Burlington to see if we could find the gravestone of  my Great Great Great Grandfather George Sheard.  George was born in  England and traveled to America, ending up in Wisconsin as a farmer.  He  son moved to Kansas where 3 generations later my Dad was born.  With my  Mom's research on what two roads the cemetery was located on and my  understanding of how Wisconsinites name their roads we actually found  the cemetery with little difficulty.  As we walked around my Mom began  to get excited as each headstone we passed had names on it she  recognized from her genealogy research.  We soon found many headstones  with the name Sheard on it, this was actually pretty cool to me.  Sheard  isn't a very common name, in fact I never have met anyone outside my  immediate family with the last name, so seeing so many of our relatives  in one place was exciting.  Dad was the one to find his Great Great  Grandfather first, his headstone being carved into the shape of a tree,  with a book leaning on the trunk with engravings for his wife and two  kids that died at a young age.  Soon after our findings an older couple  drove up to the cemetery to see if we needed help, of course my Mom got  to talking with him about who we were looking for and we found out he  was a decedent of our grandfathers brother.  He also told us to go visit  another couple down the road that took care of the cemetery.  So we  paid an unexpected visit to the cemetery caretaker and his wife.  They  welcomed us in and spent an hour with us pulling out all the records and  photographs that they had and sharing stories that they had learned  from growing up there.  They also told us that the farm that used to be  in our family was right down the road, what a cool trip to be able to  visit the farmland that used to be farmed by my own Great Great Great  Grandfather, who knew that it was so close to where I am living now.  I  am so grateful to my Mom's dedication to finding our family history.  It  was a really neat experience to be apart of and makes me especially  grateful for family today.

The Great Great Grandson and Great Great Great Granddaughter


My Mom looked at every headstone in the cemetery (luckily it was a pretty small cemetery)


This was my favorite document, showing the Sheard family coming over from Liverpool to Boston.
