One fine internet day, I wondered where my aunt Gladys was buried. The family always maintained she had been buried in Arlington Memorial Cemetery even though the closest she ever got to serving in the military was shopping in the PX at the various bases my uncle Scotty had been stationed at and the various government jobs she had held. She had died earlier than my uncle and her family my cousin Caroline along with my cousin Tommy and their dad Uncle Scotty arranged for her to be buried in Arlington. It seems as though wives of soldiers buried there can be buried there before them. No matter he was still alive and well in St Petersburg, Fl at the time. He eventually died and was also buried in Arlington but not next to her. Imagine my surprise when I did a Google search for birchmire and the grave for Gladys Birchmire who died in 1908 showed up. Clearly not my aunt Gladys who died much later.
There wasn’t much of a mystery though. Gladys Birchmire was my grandfather’s first wife. The real mystery was why his second wife, better known as Grannie to me and my brother, had allowed her daughter to be named after the first wife. Nearby was the grave of Janie E. Potter the Birchmire family’s mother’s helper or hired girl. Family lore indicates she had come to live and work on the family place in the beginning maybe in 1910 when my father was a baby. Not too surprising was seeing my Grandfathers name on the other side of the monument along with Grannies name Margaret D. Ah the non-mystery cleared up.
William Birchmire’s grave and tombstone are in Bethel Cemetary in Alexandria, Va. His two wives and he are all buried there in Old Town.
