My bones over the bones of my ancestor

[breakinglight11]

For Columbus Day weekend, I am home in Allentown for the first time since my mother died. My dad and I are having a nice, low-key time. We visited the grave of our ancestor Robert Lyle, who emigrated from Ireland with his brother in the 1700s, before America existed as a country. I don't often think of this part of the family, through which we are descended on my dad's mother's side. I identify much more with the Italian and Russian immigrant portions of our heritage, as that influenced how we lived and the culture we grew up with. But my dad practically grew up in the house of his maternal grandparents and their family, so it feels much more immediate to him. And seven generations back there was Robert Lyle, whose son Captain John Lyle was a decorated soldier in the Revolutionary War. A couple of generations later the family became Proudfits, then Linns, of whom Dad's mother's mother Sarah Elsie was one. Linn became Hamilton, then Hamilton became Roberts, when Gertrude Hamilton married Arthur Roberts, a first-generation Italian American whose family didn't even use that name thirty years before.



This is my ancestor's grave. It was in this old cemetery in Bangor, Pennsylvania, a flat stone that looked to have had the engraving redone in the stone in the two hundred-plus years since it was laid. Here is a closer look at the inscription.



And here is me laying on it, remembering my own death as the stone urges. I wondered if it was directly over him. And then I wondered if, since he lived so long ago, he might have been around my height. Looks like it might have been true. Interesting to think my ancestor's bones were directly beneath mine.