(Pronounced YOU-per)
After a good night’s rest, we got ready for another day of discoveries and sight-seeing.
While waiting for everyone to get ready to go, I walked around the motel taking pictures of flowers, bumblebees, etc.
Kathy and Elaine wanted to show us a cemetery out in the middle of the woods on our way to the Whitefish Point Lighthouse. 
When we first got there, I saw this plot with the picket fence and took this picture.
From there, we discovered a wealth of huckleberries. They look like blueberries, but smaller and really tasty.
Thank you, John W. Bourne.
There was even some wintergreen growing there.
And mushrooms! Every size, type and color. So many that I will dedicate a whole blog entry to them.
About fifty yards from me, Don is looking at grave markers and he yells at me, “LaVon! Come here!” That was odd because Don never yells at me, so I immediately wonder what he’s found and start making my way around the huckleberry patches to where he is. When I get to him, he points to this marker. That’s my maiden name!!! Not very common, as you can see. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.
Louis C. DeRusha was born in 1887 and died in 1948; married Jessie E. in 1906 and had sixteen daughters and four sons before 1948 while serving our country in World War II. Twenty children!! And Jessie outlived Louis by nineteen years. I know this because I found an obit on Jeanette Dunklee online.
This was an emotional discovery for me.
Kathy was in the middle of picking huckleberries when I called to her to come see what Don found.
Elaine was busy picking eating huckleberries, too.
I brought a fern frond, like this, home with me out of the DeRusha plot.
Another view of the cemetery in the woods. There was no organization to it, just graves scattered all through the woods.
Quite a few were marked “Unknown.” 
When I called Mama Trudy to tell her what we had discovered, she wasn’t at all surprised and told me that my daddy’s family came to Texas from Michigan. I knew we were of French Canadian descent on my dad’s side, but didn’t know they came by way of Michigan! Specifically the Upper Peninsula.
And what are the chances that we would find this particular cemetery in the woods of Whitefish Point. I just wish I knew how closely I am related to these DeRusha’s.
2 comments:
I can see why you would be excited to find headstones with names of relatives...I would be the same, our name isn't very common either.
Surely enjoyed your comments and pictures of Whitefish Point. Must correct one thing. My parents Louis and Jessie DeRusha had 16 children, 12 girls, Dorothy, Jeanette, Ruby, Lillian, Viola, Josephine, Erma, Edna, Janiece, Vivian, Theresa and Carol. Four boys, Harry, Joseph, Emmett and Wayne. Joseph and Josephine were twins who died at birth. Of the 16 I am the only one still living. I am the 13th one. I was born April 25, 1929.
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