Scrapbook > Text > Mary Jane's Journal > Remembering Mary Jane
Mary Jane Beaty Davis was born in 1814 in Washington County Virginia and married Garner Moffett in the same location on September 15, 1831. The young couple left Virginia shortly after their marriage and headed west, spending time in Indiana before settling in Carroll County, Illinois where they farmed land in Freedom Township. Garner helped start a school and a church, and was himself an itinerant preacher. Together they raised a family of 5 children.
In 1842 Mary Jane's father, William Davis, died in Virginia. Mary Jane's mother, Sarah (Ryburn) Davis, then packed up her younger children and joined Mary Jane in Illinois. But Mary Jane herself was widowed in 1856 when Garner died from typhoid fever. She and Sarah then made their home together until Sarah's death in 1873.
In the winter of 1870 the two women began a journal in which Mary Jane recorded the family history "as fare back as I can learn from my mother". Mary Jane also recorded her memories from the early days of her marriage, as she and Garner settled first in one place and then another. The women most likely sat together in the kitchen or front rooms of the house in the photo above. Built by Garner abt 1848-9, it is no longer standing.
Sarah (Ryburn) Davis died in 1873 and Mary Jane followed in 1894, after which the journal passed into the hands of Mary Jane's daughter Margaret Emmert and from her to one of her four sons. With the death of that generation it passed to Mary Jane's great grandson, Dudley Emmert. Upon Dudley's death in 1990, his sister, Mary (Emmert) Seielstad, asked Dudley's daughter to look for the journal among her father's possessions. It was eventually discovered in an old wooden barrel out in the family barn. The journal is now a treasured possession of the Seielstad family who have generously shared it's contents, believing that Mary Jane would have wanted them to do so.
In the early fall of 2000 4 women who had never met, but who wished to honor Mary Jane's final resting place, gathered on the edge of a corn field in Carroll County. At the time of Garner Moffett's death the nearby community of Lanark did not have a cemetery. Hence Garner was buried on a neighbor's land, in what came to be known as Wolfe Cemetery. When Mary Jane died in 1894 she too was buried there although a newer cemetery had been established in town.
By 2000 Wolfe Cemetery was long forgotten, hidden beneath a stand of trees among vast rows of waving corn. A sagging wire fence encircled it while brambles and wild onion plants hid the few stones that remained. On that sunny day Laura Seielstad and I trecked out through the corn field and helped each other over the fence. With us were descendants of 2 other families who originally owned neighboring land.
At first we could not find any sign of Garner or Mary Jane's stone. Then Laura spotted a tall, narrow monument that had fallen from its base. Lying on its side it had sunk into the surrounding soil; the top surface covered with vines. We pushed the overgrowth aside and with some difficulty read Mary Jane's name. But where was Garner's stone? Then it struck us; we were looking at one side of a two sided monument. We knelt in the dirt and cleared away the sides of the stone, using whatever we could find to assist us. After some effort we were able to roll the stone over. There, protected from the elements for years, was Garner's name.
We could not let the story end there. The following year we had the marker resecured on its base. The owner of the farm, perhaps feeling our sense of purpose, cleared away much of the overgrowth. Today, though the remains of other family members have been moved elsewhere, Garner and Mary Jane stand guard looking out over the land they settled so many years ago.
See Mary Jane and/or Garner's narrative pages for additional information and photos. The Scrapbook-Text page contains links to Mary Jane's journal.