Read time: 6 min.

I’m neither a weatherman nor a groundhog, but I’m fairly certain Monday was the coldest day of the year so far. With the wind chill firmly into the negatives, I naturally chose to spend it outdoors traipsing through a snowy cemetery with my Aunt Jan. We were there to find the graves of two ancestors who died more than a century ago.

It took about thirty years for me to become interested in genealogy. Listening to people yap about their dead relatives was never my particular cup of tea, but I’m ashamed to say that disconnect extended to my own family: I’m a little embarrassed to admit that many of the extended members of my mom’s side existed only as names on paper instead of as stories I knew.

I wanted to change that as I got older. Just after Thanksgiving, my Aunt Jan and I made plans to interview our Aunt Sue, the last of my grandpa’s siblings. She knew her grandparents were buried at Strong Cemetery, but she admitted she’d never been to their graves. 

I’d ventured to Strong Cemetery once, briefly, when I tracked down a Revolutionary War veteran named William Whicker. A second trip seemed like the perfect opportunity to go together and finally find our relatives! Unfortunately, Aunt Sue passed away unexpectedly last week, and our chance slipped away.

In the midst of mourning, Aunt Jan and I decided to go to Strong Cemetery ourselves. Even without Aunt Sue, we wanted to stand where those who came before us were laid to rest and claim a connection that had gone unexplored for far too long. To that end, we bundled up, steeled ourselves against the cold, and set out into a blustery winter evening that offered very little comfort.

My previous visit to Strong Cemetery was in search of a single person- that Revolutionary War guy, William Whicker. It was a focused, clinical trip. Once I found his stone, the rest of the cemetery all but disappeared as I left. In hindsight, I realize that was a shame because the place he was buried has a history far more fascinating than I gave it credit for!

Strong Cemetery got its start with Ruben Strong. A native of Vermont, he arrived in Delaware Township from Ohio with his family in 1834. When he died the following year, Strong became the cemetery’s first burial¹. Today, his old homestead sits just west of the cemetery across Strong Road². 

I can’t help but wonder what Ruben Strong would think of the family cemetery if he could see it in 2026. What began as a modest burial ground has grown into something vast- nearly 3,500 people call it their final resting place! Among them are generations of familiar local names: Krohns, DeHavens, Boots, and, obviously, plenty of Strongs. 

Seven Swanders are buried there as well. Aunt Jan and I were searching for two, but we had no real idea where to start. The front of the cemetery was clearly home to the newest graves, but the winding sections beyond dissolved into an indecipherable mix. Our ancestors died in the early 1920s, but stones from that era were scattered among markers decades older and newer. It left us without any obvious place to begin.

Still, we persisted: first by sending up a prayer, then by splitting up, shivering, and scanning row after row. Our first passes came up empty, and the cold eventually drove us back to the warm car to regroup. We inched forward toward the older section, stepped out once more, and began again- slower and more deliberately. For a long moment, the only sound was the crunch of frozen grass underfoot. Then Aunt Jan broke the silence. She’d found them!

Charles Alance Swander and his wife, Jennie Bewley Swander, were buried along the southern edge of the cemetery. Aunt Jan loved that- they rest away from the rest of the crowd. Their granite headstones were modest rectangular markers, but once we brushed away the snow, they caught the light. After all the walking, the guessing, and the cold, our search suddenly collapsed into certainty: our ancestors no longer felt like names we’d only heard. Instead, their stories became something solid beneath our boots.

Charles and Jennie Swander were my grandpa’s grandparents- my great-greats. Unfortunately, Charles died in 1920 at forty-two, and Jennie followed just six years later at forty-four. Their two sons, Charles Howard and Maurice, were still boys. With no parents left to raise them, they were sent to live with a pair of bachelor uncles- men who probably never planned on becoming full-time caretakers overnight.

It’s hard to wrap my head around how tough it must have been for the boys or for the uncles who took them in. Still, that’s what families did then and still do now. The Swanders made do. They adapted, absorbed the shock, and kept going.

Standing at the edge of Strong Cemetery, I finally understood some of what genealogy had been missing for me all these years. It wasn’t about dates or diagrams, but about closing the distance between past and present. Aunt Sue didn’t get to visit with us, but the day grew out of her memories. In finding Charles and Jennie, Aunt Jan and I honored her, too. On what may have been the coldest day of the year, I left with a warmth I hadn’t expected.

Sources Cited
1 Greene, D. (1964, April 30). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 6.
2 (See footnote 1).