Ancestry Magazine

Every unique stone placed with love in the fireplace my grandfather built has a story behind it that lives today.

After more than forty years since my grandfather’s death, it is difficult for me to remember much about him. I was only ten, and living half a world away when he died. I didn’t go to the funeral–he simply disappeared that year from my young life.

Recently I had the opportunity to return to his hometown, and I took the occasion to drive by his home. The house itself has changed and holds few significant memories–different paint, a new fence, relandscaped yard, but looking over the fence I caught sit e of Grandfather’s fireplace and this unleashed a flood of memories.

Understand that this fireplace is not the typical backyard barbecue. Grandfather’s fireplace is a massive stone monument, fronted by a flagstone patio and backed by a four-foot wall; its firebox is some five feet across, and its chimney is ten feet high. It really is almost as massive as I remember it. Most unique about the fireplace is that Grandfather gathered each stone himself, not by truckloads, but one by one. And these were not common stones.

Grandfather was, for many years, state superintendent of public instruction. Before air-travel days, he drove throughout the state, and on each trip he stopped to gather rocks. He became known for his avid interest in the geological surroundings of where ever he was, and friends and colleagues were always looking out for some special stone that might interest him. His Ph.D. from Columbia belied the fact that he was the first generation off the family farm. And although his work was in education, it didn’t affect his unmatched knowledge of local geology, biology, and everything a child would want to know about the out-of-doors.

The memories that filled my mind as I looked at the fireplace were of extended family barbecues in that backyard and roaring fires as the evening grew cold, keeping cousins warm so we would stay out later than we should have. More important were the quiet lessons of the wonders of our world. Each stone in the fireplace pointed out geodes from the desert to the west, petrified wood from the south, or gastroliths (large stones rubbed smooth in the gizzard of a dinosaur) from toward Colorado. Even more unique were the sandstone mile markers left from abandoned sections of what became U.S. Hwy 89, and Indian grindstones, hollowed by years of stone rubbing stone as maize was ground into flour. Each rock had geologic or historical interest, but each was also a personal part of my grandfather’s life.

My memories turn ed to times of solitude, times I had sat perched on his two-feet high barbecue table–a two-feet thick chunk of petrified wood, admiring those stones I had come to equate with him.

My reminiscences inspired me to contact my youngest uncles and aunts to hear their recollections about the fireplace. Their strongest impressions were of its gathering and building. As children, they anticipated the return of their father from business trips and would willingly unload from his car trunk the stones that told the story of where he had been and what he had learned. More vivid were memories of family rock-collecting trips when they drove through almost roadless deserts or mountain valleys in the days before SUVs.

Grandfather’s farm upbringing had left him a skilled builder and he laid every stone of the fireplace himself. Much of the building took place under flood lamps in the early morning or late evening hours of his busy life–two or three stones a day, over a period of more than eight years.

I went back after that recent visit to take pictures so that the memories could be awakened more frequently. And I will return with my children and grandchildren, briefly bothering the current owner of the house, so they can know their great and great, great grandfather. On memorial days in future years, I will go not to the cemetery to remember my grandfather, but I will return to his monument. I will think about monuments and whether there is anything I have built that will endure in a way that my grandfather’s has. One day, perhaps future generations will point out my work to their children and remind them of who I was. Like my grandfather, I hope I will leave something more than my gravestone.

David P. Farnsworth, legal counsel for Ancestry.com, has an avid interest in the preservation of his grandfather’s monument and others like it.