Reading the Final Chapter of the Book, Just to See How it Ends

Has a cemetery marker ever told so much of the story? I reflected on this while visiting the Irish Matriarch's final resting place. I was there to remember my Mom, the most recent to join Agnes Bettie Kenney Burgan on the old sod, and took a few pictures to help tell the story.

Holy Redeemer is a cemetery that is owned by the Redemptorists, an organization that ministers to ethnic Catholics through its Priests and Brothers. Some web sites list the cemetery as beginning in 1880. The land was marked as being owned by Thomas Burgan, Agnes' father in law, on the Hopkins Map of 1877. How it moved to the Church's hands is a mystery to me. However, the Burgans would not be off the land for very long. John J. Burgan, the Irish Matriarch's husband, died on August 6, 1900. The very next day, Agnes signed a document to purchase lot # 17B, Section G, and paid $78.00 for the 10' by 18' plot. The certificate that I have a copy of notes that those buried there had to be in good standing with the Catholic Church.

Our family's oral history asserts that Agnes' youngest child, William Edward Burgan, carved the marker himself. An important part of the marker is the Celtic Cross found on top. Agnes had come to America almost 50 years earlier, and had married into a well established Episcopal landowning family. This did not keep her from raising her children in the Catholic faith, and her Irish roots were reflected in the monument. During her lifetime, other family members would be buried in the Burgan plot, including her son-in-law, daughter-in-law and grandaughter. After her death in 1924, 2 of her 3 children would be buried there, as well as another grandaughter (and husband) and great grandaughter. Each were Catholic, and most of them were proudly Irish.