Grave marker for Thomas Leroy Briggs
October 20, 1858 to July 11, 1899
 
Thomas Leroy Briggs, died as the result of an accident while putting up hay. At this time, October 30, 2002, it is not known who placed the flowers at his grave. Someone cares. We'll keep looking.
 
We did locate the grave marker for Thomas Leroy Briggs, our great-grandfather. Lois and I and a cousin of Lois' drove around back in October looking at fall color and we looped past Beverly, Illinois where the Briggs family was raised. It is maybe 100 miles from here. We located the cemetery with the help of a resident mechanic and found the stone marker rather quickly. Strangely enough, there were flowers at the marker so there is someone around yet who cares about the Briggs family. Interesting. 
 
I spent a couple of hours in the Quincy Public Library recently looking for a record of where Mary Georgeanna was buried but no progress on that front as yet. I couldn't find a record of her death in the Illinois records but a local paper, "The Quincy Daily Herald" had a local news column for Beverly which mentioned that Mary Briggs had gone to St. Louis the preceding week to spend the winter. The dates seem to conflict as she is recorded in family records as dying November 11, 1914 and the issue that the note appeared in was the November 13, 1914 issue. We'll just keep digging. I want to go back to the Beverly Cemetery and look it over more thoroughly. We were short on time the last visit.