In Search of Emily

I don't know why I have never gone looking for Mr Geniaus' Great-Grandmother's grave but I hadn't until yesterday.

Emily's plot

Before we motored home from our trip to Wagga Wagga I checked my database to see if there were any country cemeteries I needed to visit but there were none within 50km of the motorway. We were approaching the southern outskirts of Sydney when I thought of Emily Ball (nee Royds), Mr Geniaus' Great-Grandmother, so I suggested we take a detour via Liverpool Cemetery to find Emily's grave.

This smallish cemetery has a rather modern office, lots of new mausoleums, some older graves and a computerised grave locating kiosk. We quickly found that Emily was buried in Anglican Section B, Row 5, Grave 79. Finding the grave was another matter; the cemetery office gave us a paper diagram that gave the location of various sections in the cemetery but no further details; there is no signage to help one decide which section or row is which.

We identified a few possibilities for Row 5, Grave 79 and none of them had a headstone or marker. By a process of elimination (to identify the rows we noted names on adjoining plots, drove back to the office and entered them in the kiosk) we found Emily's unmarked plot. It's such a disappointment when one finds an unmarked grave; one feels sort of cheated.

I had thought that Emily was buried with a male that I couldn't link to the family. When I got home I checked my files for the reference to that information. In

• Liverpool General Cemetery Volume 2 published by The Liverpool &​ District Family History Society Emily is recorded as being in Grave 74 with Sydney James Williams and her plot, Number 79 is shown as having no records. As a result of this error I had spent a few frustrating hours some time ago trying to connect Mr Williams with the Balls. No wonder I had no success. 

Emily's entry in The Liverpool General Cemetery Index from Liverpool & District Family History Society

• It just goes to show that one mustn't rely on one source. 

We had better luck finding the grave of Emily's daughter, Emily Deadman (nee Ball) and her husband, Eric Gladstone Deadman. It had a headstone that we were unable to clean as we were not equipped for a cemetery trip. 

I am also sorry that my devices were running low on power and I was unable to use them to photograph some graves for BillionGraves.