After its surprising discovery in some overgrowth near the Hayes State Park, the headstone of Dea (Deacon) Ethel Walker is back in place at the Hudson Mills Cemetery.

The journey began about 18 months ago when Cheryl Beuning and her husband bought a house and property near Hayes State Park in the Irish Hills. Beuning said things were in rough shape, so they got to cleaning up.

“While cleaning overgrowth on the property I stepped on a ‘rock.’ Exposed it as a perfect rectangle!” she recalled. “Flipped it over and realized it was a headstone.”

It reads, Dea (Deacon) Ethel Walker, Sept 27, 1844 (75 years old).  So he was born in 1769. Beuning said it was laying face down in a grove of trees. Considering its age, it’s in excellent condition, she said. 

However, she didn’t know how it got onto their property, so that set her about in finding out more about Walker and where he was buried so they could return his headstone to its proper place.

To start, she said she tried Google to search for this person, but could not find anyone past an Ethel Walker that founded a school in 1911. So she contacted the state agency that regulates cemeteries, to ask what could be done, but she said they could not tell her what there might have been in 1844 because there are not many records of that time. 

And then the project took a back seat for a time.

“To be honest, I forgot about it,” she said. “Work and fixing the house and property kept us very busy!!” 

That is, she said, “Until I got to that part of the property again this spring.”  

Like many people, she said a hobby of hers is genealogy, researching her family tree.

“My husband suggested I research Walker via my genealogy connections,” she said. “With b.1769 – d.27 Sept 1844 and Washtenaw County, Michigan, I gave it a shot.” 

Beuning and her husband are not from Michigan; they moved here from the Washington D.C. area.

“So I have learned a good deal about the early migration of Michigan and Washtenaw County,” she said. “And then I found him. Yes him, I was originally looking for a Bea Ethel Walker (female).”

She said “Our” Ethel Walker and his children were well documented. His birthplace was Massachusetts, and his father served as a Lieutenant in the Revolutionary War.

“Others searching to prove their connection as a son/daughter of the Revolutionary War had him in their trees, which is where I found a land grant document issued for outside of Dexter,” she explained. 

In her research she found out that in 1820, Walker received a land grant (#23865) and in turn found out other information that led her to believe he lived near Dexter or Webster Township. 

Her next step was reaching out to the Dexter Historical Society, which she did by email, and then visited them in person to look over their reference documents.

In a message to Beuning, Nancy Van Blaricum, Volunteer Genealogist at the Dexter Area Museum, said:

“I found this cemetery record in our files. Ethel Walker was buried in one of our oldest cemeteries, Hudson Mills, which is in Dexter Township, just west of Webster Township.”

 So Beuning paid a visit to the cemetery. She found a spot where she believed Walker was buried, but the headstone was missing. At the spot there are two other headstones of similar size, shape with the same stylized willow tree design on it – these were his children.

More research led her to discover that in 1988 a team of Boy Scouts did a project to clean up and work on inventorying the cemetery. A full document of this is at the historical society.

“Row E seems to be our Walker family, and Ethel’s headstone seems to have been taken already by this time, 1988,” Beuning said.

As to how it got to her property, there is no solid answer.

“The property my house stands on was a cow field until it was sold for development in about 1989,” she said, while her house was finished in 1990.

“The previous property owner still lives across the street,” she said. “He knew of no Walkers, nor a cemetery on the property, which he grew up on. Hence the reason I suspect it (the headstone) was discarded in an empty field.”

She said perhaps it was a vandal, or teen thrill seekers, or as Van Blaricum mentioned to her there was a period “where folks were taking headstones to make furniture.” 

With all of this in hand, she reached out to the Dexter Township offices and was connected with township board trustee Karen Nolte. Through some planning and coordinating, they delivered the headstone to the Hudson Mills Cemetery on July 27, and reset it back to its original site the Dexter Historical Society had previously recorded.

This was detailed in the township’s recent monthly “in the loop” email update. Here is part of the message:

“Deacon Ethel Walker’s headstone (1844) was returned, in excellent condition, to its original location just last Saturday, based on Cheryl’s research. According to records, this headstone has been missing from Hudson Mills Cemetery for over 40 years. We sincerely appreciate and thank Cheryl for all her work, research, and for bringing it back to Dexter Township. Deacon Ethel Walker’s headstone is now next to his daughter (Harriet) and just a row away from his son (Rev. George) and his wife. Regretfully, his wife’s headstone is still missing.  A very nice addition as we continue to work to restore our historic cemeteries. Thank you everyone for helping. THANK YOU CHERYL!”

Nolte told the Sun Times News this addition to the cemetery ignites a new perspective to not only address the condition of damaged headstones, but to build a historical record for the township. Another aspect to our ongoing restoration work, she said.