"Find a grave with a lamb on it."
Darrell LaRue Crooks is buried in Union Hill Cemetery in what I'd call the "Little Dixie" area of Henderson County. It's exact address is 8648 Whitelick Rd, Corydon, KY, 42406. I photographed this tombstone on April 3rd, 2017. It baffled me that this little church cemetery really wasn't documented on Find-a-Grave yet and definitely wasn't photographed whatsoever. So I took it upon myself to get as much of it on there as I could that day.
Darrell was born on January 12th, 1942, and passed on March 9th, 1942. He was the son of Ralph Alexander Crooks and Marie Hammond. Through his father, he's a descendant of Samuel Willett & Polly Dant, and Reeves Arnett & Sarah Trigg. Through his mother, he's a descendant of James Crook & Maria Overfield, and Elias Morehead & Magary Duncan.
According to his death certificate, he died from severe ear infections. It mentions acute bilateral mastoiditis, otitis media.. and it mentions doing an operation and figuring out his ears wouldn't drain properly. Poor baby boy.
His tombstone is one I'd definitely like to get out and clean with a little D/2. It's little, so it won't take much, and I imagine if his parents were still living, they'd be appreciative.
A neat little factoid about Union Hill Cemetery -- it's actually kind of like two cemeteries together. If you ever visit the cemetery, you'll realize that the oldest graves, mostly with the last names of 'Marks' 'Overfield' and some of the older 'Crook/Crooks' are off to the far right of the rest of the graves - like Darrell Crooks' is located away from those original graves - his is more towards the center with the majority of the graves.
I believe this cemetery initially started as a family cemetery. Likely for the family of Charles Crook & Margaret Deborah (Marks) Crook and their descendants... but when a church was founded there, it expanded to include church families. That said, most here still undoubtedly have a Marks, Crooks, or an Overfield in their family tree. I'm going to include a satellite view of the cemetery so it's a bit easier to understand how it feels like it's 'two separate' cemeteries so to speak.
There are a LOT of cemeteries, mostly off in fields and the woods, near this cemetery. One of them being "Old Marks Cemetery" which also has the names "Dixon Cemetery," and "Crooks-Dixon-Pritchett Cemetery." It is located in the woods at GPS coordinates: 37.6767006, -87.7213974. "Old Marks" has ancestors of those buried in this cemetery. It's safe to say that the Marks/Crooks/Pritchett/Dixon/Overfield families owned most of the land in this area south of Corydon.
When you spend so much time doing genealogy, you start to realize all the 'founding' families of the area intermix with one another and everyone is related to everyone. These families tie into my Gibson's umpteen different ways and we all know the two Gibson Cemeteries are just a stones throw away from these.
Also being a genealogist, I'd *love* to know where Darrell got his middle name of 'LaRue' from. From what I can tell - he does NOT have a LaRue ancestor in his tree. Perhaps his parents were family friends with some of my LaRue kin.
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