Last week I revisited Marlboro Friends Meeting outside the little village of Sophia, North Carolina, about half an hour’s drive south of Greensboro. I knew my third-great grandfather, John Farlow (1809-1879) was buried there since I already had a picture of his stone but I was hoping to find more.

It seems like every other stone in this graveyard is engraved with the name Farlow including a large modern obelisk erected in 1948 by one of my distant cousins. The stone details how Nathan and Ruth Farlow came to this area from Pennsylvania in the mid 18th century and lists three generations of their descendants, ending with my John Farlow.

What I didn’t notice the last time I was there was a little half stone propped up against the base. As far as I can tell this looks like the original stone for my fifth-great grandmother Ruth Carter Farlow, John’s grandmother, who died on Christmas Eve 1837, just a month short of her 96th birthday and that was after having eleven kids over 20 years!

And as this appears to be an original stone, it’s the oldest that I’ve yet found from my ancestry.

(I wonder if North Carolina Quakers in 1837 celebrated Christmas.)