Sutton Family Heritage

The snow has melted, and spring is finally here. After being cooped up all winter, Lyta and her daughter, Cory, hit the woods in search of geocaches. As they approached the GPS coordinates, they left the trail. A few steps into the brush, something caught Lyta’s eye.

“That’s not the cache,” Cory said, as Lyta reached into the thistles and picked up a plastic sandwich bag with a little black book inside.

“No, but it looks cool,“ she replied.

Lyta began flipping through the book. On the first page was written the name “Sutton.” Turning the page, she saw, “P 10-29” and “20k” and “Great grandma always said…” with a Gaelic cross drawn on the opposite page. She turned the page and found a pad lock key taped in the book. The rest of the pages were blank.

“It looks like some kind of code or puzzle,” Lyta said. “Sutton. Why does that name sound familiar?”

Cory looked over her shoulder at the inscription, then typed the name into her phone. “Sutton. There was an old guy that wandered away from his assisted living and went missing during the winter. They found him five days later dead in the snow near here. Do you think that could be his?”

They cut their hike short to do a little research.

As they read various articles about Nathan Sutton’s disappearance, they found that he had died three months earlier. Lyta started putting together his story. She thought out loud, “Nathan was 93 years old, a life-long resident of the area, and he suffered from dementia. He had been an only child. His wife, Margaret, passed away nearly twenty years ago, his daughter had died in infancy, and his son, Matthew, died last year in a car accident. He had no known living family, so the county cremated him and buried his remains in the municipal cemetery.”

“He had no one. That’s so sad. And there is nobody that we could ask about the book,” Cory said.

“The book says, ‘great grandma,’ and he was found near where he grew up. How about instead of looking for the living, we look for those who went before him?” Lyta suggested, as she opened a genealogical website.

They found information on Nathan Sutton’s parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. His family owned farmland in the area for generations. During the great depression after his great grandparents had died, the family sold the land to make ends meet. There was an old family cemetery on the edge of the farmland, which was near the trail where they found the little black notebook.

“It’s getting late, it is too dark to go back out on the trail,” Lyta said. “We aren’t going to figure this out tonight.”

The next morning, while Lyta was making breakfast, Cory was looking over all of the research they had done. “No way,” she shouted. “Nathan’s great grandmother’s name was Phoebe Barringer Sutton, and she died on October 29, 1929.” She paused. “P 10-29. Do you think that could be referring to his great grandmother, Phoebe?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Lyta exclaimed. They grabbed their jackets and headed back to the woods.

It was not an easy hike. The farmland was private property, and they couldn’t approach from there. The woods had swallowed up the cemetery, and there was no good approach from the hiking trail. There was not even a deer path in the area. Clearly no one had been to the cemetery in years.

“There’s no way he would have been heading here,” Cory said. “It’s nearly impossible for us in good shape to get out here in good weather. Do you really think he would have tried to come out here in a foot of snow?”

Lyta replied, “Well, the article said he had dementia, so maybe he was remembering what it was like when he was younger. Maybe he didn’t understand. Or maybe, we are just making up a fantastic story.” As they continued through the woods, they came upon a gravestone. “Clive Sutton. It looks like we’ve found the cemetery.”

They started shouting out the names on the stones as they looked around. Phillip Sutton. Mary Ann Sutton. Peter Sutton. Ana Davis Sutton. Cornelia Sutton Drake. Anthony Drake. Phillip Drake. Edward Sutton.

“I found her! Phoebe Barringer Sutton,” Cory shouted. “It’s a cross. Her headstone is a Gaelic cross. It looks like the drawing in the book.”

“OK,” said Lyta. “Maybe we are onto something, but what? What does this key have to do with any of this? There’s no lock here.”

They walked around the gravestone several times. “Maybe the inscription on the stone will tell us something. ‘Beloved wife and mother. Phoebe Barringer Sutton. Born February 29, 1888. Died October 29, 1929. We reap what we sow.’”

“We reap what we sow,” Lyta repeated. “Could that mean something?” She began clearing the leaves from around the base of the gravestone.

“What are you thinking, Mom?” Cory asked.

“I don’t know. They were farmers. We reap what we sow. Seeds are buried, sown, an inch or two deep.” Lyta looked at the ground. “It feels kind of wrong to dig around a grave, even just an inch or two.”

“Come on. We didn’t come this far to give up now,” Cory said as she grabbed a flat rock nearby and began scratching at the ground. She scraped about three inches down in front of the stone. “Nothing!” she said. She stood up and went to the back of the stone and started digging.

“This just doesn’t seem right,” Lyta said, as she began pushing the dirt back into place in front of the grave. Then, she heard a clanking sound. “What was that?”

Cory looked at her mother wide-eyed and said, “I think I found something.” She kept digging faster than before and Lyta came around to help her.

Cory pulled a metal box out of the ground. “It’s a box,” she said.

“It’s a locked box,” Lyta replied, as she pulled out the little black book and flipped to the page with the key. “That box isn’t something that was buried with her. It’s newer than that.” She carefully removed the key trying not the tear the page, and then slid it into the lock.

“It fits!” Cory shouted, as Lyta turned the key and removed the pad lock.

As they flipped open the lid on the box, they were shocked to find it was a box full of cash.

“OMG! How much do you think is in there?” Cory asked.

“Twenty thousand dollars? That’s probably what the 20k means,” Lyta responded. “Let’s go. We’ll figure it out at home.”

They filled back in the whole with dirt and leaves, Lyta put the box in her backpack, and they hiked back out of the woods. When they got home, they put the box on the dining room table and started counting the money.

“I wonder how long this has been there,” Cory pondered.

Lyta looked at the money. “There are no new bills. These were printed in 1985 or before.”

As they were taking the bills out, they found a piece of paper. It read:

Matthew,

If you are reading this, I have passed on my goal to you. I had plans that I didn’t accomplish, but I hope you will. My mother used to tell that my great grandmother always said, “If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.” Great grandma buried her money in a metal can behind a cross that was in her garden. She didn’t believe in banks. Little did she know how right she was, as coincidentally, she died the day of the stock market crash of 1929. The family has long since sold the land with that garden. I rent my apartment and have no property to bury my money, so I’m leaving it with great grandma for safe keeping. My plan is to someday buy back the family farm, and this is my down payment. To my only child, Matthew, if I have left this task to you, please save and use this money wisely.

“Whoa,” Lyta said. “He planned to buy back the family farm property and pass it on to his son. He must have remembered the box and for some reason he was trying to get to it.”

“So, what do we do with the money?” Cory asked.

“Well, we could turn it over to the county,” Lyta said with a laugh. “As if I would trust the government to do something good with it. Or we could donate it to charity. Or…” Lyta looked at her daughter and smiled.

“What?” Cory wondered what her mother was thinking.

“We could buy the property that the cemetery is on and clean it up. We could carry out Nathan’s final wish of returning the property to the family. We’ll be their adopted family. There’s no way that $20,000 will buy back the farmland, but this little portion of wooded wasteland that holds the cemetery can’t be worth much.”

The next day, Lyta and Cory went to Nathan’s grave site in the municipal cemetery and told him their plan. Cory looked at Nathan’s grave and then at her mother and said, “Yeah, this is definitely what he would want.”