Jacob Perry Wintermute (J. P. Wintermute) Grave Site in Oak Grove Cemetery Delaware, Ohio

Article by Jim and Kelly Wintermute

For some time now my daughter Kelly and I have been thinking about going to Delaware, Ohio to see the grave site of Jacob Perry Wintermute, or J. P. Wintermute as he preferred to sign his name.  Delaware, Ohio is about 475 miles from where we live, so it is two day round trip for us.  But I am retired and Kelly had four days off from work so we decided to take the trip. 

I imagine that a lot of people might wonder why we would drive so far just to visit a cemetery in order to take pictures of some grave stones.  Well, maybe it is a little strange but the thing is, J. P. Wintermute is the person who started this whole idea of preserving our family history.  What we wanted to do is visit his grave site, take a few pictures, then put them on the family web site along with a short article for everyone to see.  It would be nice if we had pictures of the grave site of Dr James Stinson Wintermute from Washington State who was working on the family history along with J. P. Wintermute,  but we do not have them.  Perhaps we can get someone who lives in that part of the country to go to the cemetery and take some pictures for us, that would be something we should maybe look into. 

Anyway, we believe that because Jacob Perry Wintermute decided to research and then write the original Wintermute Family History book, he started something very special and we wanted to visit the place where he was buried and pay our respects.  He started something that future generations would want to carry on, correct any mistakes, and continue this work.  Preserving the past so that future generations will know where they came from is challenging, but it is also rewarding.  Currently, the Windemuth Family Organization has amassed a great deal of information and we continue to do research in the hopes that some day we will have a complete record of all the descendants, although that is most likely just wishful thinking. 

I have to wonder if Jacob Perry Wintermute had any notion that what he was doing would turn into an International Family Organization dedicated to preserving the family history that he started so many years ago.  In some respects I think he would be both happy and proud to know that he started the whole thing by doing family research and writing a book. 

In any case, Kelly and I went to Delaware, Ohio to visit the grave site in the Oak Grove Cemetery and take a few pictures of the grave site.  Upon arriving at the Oak Grove Cemetery we stopped at the office to speak with the cemetery manager, Mr John Delong.  He was extremely helpful and went out of his way to help us in our quest to find the grave site of J. P. Wintermute.  After a few minutes we came upon the grave site and with our digital cameras we took some pictures of the site and of the grave stones.  We spent perhaps half an hour at the Oak Grove cemetery, there are nine Wintermutes buried there.  Maybe we should have taken pictures of all the Wintermute grave stones, but unfortunately we didn’t do that.  This could be something we do later on, but for right now we were only interested in the grave site of J. P. Wintermute. 

We lack information on the children and the grandchildren of J. P. Wintermute and we would like to be able to fill in the missing information.  For example, we do not know anything about the children of Nina Wintermute, or Pearl Lucile Wintermute.  We do know that Nina married Joshua Thayer Skidmore and Pearl married Rae D. Henckle but we have no idea about children or where these children are now.  We do know Nina had children but we have no idea whether Pearl had any children.  If we could locate  any of the children we might be able to learn a whole lot more information that would fill in the gaps we have in our tree branches.  If anyone has information as to the possible whereabouts of the grandchildren of J. P. Wintermute and his wife Etta, please let us know so we can check into it. 

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