Henry is very interested in documenting his family’s history. Here’s a link to his tree: https://www.myheritage.com/site-286197141/sullivan
In 1986, Henry’s family video recorded Bertha Busler, his grandmother, in her living room. Here are Henry’s notes from that recording session: BerthaBuslerTapeNotes. These links will download the file to your computer. The video is about 2 hours total, so it’s split into 4 parts:
Click here for Part 1 Click here for Part 2 Click here for Part 3
In 1987, brother Ean (was known as Erwin before he changed it) video recorded Grandma again. See below for how to get a copy of this file.
If you would like a copy of these two files, just email Henry at [email protected] and he will send them to you.
In May 1996, Henry and his late wife Christy drove across country, stopping in Loveland, Colorado to see Uncle Carl and Aunt Lorene, not knowing that that would be the last time we saw either of them. We had Uncle Carl show us his picture album. Here is a video of that album (his bandaged fingers are from a workshop accident):
Henry and Christy went on to cousin Jim’s house when he lived in Rolla, Kansas and he was nice enough to show us around town and the cemetery.
Henry and Christy went on to their friends Tom and Donna’s house in Tulsa. A visit to the Cherokee headquarters in Tahlequah indicated that George Vance Sullivan was buried in a private cemetery in Vertigris called Riggs #3. They visited Riggs Air Field, which is now called the Riggs Air Park. They knew about this cemetery and said that it was just over the fence on the adjacent property. They said that they liked to call it the “Sullivan Cemetery,” since most of the people buried there were Sullivans.
Henry and Christy located the neglected cemetery just before an Oklahoma May thunderstorm (which can bring tornadoes) and made a video of the visit. Here is that video:
The first headstone that they located, starting with “L. A. Sullivan” is now missing. This video may be the only picture of it that exists. The owners of the property at the time were the Underwoods, who said that some one else had visited sometime before this and that they had removed another headstone. That makes 2 missing headstones at least. Here are some pictures of the headstones we saw:
Another side of this four-sided monument with 2 sides filled in said (in the video, audio only), “D. T. Sullivan.” This monument, especially since it is now missing, could be for E. A. and G. V. Sullivan.
The only other 4-sided vertical monument was this one:
The only non-Sullivan in the cemetery was George C. Martin, buried in an area protected by a short fence with a small stone with his initials. He was from Baraboo, Wisconsin.
In 2008, Henry and his son Brian returned to the site and cleared the site of overgrowth and some weeds. They arranged to have a fence built around it. Brian later built a sign from 1/4″ stainless steel which Henry mounted on the gate and Sharyl sprayed the weeds. Brian said that the sign would last longer than the fence. Here’s what it looked like after that:
