Truslow Family Cemetery

Benjamin Truslow, a farmer, married Lillie Dent, daughter of Frederick Dent and Sarah Knight, on September 10, 1893. Sarah Knight was the daughter of Lewis and Roberta Knight, who owned the log house to the east. Census records suggest that Benjamin Truslow was a tenant farmer because he was recorded as renting rather than owning a house. By 1900, Benjamin and Lillie had three children, Ashton, May, and Louise, and a fourth child, Blanche, appears to have been born shortly after Benjamin's death in 1901. After her husband's death, Lillie was recorded as living with her parents with three of her children, Ashton, May, and Blanche, while Louise appears to have died sometime between 1900 and 1910. Lillie died on October 21, 1949, nine months after her daughter May. Ashton, the oldest Truslow child, was also a farmer and married Diantha Millington in 1920; by 1930 he was working as a truck driver for the Texaco Oil Company, and he died on September 29, 1931, at age 37, leaving no heirs. May married Mitchell Gallant on November 23, 1918, in Washington DC, and the couple lived in Fredericksburg; by 1930 they had three children, Doris, Norris, and Ellen, and a fourth child, Alfred, was born in 1934. May died at age 52 on January 15, 1949, from heart issues. Blanche married Ashby Brooks on December 12, 1918, and by 1940 they had five children, Ashby, Benny, Glenna, Dorothy, and Bennie P. Brooks, though it appears not all of the children survived; Blanche died at age 78 on March 26, 1978. The family burial ground, formerly adjacent to Embrey Mill Road, was a small rural cemetery where studies indicated that four people were buried within a 33-foot square enclosed by a post-and-wire fence. The only marked grave was Benjamin Truslow's, with a hand-inscribed sandstone marker giving his birth as August 18, 1871, and his death as June 11, 1901, at age 29 from peritonitis; a smaller similarly shaped marker to the southeast is thought to have been the footstone.

Embrey Mill, Virginia · United States