Terri Jo Ryan has an article in the Waco Tribune-Herald, Graveyards help group dig up past (gotta have puns, especially considering the today’s date), about another group working to record cemetery data, as well as preserve the cemeteries themselves:
For a dedicated few, like the McLennan County Cemetery Interest Group, graveyards are the venues for the living to touch history and to help preserve it for future generations.
Led by reference librarian Bill Buckner of the genealogy division of the Waco-McLennan County Public Library, the group, which is open to the public, seeks to provide a forum for data collection and record preservation for all McLennan County cemeteries.
Since its founding in April 2002, more than four dozen volunteers have worked to identify more than 300 burial grounds in McLennan County, from small family plots to obscure fields forgotten by all but a few, as well as from abandoned sites that are remnants of lost communities to “active†but rarely used tracts.
By taking inventory of these poorly marked or unrecorded cemeteries, Buckner said, the hope is to make a comprehensive database before they vanish forever.
I said a few months ago that it seems like these kinds of genealogy-oriented events are happening more and more – it could just be the media is covering it more, but it seems like more and more groups are doing this, and making the information available for other genealogists. It could also be that as more people are drawn to genealogy, you’re going to get people who will volunteer for these kinds of groups, to work on these projects.
It could also be that as the media covers these types of groups and events, that others are inspired by it.