Collecting random bits of genealogy news.
Cemetery/Graveyard News
This is an older story from August of last year, that I came across recently. The Clarke-Times Courier (Virginia) had an article about a retired couple who photographically documented every cemetery in a county and assembled it into a book. That is something I’d love to do in my retirement years. Never the same thing twice, outside, and your helping out a lot of people.
Susan Campbell has written an article, Cataloging Gravestones An Expression Of Their Faith, in The Hartford Courant (CT), about a couple of ladies doing some community service – namely documenting and measuring cemeteries that haven’t had such work done to them in 70 years. These kinds of projects will be a boon to future genealogists, it’s just a shame that there are countless cemeteries that haven’t been documented yet.
Joanne Huist Smith has a sad story in the Dayton Daily News, Volunteer who worked for years to restore cemetery finds it vandalized (subscription maybe required), about the restored Kerr and Drill pioneer cemeteries having nearly every one of their 50 or so headstones destroyed. Most of the graves date from 1835 – 1874. If you are in the Dayton, Ohio area and would like to help out, they are looking for any and all help.
You can contact Lisa O’Hearn at (937) 546-6005 – I believe that is the correct area code.
In the Denver Post, Sheba Wheeler writes about the historical gold mine for genealogists that has turned up as a result of the research by the Black Genealogy Search Group of Denver, concerning The Riverside Cemetery (Rootsweb website). They researched 86,000 burial cards that go back to the 1870s.
There is an interesting article by John Andrew Prime in The Shreveport Times (LA) about an unsolved murder mystery, and how fast information started pouring in from genealogists and others looking to help Dale Nicholson solve the mystery surrounding his grandfather. Dale is hoping to find his grave, so that his mother can place a tombstone on the grave.