A Rabbit's Tale 12/23/2010

What to do with all these photographs?
by Tammi Thiele

This was a question I started asking myself after I had accumulated a few thousand photos. I didn't want to just delete them since I had gone through all the work of taking them. And, I knew that at some point someone somewhere would be interested in seeing at least one of them.

So I started showing off all my interesting finds on my Graveyard Rabbit Blog but that still left me with a ton of photos that were unused. So I started searching the internet for sites that were used as photo preservation sites for cemeteries. This is how I discovered the Arkansas Gravestone Project, since I live in Arkansas and the majority of my photos are from cemeteries in Arkansas this was a perfect site for my pictures.

The Arkansas Gravestone Project is a privately sponsored, non-commercial, non-profit, educational site, who's success depends on the generosity of volunteers and individuals who contribute photographs to be archived. The main mission of the Arkansas Gravestones Project is to capture and archive digital images of ever gravestone in every county in Arkansas. As the years pass the inscriptions on many gravestones become difficult, if not impossible, to read. This results in a loss of so much information that may or may not exist anywhere else. Archiving theses images is a wonderful means of preserving these important records and simultaneously assisting genealogist who use this valuable information to help expand their family trees. The Arkansas Gravestone Project has just over 411,000 photos stored on the site and growing daily.

I am proud to say I have added about 8,000 photos to the site and adding more all the time. Connecting with this group has also connected me with a whole group of people who share the same interest in cemeteries that I have. So if you are interested in a group of this nature there are twenty-four states that have similar website:

Arkansas - www.arkansasgravestones.org
Arizona - www.arizonagravestones.org
Colorado - www.coloradogravestones.org
Florida - www.floridagravestones.org
Idaho - www.idahogravestones.org
Illinois - www.illinoisgravestones.org
Iowa – www.iowagravestones.org
Louisiana – www.louisianagravestones.org
Maine – www.gravestones.earlymaine.org
Massachusetts – www.magravestones.org
Maryland - www.marylandgravestones.org
Nebraska – www.nebraskagravestones.org
New Jersey – www.newjerseycivilwargravestones.org
New Mexico – www.newmexicogravestones.org
New York – www.newyorkgravestones.org
North Dakota – www.northdakotagravestones.org
Ohio – www.ohiogravestones.org
Oklahoma – www.oklahomagravestones.org
Oregon - www.oregongravestones.org
Pennsylvania – www.pennsylvaniagravestones.org
South Dakota – www.southdakotagravestones.org
Texas – www.texastombstones.org
Utah – www.utahgravestones.org
Virginia – www.virginiagravestones.org

So don't just delete the photos you have. There is a place for them that will help preserve the information on them. Just look around on the web and see what you can find. The USGenweb site is a good place to start looking.