Digging For Answers 9/9/2010

Digging For Answers
By Randy Seaver

Welcome to the Digging for Answers column on the Graveyard Rabbit Online Journal.

This column will depend on your submission of questions about cemeteries, gravestones, burial practices, and other topics that concern a Graveyard Rabbit (other than where his next carrot is coming from!). So please send some questions to the editor, who will pass them along and keep the columnist hopping.

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Question: Jeffrey asks:

My local genealogical society wants to do more than a "walk the gravestones and transcribe and index them" survey of our local cemetery. How could we make a really wonderful cemetery book and/or web page that would honor our ancestors buried there and also be a service to our members, local visitors and the genealogical community?

My answer:

Doing a cemetery survey that will help family members and genealogy researchers find the resting place of their loved ones is a really noble, educational and difficult task for a local genealogical society to do on a volunteer basis. The larger the cemetery, the more difficult it is to complete. The key issue for a local society is to be able to collaborate with the cemetery and gain access to their records that contain names, dates, burial location, and other information that will help you identify the persons buried in the cemetery. In many cases, these records contain death records and newspaper obituaries. This type of information is just as helpful to researchers as the gravestone inscription information.

Let me provide one excellent example of an excellent cemetery survey done by a local genealogical society, the Boulder Genealogical Society in Boulder, Colorado. They have collected, transcribed and indexed the information at Columbia Cemetery in Boulder. The Columbia Cemetery Burial Index project page has this summary:

"Columbia Cemetery, Boulder, Colorado, 1870 to the Present, Index of Burials, Updated December 2001. Compiled by Mary McRoberts for the Boulder Genealogical Society, Boulder, Colorado.


"The Boulder Genealogical Society published the records of approximately 6500 people buried in Columbia Cemetery (also called Pioneer, Masonic, City, Park, Boulder, Old) in January 1998. Our goals were: to locate everyone buried in Columbia Cemetery, to compile biographical information about each person, to find the purchasers of each lot, and to discover descendants of the deceased. We researched many sources including Columbia Cemetery ledger books at Carnegie Library For Local History, records of Howe and Crist Mortuaries, Boulder County Clerk and Recorder's records, censuses of Boulder County, Estate Files of Boulder County, obituaries, The Boulder Daily Camera newspaper files, published Boulder County, Colorado histories, family histories and more. All sources are given with each person."

The burials are indexed by surname letter, and for each person there is information about:

the Name (last name first)

Birth date information (date, age at death, child or adult, etc.)

Death date

Section and Lot Number

A "More Information" link, which includes:

Biographical information about the person, obtained from many local records, including newspaper records, county vital records, census records, city directory entries, etc.

Photographs of all grave markers in the Section and Lot

List of all persons buried in the Section and Lot

As an example, the page for my great-grandaunt, Effie E. Carringer (1858-1874) (daughter of D.J. and Rebecca (Spangler) Carringer, sister to my great-grandfather, Henry Austin Carringer), who is buried in the Columbia Cemetery in Boulder. This page provides information not only about Effie but also her family - the deed to the cemetery plot, an entry in the Boulder city archives, articles in the Boulder newspaper about the Carringer family, the 1880 U.S. Census record for the family, and a city directory entry which provided an address in 1896, etc. I also found other Carringer family members buried in the Lot, since D.J. Carringer bought the lot in 1876 and other extended family members died in Boulder before and after his death in San Diego, and were buried in Boulder.

The Boulder Genealogical Society performed a wonderful service to family members and genealogical researchers by making the extra effort to research, summarize and provide this information about over 6,500 residents of Columbia Cemetery.

So, Jeffrey, here is the challenge for you and your local genealogical society: Can you do this same type of cemetery survey for your local cemeteries? If you do, you and your colleagues will have performed a wonderful service to the genealogical community as a whole and family members of the deceased residents in particular.