All Hunt, No Find.

It was a three day weekend, plenty of time to take on a new cemetery, new to me anyhow. I had no fresh requests, but findagrave had several older open requests that I’d simply never gotten around to. As I reviewed the list I was looking for quantity vs. size. A single request in a cemetery of over a thousand interments didn’t leap out at me, those can chew up hours, and recall that success only averages about 50% anyhow. Better, I thought, to go for multiple requests in smaller cemeteries, cull the low hanging fruit first.

I came across Buster Cemetery located in South central Jeff Co. near a town called Valles Mines. Buster listed a little over a hundred interments and four open requests.

I’d not been there before but had always assumed I’d get around to it.

Valles Mines was founded on 1749 by a French (Canadian) guy, Francois Valle. Yeah that’s right, by a guy named (when translated into American) Frankie Valli.

He started by visiting from Quebec (which is in Canada) and buying lead from local natives. He eventually decided to cut out the middle man and open his own mining company. The mining was done the old fashioned way, cheap labor. Some of the lead/zinc he extracted was used by the fledgling American militia to fight the war of independence.

The mines have long since played out, the town is basically a shadow of its former self. Some of the shallow, surface dug mines are still accessible and an effort is underway to build and maintain a museum in Frankie’s (Francois’s) original settlement house.

I cross checked the requests against my tweaked and speedy lookup list compiled from online transcription records. I had one match, which meant that someone had actually come across at least one of the requested markers there. I did not check the ‘notes’ column though, until later.

I printed out a map with directions, and oddly enough remembered to carry it with me. It took about a half hour to get near it, a few more minutes to slow down and actually find it. Pictures of the cemetery online showed a wooden sign over an entrance. The sign had actually fallen since that picture, and the entrance was nothing more than an open section of fence. The old cemetery had been recently and hurriedly mowed, though not detailed.

There were no huge or ornate obelisks or fancy stones. Mostly low–end simple, tilted, leaning, and broken ones scattered amongst a few anonymous field stones. As I stepped out of the car I almost stepped on one stone, right at the entrance, flat on its back and mostly sunken into the ground.

There was sign of recent activity, flags and flowers among the scattered and unevenly spaced graves. Around one fairly recent stone, someone had built a small wooden wall, installed a bench, a message board and two solar yard lights. Not as elaborate as some of the grave-altars I visited in Japan, but still a considerable effort.

It only took a few minutes to check the whole cemetery. Even though the graves were not in straight lines there just weren’t enough of them to make it take very long. I had three family names in my head, McGee, Anderson and Hall. I found a couple of McGee’s but not the right ones. Hall, nothing, Anderson, not the right one. This was frustrating since I’d crosschecked and found one. I had brought my awesome little netbook with me and opened up the speedy spreadsheet. This time I read the ‘notes’ column for the entry I thought I should find:

“s/o Guy & Stell; Infant; Born in of Valles Mines. Did not find”

Allow me to explain. Whenever someone does a proper transcription project at a cemetery, they have with them a previous transcription list. It’s not a blank slate every time. They simply add new finds to the old list and also make a note on the list if they can not locate one that was there before. That’s the deal here. This stone once existed and was legible, but was not found at the last read.

What happened to it?

It sunk into the ground, crumbled, wore down to complete illegibility or was removed. I have no idea in this specific case.

Four requests, zero finds, bad for my average so I re-walked the entire cemetery, photo’d a couple of same-family-name matches (McGee, Anderson), still nothing.

It turns out that the most recent transcription list for Buster had about a dozen “did not find’s” on it, that’s roughly ten percent of the total number of markers.

As I mentioned earlier there were few if any fancy or pricy stones in this cemetery. Buster is a few miles out of town on a country road, if you can really still call Valles Mines a town. There is a house across the road and down a little, and adjacent to the cemetery there is a metal building, perhaps a maintenance garage. Very few cars went buy during my hour-long visit, so this is not along a main route for many people. The cemetery had been mowed in the last few weeks, but no attempt had been made to fix the sign. Many of the markers were either low quality, or hand made, small, concrete slabs with names and dates carved by hand. One was simply concrete with marbles pressed in to spell the names. Several graves had only the funeral homes’ metal markers, one or two of which I noticed, had been mowed to shreds.

Frustrated and saddened I left unfulfilled.

Instead of heading home I drove roughly east to Ste. Genevieve County, a return to Lebanon Baptist Church.

This would be my third trip there in the last month. The first time I ended up arriving during Church services and left quickly, the second I spent some time looking for Pilliard’s and Bailey’s, not finding the requested one, but still adding a new name or two to the requestor’s family search.

Those that I had found were appreciated, but Grace, the requestor, was unrelenting. She queried me about the possibility of there being an extension or second site to the cemetery as all those I’d found were at least a decade older than the one she was looking for. I got in contact with another Jeff Co/Ste G. Co. grave finder, he answered back that yes indeed there was a second section. He did not tell me where it was, but I already had an idea.

I’d noticed a slightly paved drive that went up the hill from the cemetery. I didn’t give it much thought before since I’d not been looking for a supplemental area. So on that hunch alone I drove another thirty minutes to Ste. G.

I drove directly up the hill and sure enough an acre had been cleared out and a hand-painted sign signified that this too was part of the Lebanon Baptist burial field.

Only about a hundred graves, all dated later than the early 1940’s. I found a couple more Bailey’s and a couple of Pilliard’s, and then went ahead and photo’d all the graves so I wouldn’t have to drive back.

None of the graves was for the missing Jonathon Fite Bailey. He reportedly died in 1939, right on the cusp of the transition between the old and the new sections, but a thorough search of both had come up empty. Grace was polite and thankful for the new finds, but hasn’t given up yet looking for a stone for J.F. though I won’t be going back for a while, it’s a long way. It’s my opinion that there is no such stone in that cemetery. That doesn’t mean he isn’t buried there, I just can’t prove that he is. There’s no law saying you have to put down a stone.

300 Priests, more or less.

While researching cemeteries in Jefferson County I came across a transcription list that stood out from the others complied by the county Historical Society. It was for Liguori Cemetery, which I’d never heard of. The fact that I’d not heard of it wasn’t the interesting part. Nearly all the almost three hundred names on the list were prefaced with Fr. or Br. The list itself was provided, according to the transcription list “by Father William McKee”. Findagrave.com did not even list the cemetery.

* Disclaimer: I am not Catholic, never have been and never will be. I have nothing in particular against the Church or its followers, in fact I am fascinated and intrigued by the whole institution. I am also admittedly ignorant of many of its ways and means. Any errors, misstatements or misrepresentations in this entry are a result of that ignorance, not out of malice.

Peeling back the history of this cemetery I tried to learn a little more about the history, lives and works of the folks there, but I kept running into geek barriers. You know how if you ask a car geek a simple question about your car sounding funny, or burning too much oil you end up getting sucked in to the minutiae about things that have no meaning to you whatsoever, like timing, dwell, compression, ignition sequence. . . Well the Catholic Church and the Redemptorists themselves have a rich language and symbology as well and to this outsider it quickly causes the eyes to glaze over. That’s not a put down, just an acknowledgement, one kind of geek to another, that I didn’t grow up in that culture and am just not fluent in the subtleties and dialect.

Challenged by the unknown, I started researching Liguori, Mo. Which is as it turns out named for Saint Alphonsus Liguori, founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. It’s a Catholic thing. Further research revealed that Liguori is the home of several more Catholic things, a Senior Care facility, Liguori Publications (a publishing house with $20 – 50 million annual revenue), and a nunnery, convent or whatever the politically correct word is for a home for nuns: http://www.redemptoristinenuns.org/ They seem like a dutiful, contemplative bunch. Liguori is 120 acres in size and was home of the Liguori Mission House in 1947. One year later a post office was opened there making it the first PO in the world named after that particular Saint. It would seem to me that if I were made a Saint (pause for groans and laughter) that subsequently having a little post office named in my honor might not be such a huge deal. Then in 1960, or thereabouts the convent was opened. My intentions for the cemetery were completely innocent and secular. I had in front of me an entire cemetery that didn’t exist on findagrave, and saw the chance to bring these folks online. I made plans for the weekend, weather permitting, to check it out. That Sunday morning I grabbed water, my camera, the list of names, and a map . As per custom, I forgot to actually take the map with me. This resulted in about forty five minutes driving around in ever widening circles five or six miles form the actual location. Upon finally finding it, by seeing a sign pointing to Liguori Publications, I was pleasantly surprised. There were no stores or gas stations or tanning salons. Entering Liguori was like entering a small college campus. Freshly mowed lawns, a few large buildings, all clean and well maintained, shady trees smooth, un-striped roads, benches under the trees, and very little vehicular traffic. At the end of the road was the large, but neat and tidy publishing house with parking available for the approximately 150 workers, none of them working on this day. I parked there, grabbed my camera and my official findagrave.com cap and walked back down the road approximately one hundred yards where I had spotted the cemetery.It was starting to heat up, but was still moderate, the short walk making me sweat only a little. I had never seen a more logically laid out cemetery. The stones were in a tight grid, and nearly uniform in construction. There were in fact only three or four different types of stone, and like stones were clustered together. They were all simple, frugal and efficient. The graves were uniformly space, with no empty plots interrupting the grid. It was a cemetery that looked as though it were designed by a mathematician or engineer, someone that prized function far more than form. Since the inscriptions all pointed the same direction, east, I started at the eastern-most point and stopped at the first stone. The first few were the exceptions to the standards of the rest of the field. Old stones, not perfectly aligned, and the inscriptions not uniform. This was true only for that first row. This anarchy was discarded immediately starting with the second row. I decided to go ahead, row by row and shoot them all, or at least try. After the first row it got easy, quickly. Since all the stones in a row were the same build, I could stop, shoot, sidestep, shoot, sidestep, shoot, etc. without having to refocus or adjust the zoom. In all I got nearly three hundred shot in less than an hour.Occasionally I stopped to ponder only if for example I noticed the dates between ordination and death were very close, like less than a year as I saw on one or two of them. All the stones had the same basic information, date of birth, date ‘professed’, date ordained, and date of death. All of them had the name, preceded by “Rev. or Br. and followed by C.S.S.R (or C.Ss.R) which stands for “Congregatio Sanctissimi Redemptoris” or in English: “Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer." This is the official title for the order. (I only found this out later as part of my post-research, I grew up in rural Kentucky, and Latin was not exactly a must-have language there.) I also found out that the official mission (charism) of the order is: “With Him is plentiful redemption." Which I like as a mission statement as it is completely lacking in action verbs. (Source: http://mission.liguori.org/redemptorists/whoare.htm ) 
By the end of the shoot I was covered in sweat and my water was as warm as that sweat, and about as tasty. I trotted (walked) back to the car and fired up the non-frugal or chaste air conditioner and let it blast my body down to reasonable temperatures. I pointed the car towards home, bid adieus to the brothers and sisters and left as quietly and respectfully as I had arrived. I suppose this would be the time to mention the spiritual nature and sensations that are sure to be a part of walking the grounds of so many deceased spiritual soldiers. Sorry, I’ve got nothing. Perhaps my mind is just too closed to that realm, but to be honest, I actually truly enjoyed the peace and serenity of this cemetery, but no more or less than any other. I enjoy cemeteries, I find them peaceful and I tend to get contemplative in them, but none really more than another regardless of the connection to things religious. If any grave causes me to break that emotional wall, it is the tragic deaths, of toddlers, teenagers, soldiers and young mothers. Most of the men buried in this cemetery lived very long lives in the service of their church and were probably in close touch with their own mortality. If unfulfilled spirits indeed haunt the physical world, I would not think this was the place they’d be found. Once I got home I showered and grabbed a bite. I then transferred the nearly three hundred photos to my awesome little netbook. I then began the tedious task of creating the cemetery on findagrave then the individual memorials themselves. I accomplished this by opening up the photos one at a time and typing in the relevant names and dates into the database. The photos themselves had to be reduced, which meant opening up a photo editor and resizing each one to fit in the allowable size for findagrave. Many of the photos also needed to be cropped to center them and make them uniform. Almost as many needed to be rotated from two to five degrees. In my haste the camera was not always level causing several to appear crooked. Once the photo was fixed I saved a copy, leaving the original high-detailed photo intact, giving the small adjusted copy the name on that person’s stone. I then uploaded that photo to findagrave and went on to the next one.
Once I established a rhythm I was clipping along at about three minutes per stone. Best estimates predicted about thirteen to twenty hours of solid, boring, repetitive work, a task that I still haven’t completed. A few here, a few there, I ought to be done by Spring. As of this writing there’s 108 complete, I’ll keep you updated. To date I can not determine if anyone has searched for any of these men. There have been no requests for more info or photos. But then again I don’t expect there will be many. Historically I get most requests and questions from descendants of the interred. By definition catholic priests don’t have many, if any descendants. They are in evolutionary and genealogical terms, dead ends. However they are likely somebody’s uncle, brother or son. So at least there’s a chance that there will be searches even if only by people whose lives they touched.



*** Update. The uploads were completed over the subsequent weeks/months. I've even gone back a couple of times to add new graves.


Oct 17, 2023
Update:
I received a rather unusual request a few days ago:
" . . . I am one of the Redemptorist priests who lives at St. Clement's, next to Liguori Cemetery. We are in the process of creating a website for St. Clement's. Can we have digital copies of all the pictures of the tombstones you have taken in Liguori Cemetery? That would save us from having to duplicate the great work you have already done."

Yes, yes you can Fr. Luberti.
 Delivered. Awesome!
 

The Search for Jacob.

I thought I’d start on my most recent adventure as it is fresh in my mind and helps illuminate my fascination with grave-finding.
I received a request for one Jacob Pilliard 1850 - Jun. 14, 1895. The request placed him in the Lebanon Baptist Church cemetery in Jefferson County. I’d not heard of this cemetery so I did some research. I pulled up the Jefferson County Historical Society’s cemetery transcription list, which I use frequently to pre-check and cross-check requests. Their lists are very good, to a point, and most of the transcribing was done in the early 2000’s so recent burials don’t show up. To create these lists, volunteers traveled to each cemetery with the previous transcription list and made note of new stones, missing stones, etc. since the last visit. There is a very low error rate among these lists. One problem though, they didn’t have a list for Lebanon Baptist Church. This was unusual.
I did some more online research searching for “Lebanon Baptist” Jefferson County MO. and came up with a familiar document. http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nebuffal/jeffcomo/churches.htm
This is an extract from :

GOODSPEED's HISTORY OF
Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford, & Gasconade Counties, MissouriChicago: The Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1888
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM THE EARLIEST TIME TO THE PRESENT; TOGETHER WITH SUNDRY PERSONAL,BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL SKETCHES AND NUMEROUS FAMILYRECORDS; BESIDES A VALUABLE FUND OF NOTES,ORIGINAL OBSERVATION'S, ETC., ETC.

I’ve read this document before, lots of times. It is essentially a history of the county as of 1888. Goodspeed Publishing did lots of these in the 1880’s.
The relevant entry is quoted here:
“Lebanon Baptist Church, in the east part of the county, was organized about the year 1850, and five years later a frame church edifice was erected at a cost of $600. Its pastors have been James P. Cape, J. M. Hensley and S. Frazier. Its membership numbers 77.”
As it turns out, Goodspeed got this wrong. I replied to Phyllis, the requestor and let her know I was having problems ID’ing the cemetery. She sent more information:
"Jacob Pilliard died on June 14, 1895, while rescuing another man who had fallen into a well" (source: Deaths from Jefferson County Newspapers 1866-1920, by the Jefferson County Genealogical Society; entry of November 7, 1895). He is buried in the Lebanon Baptist Church cemetery at Danby, Missouri, near Bloomsdale."
The mere mention of the two villages made things clearer. Danby is little more than an intersection in the southeastern tip of Jefferson County. Bloomsadale is a little larger but it is actually located on the northeastern tip of Ste. Genevieve County, our neighbor to the south. I called up a map and located both towns. It made sense. These two places are only a few miles apart in an area of the county that to this day is not heavily developed or populated. Back in the late 1800’s it would be easy to not know exactly where the county line was. I grew up in rural areas, and without signs to indicate otherwise, back roads drift in and out of neighboring counties without notice. So I expanded my search and looked for “Lebanon Baptist Church” in Ste Genevieve, Mo. and got an interesting hit. http://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills081/hlrbillspdf/5018C.01.pdf
This was a Missouri House Bill celebrating the church’s long history:
“Whereas, the members now pause to recognize the Lebanon Baptist Church, in Bloomsdale, Missouri, Which is celebrating its 175th anniversary on September 21, 2008; and Whereas, built in 1833 by John Lee. . . . . .Whereas, in 1860, a frame house for worship was built, and today there is a Prayer Garden with the original stones hewn for the original church in front of the old stile-block, inviting anyone who wishes to commune with God. . .”
Essentially indicating that the church, In Ste G. County has occupied the same land since the early 1800’s. So Pilliard’s family lived somewhere between Danby and Bloomsdale, members of the family were buried in both places. I printed a map of the area and made plans to drive to Bloomsdale during the weekend and resolve it once and for all. I reported my findings and told Phyllis and Grace, one of Phyllis’s relatives who was providing her information as a former resident of this area, that I would try to photograph the entire cemetery if it were small enough, in hopes of picking up other family members.
* Grave finder tip! Whenever you get a request and find a stone, look around for others with the same last name and photograph them as well. These may well be family the requestor hasn’t discovered yet!
Saturday rolled around, too hot, too tired. It would wait for Sunday.
Sunday morning I printed out the list I had compiled from findagrave.com, listing all possible names for Lebanon Baptist in both the Ste. G and erroneous Jeff Co. listings. I grabbed up the camera, checked the battery (lesson learned the hard way) grabbed a bottle of water (essential) and headed to the beauty shop in Festus. (first things first, it was haircut day) I got right in and out, skipped my traditional visit to the adjoining $1 store and proceeded south down the wrong road. 61/67 splits south of Festus, I initially took 67, which was wrong. After about fifteen minutes I realized my mistake and turned around and took 61. Within minutes I was out of my area of familiarity. Very rural, except for a golf course, thinning civilization, then a curve to a small bridge over a creek and a sign indicating I had just entered Ste. G county. Within a minute I passed the Church. I turned around and immediately felt stupid. The cemetery was prominent, directly adjacent to the church. In front of the church were about thirty cars. I looked at my watch, it was eleven A.M. For reasons I’ll not go in to here I’d never even considered the possibility that there would be people at a church on a Sunday morning. I weighed my options and decided to go ahead and give it a try. I slipped in between two minivans parked in the gravel/grass and quietly popped open my trunk to retrieve the camera and my official findagrave.com cap.

There was no noise coming from the church so I assumed its flock was buttoned up tight to keep the hot air outside and the AC inside. I didn’t want to interfere with services or talk to anyone, so I just behaved as though I belonged there, like a regular guy making regular rounds at a cemetery. I didn’t even look toward the church as I stopped and took a couple of wide shots of the cemetery.
Findagrave didn’t have a full cemetery shot for this one so I thought I’d take care of that as well.
I got lucky. Only one other time have I entered a cemetery and walked right up to the stone I was looking for. I didn’t immediately see Jacob’s but I did see two newer looking prominent stones with Phyllis’ other family name, I’d snag those as well. Sarah was on my findagrave list but Lee wasn’t.
Jacob was just to the left of them, a tall, flat top obelisk, old, fading, discolored and smoothed with time, but still legible. I was getting a little edgy, uncomfortable thinking that I might be being watched or judged. I didn’t want to disrespect the church, its members or the community at large. Some people can be pretty weird when it comes to cemeteries, I’m not, but I recognize that others are, and I didn’t want to give anyone the impression that I was desecrating sacred ground, so I decided to take my first few captures and call it a day rather than spend an hour taking pictures of every stone. I had what I needed to fill the request, plus a bonus shot or two. Good enough, I was in and out in less than ten minutes. Once home I tweaked the photos, squaring them up, cropping them and resizing them to 27% of initial size (findagrave has its limits and so does my internet connection.) I posted Jacob’s photos and those of the cemetery as well as the new find, Lee. I emailed Phyllis and Grace mentioning Lee as a possible relative. I heard back from Phyllis a little later. It turns out that Lee, who died at the age of five or six was Phyllis’ great uncle, her grandmother’s younger brother whom she had only ever heard referred to as ‘Fritz’. Lee was his middle name. She had not even known where to start looking for his grave. She also sent me some back story on Jacob, who died in 1895 at the age of thirty five. It turns out he did indeed die rescuing another man from a well. A newspaper account from that time, June 1895, reads as follows:
“The sad news reached Ste. Genevieve last Saturday of the death of Mr. Jacob Pilliard, Justice of the Peace of Jackson Township, who was overcome by foul air while rescuing a man who was cleaning out a well on his farm near Bloomsdale. He had employed a couple of men to do the job and was cutting wheat nearby when one of the men called for assistance. Mr. Pilliard ran at once to the well and was let down by means of a bucket. He succeeded in getting the man out, but was himself overcome and when taken out of the well was more dead than alive. He never regained consciousness and died in a few hours. Mr. Pilliard was a young man who was well liked and respected by all his acquaintances. He leaves a wife and family who have the sympathy of the community in their sad loss.”
What a tragic, real, heartwarming story. The name on this stone, not unlike the hundreds of others I’ve photographed, had a story. This was a real person, a good person with family, work, respect, responsibilities as well as selfless courage. Over one hundred years after his death his descendants are still working to connect to him. This is why I continue to do this.
________________________________

On Tuesday morning I received an email from Grace, it turns out that she’s got another ancestor in the same cemetery. She’s put in a findagrave request but also sent me an email directly, alerting me to it. She also asked if, since I live in Jeff Co. I might know some people she used to know. I replied that I’d be happy to return to the cemetery, on Saturday. I also had to tell her that I’ve only lived here for a few short years and had no local family history and actually know very few people here. I ending it by adding:
“ I've got no family history here myself, so I live vicariously through other people's ancestors.”

My new hobby

Back in March I was listening to NPR one Sunday morning and heard an interview with Jim Tipton, the founder of findagrave.com.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124671879
I had never heard of it but there was something rather intriguing about it. It fed a couple of my interests, walking around outdoors and taking pictures. I’d visited cemeteries before, taken pictures of interesting, artsy tombstones. I’d visited the poor farm cemetery here in Jefferson County, which has nothing but a couple of field stones, plain rocks as markers and only a couple of them, though I knew for certain that the number of unfortunate folks interred there was actually in the dozens, if not scores. (A subsequent data search revealed that the county’s records for the farm had all been destroyed in fires, floods and the like. These unknown will likely remain unknown forever.)
So the idea of helping build a database of burials and tombstones in old, small and all but forgotten cemeteries fascinated me.
I logged in to findagrave.com and discovered that there were indeed some outstanding requests for photographs very near my home. I signed up as a contributing photographer, grabbed my camera, printed off the lists, grabbed a bottle of water and headed to the nearby Hillsboro Cemetery.
I walked the entire cemetery; it took less than an hour and came up with none of the names on the list. Frustrated I returned home and added a comment to the online request. One of the canned responses was: “I have searched the entire cemetery and was unable to find the requested stone.” Apparently this was not so uncommon.
Frustrated but undeterred I loaded up and went to the next cemetery on the list. I found two or three of the five I was looking for. I was giddy with the sensation of discovery. I took two or three shots of each one. Still there were a few names that just didn’t exist.
I edited and resized the photos and uploaded them, checking the ‘Fulfill request’ button. Within twenty four hours I received via email a notice that I had a message waiting for me. It was a personal, public and courteous “thank you” from the requestor. I was hooked. I am motivated primarily by appreciation. A simple, personal ‘thank you’ will get my lazy butt off the couch more effectively than offers of food or threats of violent bodily harm. I’m cheap that way. Appreciate my efforts and I am your slave. Just ask Angel.
Over subsequent weekends my numbers started slowly climbing. I started learning the ropes. I also discovered that about half the requests could not be fulfilled. There are several reasons for this:
1. Inaccurate burial information.
Some of the information comes from newspaper accounts and genealogy databases and is not always correct, especially those from the mid to late 19th century.
2. There simply is no stone.
Either there never was a stone, or the stone is just missing. In most cemeteries there has never been a requirement to have stones. Those that could not afford them, or were without someone remaining to provide them simply went unmarked.
3. Worn, eroded, broken, unreadable.
The average lifespan for tombstones is not as long as you might think. Even rather elaborate, more expensive stones from before the Civil War are now mostly worn down to the point of being completely unreadable. Those from the 1880’s are getting there fast. Depending on the quality of stone used, some from the early 20th century are already fading away. Those from the roaring 20’s onwards seem to be made of more stable stuff. Time will only tell how long they actually last, but if I’ve learned nothing else, it’s for certain that even carved limestone, marble or granite is not forever.

Another thing I discovered is that before the 20th century many people were buried in places that have now been repurposed. Land has been sold, families have moved away, churches have burned down or flooded out and moved. Some of the small family cemeteries stand in fields or forests and are not accessible from roads. I’ve found one in a guy’s back yard, another where a church used to be and now is in the middle of a pasture. Another I have discovered is under the paved parking lot of a large home supply store, and no, they didn’t bother moving the graves first.
The findagrave database is extensive but incomplete. In some cases it is downright inaccurate. This is understandable since this site is ad-based and all the work, all the data and photos, comes from amateur volunteers such as myself. But like other contributor based sites it is open for improvement. On more than one occasion I’ve sent messages to requestors or findagrave itself pointing out errors.
For example, I received a request a couple of weeks ago. The requestor had added a memorial to the Resurrection Cemetery in Jefferson County and requested a photo. The findagrave database says there are six interments there. There’s only one problem. There is no such cemetery in Jefferson County.
The requestor is not from the area and likely used the information in the obituary to determine the burial site. The obit says this particular priest was from Jefferson City, worked in Jefferson City and has family in Jefferson City. Jefferson City is a hundred plus miles away in Cole County. Apparently the requestor assumed that Jefferson City was in Jefferson County. I sent the requestor and findagrave a note, and left it at that. They haven’t corrected it yet, but at least I did my job.
Another case I’m working on now is similar. The request was for a grave in the Lebanon Baptist Church Cemetery. There is no such animal in Jeff Co. However, just across the Sainte Genevieve county line to the south there is a Lebanon Baptist Church. Findagrave is county centric, it’s how you usually start a search. Findagrave lists two Lebanon Baptist Church cemeteries, one in Jeff Co. the other in Ste G. I did my homework and sent notes to the requestors. It turns out the cemetery in Ste G. is barely documented on findagrave so I’ve decided to go the additional mile (actually additional eight miles) and this weekend , weather permitting, I will visit and photo-document the entire cemetery.

Some of my fans have expressed interest in this little hobby of mine, so I’ve decided to journal some of the work involved. This blog will be periodically updated with new frustrations, discoveries and adventures, such as:

300 Priests, all in a row.

The cemetery in a dude’s back yard.

Find one tiny stone in a field of over a thousand.

My ongoing (mostly positive) interactions with the local Historical Society.

“Sorry but the land owners don’t want me to give out directions to that cemetery.”

Building a single 35,000 record database from varying-standard data.

Stopping halfway through to go buy a better pair of shoes.

"Heir Ruhen In Gott Die Durch Morderhand Dem Tode Uberlieferten Eheute Bonacker"
(Here rest in God, delivered to death by a murderer's hand, the married couple Bonacker)

Stay tuned.