Ancestry magazine

We visited a bunch of "Permanent Retirement Communities" on vaction this summer. It is interesting walking through seeing headstones from pre-colonial days. Some were relatives and some were not. Having done extensive "work" on my NE line this past year, I was able to recognize many of the names as cousins and great-greats, etc.

Two years ago, for a book I was writing, I visited a cemetery that doesn't look a bit like a cemetery. If you came across it (which you wouldn't, unless someone led you there), you would see no gravestones or mausoleums. It looks like a field, hidden by a grove of trees. It's the burial ground for 7,144 people who were patients at a mental ... See Moreinstitution, their graves marked only by numbered blocks, nearly all covered by grass. That's 7,144 stories, of people who died at that asylum between 1910 and 1948.

Last spring we went to Savannah on acation. I loved the old cemetery in town but would love to go back to Bonaventure Cemetery. I loved photographing there. I loved Little Gracie.

I found a set of great-great grandparents I wasn't even looking for, plus some of their children. We were in Fairmont MN looking for my great-grandfather's two sisters who died very young (in the Bonney family). My husband found a huge marker that said "Santee" and asked if this was relevant to the family. Well, my great-grandmother was a Santee! This discovery led me to the MN Historical Society, where I was able to use the cemetery info to find newspaper articles!

Cemetery in Springfield, MO. Found an entire family with the same ephiaph. "Me Too!"

Found my gggg grandfather who came from NJ. And it wasn't that far from where my brother was living at the time. This was after we started tracing my mom's side.... it was qutie a find! I like old cemeteries ... have a lot of character to them. Also like looking at the cemeteries online, the historical ones. Some are beautiful, some are downright scary!

My favorite cemetery to wander in...Silver Terrace Cemeteries in Virginia City, Nevada. Great discoveries every time I visit. Masons, American Indians, prostitutes, miners, children, Captain Storey, Chinese, and so many many other diverse people...it is soooo interesting, and spilling over with history!!

Finally found my husband's great grandparents. The headstone read FATHER and MOTHER. Luckily we ran into the cemetery keeper in the Nova Scotia Cementery where they were buried. He had the complete records in the building on the site. Those finally allowed us to find the right graves. Hurray.

With trying to trace family in Cemeteries, I call the cemetery first and ask if they have a record of the person I am looking for, then when I get there, I go into the main building and get a copy of the record and even a small cemetery map on where the grave is located as well, then go, pay my respects and take a picture of the stone or marker ... See Morewith my digital camera, and have all the pics in a small photo albums, Just for cemetery pics. this way if I need to look for any one person, I have the album right there:-)

I found the graves of my birth parents. I was adopted as a baby and never knew them.

In Italy, I found my family cemetery records going back two additional generations!