More Nebraska Genealogy-Cemetery Events coming up!

Ashland Cemetery Tour - October 15, 2011

The Ashland Historical Society will hold a cemetery walk on Sunday afternoon, October 16 at 2:00 p.m. Participants will meet at the Ashland Cemetery directory and will tour two cemeteries.

The event is free and open to the public.

Judi Schamp, a founding member of the Ashland Cemetery Directory and Improvement Committee, will discuss the history Saunders County's largest cemetery and lead the tour.

People will then carpool to Carr Cemetery; also known as Clear Creek Cemetery, which is two miles north of Ashland. Melanie O'Brien will discuss the history of the cemetery, which is the oldest in Saunders county.

Tour of Young Cemetery near Plattsmouth - October 15 and 16, 2011

"Ghosts of a Pioneer Cemetery Tour 2011" will be given at 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. October 15 and 16 at Young Cemetery near Plattsmouth, Nebraska. This rain-or-shine walking tour takes about an hour. Tickets are $10 and must be purchased in advance at Antiques Off Main in Plattsmouth or by contacting Leigh Jean Koinzan at 402-296-2942 or lk11434@navix.net.

To get to Young Cemetery from the Omaha area, drive southbound on US Highway 75 south of Plattsmouth to Young Road. Look for the cemetery tour directional sign. Turn East onto Young Road. Go a short distance, again watching for the cemetery tour sign. Turn left onto Young Lane. You will see another sign. Parking is limited, so carpooling is recommended. Restroom facilities are not available.

Storytellers from OOPS (Omaha Organization for the Purpose of Storytelling) and other "ghost characters" dressed in period costumes will tell stories about the residents of this 1855 cemetery.

For more information visit www.plattsmouthconservancy.org.

A Day at the Museum - Part 2

Deciding that I shouldn't hog the microfilm reader at the Cass County Historical Society Museum yesterday, I moved on to the Portrait and Biographical Album of Otoe and Cass Counties, Nebraska. What is nice is that the Museum has a bound copy of a reprint of this book that was published by the Greater Omaha Genealogical Society in 1977. If a researcher wants any pages photocopied, the museum staff will get the fragile original out of its protective box and make the copies for you.

I didn't locate any biographies of my kin in the book, but I recognized plenty of names. So I marked the pages that had biographies of the names I recognized as the pioneers buried at Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery between Greenwood and Ashland, Nebraska. One of my acquaintances on FindAGrave is a descendant of these pioneers, so I thought I could share the information should he need it.

While the curator was making copies, she recognized one of the names since she had recently been doing some research on Civil War veterans buried in the county. She said she had his obituary and asked if I'd like a copy. Sure! Why not? Maybe my FindAGrave friend could use it. As I mentioned in Part 1, I didn't want to leave empty handed, and it didn't matter if what I found wasn't about my family!

I have gathered quite a bit of information about a court battle over moving the remains of Edward Cagney from the Fitzgerald plot in Calvary Cemetery in Lincoln, Nebraska to the cemetery in Plattsmouth, Nebraska. The case went to the Nebraska Supreme Court which decided his mother had the right to move the remains, which had been interred about 10 years. It's a fascinating story which I will write about in depth at a later time.

The Museum has fairly detailed lists of interments at the local cemeteries and all I had to offer was that it was probably in the Catholic cemetery. This turned out to be Holy Sepulchre. With help of the museum staff, these entries were located.

Cemetery Listings for Edward Cagney and his brother, John J. Cagney

Cemetery Listings to Catherine Fitzgerald Cagney McEntee
and her second husband, Charles McEntee
This also notes that Catherine's information is on the Cagney stone.

Cemetery Directory showing the location of the Cagney/McEntee Lot
Additional information discovered: Charles McEntee's parents, Michael and Bridget,
are also buried here. Confirmation of Bridget's maiden name as Edoff.

My next field trip to Plattsmouth will definitely include a visit to Holy Sepulchre cemetery to photograph these gravestones. No, they are not my direct line, but it certainly makes for an interesting family history story! And I love a good story.

Read Part 1 of A Day at the Museum.

Open Discussion Weekend - Social Networking or Defacing a Tombstone?

Today was a beautiful, much cooler, summer day and a friend suggested lunch and a cemetery walk. So we headed for Ashland Cemetery in Ashland, Nebraska. I have a few distant kin buried there and before leaving, I took down the names of the FindAGrave tombstone requests so I could give a little bit back to the FindAGrave community.

The afternoon was a bit like an Easter egg hunt, but low and behold, we found the relatives I was looking for, and six of the seven FindAGrave requests (the missing one was a person with the same name).

While walking the cemetery, we came upon this gravestone.

Harriet Jones
Ashland Cemetery
Ashland, Nebraska

Do you see the little white sticker on the gravestone? This warranted a closer look. Here's what we found:

This was a sticky label, fairly permanent, that had been left by a relative of the deceased.

So - what do you think? An effective method of contacting kin or the defacement of a cemetery marker? If you vote the latter, will you be contacting this person to let them know what you think?

It's Open Discussion Weekend - please post your thoughts about this in the Comments section below.

Memorial Day - honoring those who served

Soldiers's Circle
Wyuka Cemetery
Lincoln, Nebraska

Jess Carl Petersen
Wyuka Cemetery
Lincoln, Nebraska

Are You Making Full Use of Find A Grave?

Mary Casey and
William D Kelly
Calvary Cemetery
Lincoln, Nebraska

Next to Ancestry.com, the online resource I probably use the most is FindAGrave.com. Are you sure that you are using FindAGrave to the fullest extent possible?

Obituaries

Every time I locate an obituary that includes the name of the cemetery where the deceased was buried, I check FindAGrave. Is there a memorial established for the person? If not, I create one based on the information in the obituary. I summarize any family history information from the obituary into the biography section.

Request a Photo

Once I've created a memorial, I click on the button, Request a Photo. This step generates an automated message to all FindAGrave photo volunteers who are willing to take a photo of the gravestone. I usually include a message that indicates my relationship to the person, if any. If I think that other family members might be buried nearby, I include the information I have and request the photo volunteer to look in the immediate vicinity to see if other family member graves are present.

This technique has been quite helpful and on several occasions, the photo volunteer has set up a memorial for the additional family member and added the photo(s) taken when at the grave site.

Review Memorials Regularly

Sometimes, I have forgotten to Request a Photo. The FindAGrave community is constantly adding information and photographs to the site. Today, I received an email notification that a volunteer had fulfilled my request for a gravestone photo. I started looking through the list of memorials I had entered and noticed that the headstone icon appeared on several of my memorials. As the cemeteries are across the country, I knew that I had not added the photographs.

What did I discover? I found that a volunteer had added a photograph of the headstone of my third great grandmother, Margaret Schultz Landon, in Union Cemetery, Liberty, Tioga County, Pennsylvania. What a discovery! The gravestone provided an additional source for her dates of birth and death. I always get excited when I find information on my direct lineage. And I had not requested this photo!

So I browsed through all of my memorials and discovered that several FindAGrave photo volunteers had added photographs of gravestones of family members!

Portraits

FindAGrave also allows other people to add photographs to your memorials. If I happen to have a photograph of a person who already has a memorial on the site, I add it. So do other people. You will not receive automatic notification from FindAGrave when this occurs. So make a habit of browsing through your memorials - or the memorials created by other people who you have included in your virtual cemeteries. Information is constantly being added to the site, so you never know what kind of gems you will discover.

Virtual Cemeteries

If you have not been using the Virtual Cemetery feature on the site, you should. This is a way where you can organize memorials by family or by cemetery (or any other combination you may choose). This way, I can include memorials of my family members that have been created by other contributors. I can easily locate the memorial by going to the Virtual Cemetery based on Surnames.

Make a habit of checking in on your memorials on a regular basis. You never know what you're going to find - and it may provide the next clue that you needed for your research.

Giving Back to the Community

If you are able to take photographs of gravestones in your area, sign up to be a photo volunteer. This community spirit is what the FindAGrave site is based on. And always remember to post a thank-you message when a volunteer fulfills your photo request.

Ashland Nebraska (Saunders county) Cemetery interments

Good news from the Ashland Historical Society in Ashland (Saunders county) Nebraska: an updated list of all cemetery interments is available online! View here.

Several of my kin are listed, so I need to make some notes!

Genealogists Are Always Willing to Help One Another

One of the people I am researching is William Langdon, a first cousin of my grandfather Bill Kelly. Information about him was elusive for the period of 1915 until his death in 1957 for quite some time. Then I discovered that he went by the name Jack Langdon. I wrote about this discovery earlier this year.

That information took me on a search for his first wife, Sarah. Those of you who do research in Missouri know what a wonderful resource the Missouri Digital Heritage site is. It has actual copies of death certificates from 1910 - 1959.

It was on that site that I found the death certificate of Mr. Langdon's wife, Sarah Elizabeth Langdon. Since her husband was buried in Missouri, I was intrigued by the fact that her body was sent to Woodlawn Cemtery in Jackson, Michigan. As I generally do when I find burial information, I create a memorial on the FindAGrave web site, if one does not exist. I made the entry in a Woodlawn Cemetery in Michigan, and placed a request for a tombstone photograph.

In a few weeks, I heard from a FindAGrave photo volunteer who said that Sarah was not buried in that cemetery. I did some more checking and discovered that the correct name of the cemetery was Woodland Cemetery, not Woodlawn as listed on the death certificate. So I changed Sarah's memorial on FindAGrave. Based on the maiden name given on the death certificate, I entered her maiden name as Irick.

Another FindAGrave volunteer who specializes in that geographic area and has created more than 60,000 memorials on the site contacted me. The maiden name of Irick was puzzling her because it didn't ring any bells. She contacted the cemetery with the information from the death certificate to locate the grave. The cemetery records matched the dates of birth and death, but the name on the tombstone was Sarah Grover. My FindAGrave friend did some more sleuthing since she was not aware of any Irick family in the area and she quickly determined that Sarah's maiden name was Quick, not Irick. Ah .... trying to decipher handwriting is not always an easy task!

From this point, Sarah's story began to make sense. Frank Grover was her first husband when they lived in Michigan. They moved to Missouri, where he died. His body was returned to Michigan for burial. After Frank's death, she married Jack Langdon. At the time of her second marriage, she was about 61 and Jack was 38. It was Jack's first marriage, so I know there's a story there! Now just to find it.

Sarah and Frank had a son. I'm speculating that he had something to do with his mother's body being returned to Michigan to be buried next to her first husband. And Sarah's tombstone carries the surname Grover, not Langdon. I think there's a story to be found there as well.

I share this scenario to demonstrate a couple things. One - things are not always as they seem and sometimes you just have to keep digging deeper to find information. And - genealogists are people who are very willing to help out another researcher in finding those facts. I probably would have left Sarah "Irick" buried in the wrong cemetery with a different surname had this wonderful lady not contacted me who was just as interested in the mystery as I was.

Since our correspondence, I've been able to add a few more members of Sarah's immediate family.

Sunday's Obituary - Ann Jane McVoy Landon

MRS. ANN JANE LANDON

The subject of this skietch was born in Columbia County, New York, July 11, 1817 and died at the home of her son, George Landon, west of Ashland, January 15, 1904, aged 86 years, 6 months and 4 days. She moved with her parents to Tioga County, Pennsylvania, and in 1837, at the age of 20 years, she was married to Daniel Landon.  There were born to them ten children, seven sons and three daughters, one son and her husband having preceded her to the better land.

She came with her family to Nebraska in 1870 and settled west of Ashland, where the remaining years of her life were spent.

The funeral took place from the home on Sunday, the 17th instant, at 11 o'clock, Elder C. A. Huyck of Ashland conducting the services. The interment was made in the Greenwood cemetery.

Source: Ashland Gazette, Ashland, NE, January 29, 1904

Daniel Landon
and Wife
Ann Landon
Greenwood Cemetery, Greenwood, Nebraska

Relationship to me: second great grandmother

Sunday's Obituary - Amanda Stover Pecht

Amanda Melvina Stover Pecht
my 2nd great grandmother

Mrs. Amanda Petch (sic), wife of Mr. John Petch (sic), died at this place Wednesday p.m., about 5 o'clock, after a lingering sickness of more than a year, of chronic ailments, aged about 52 years, and was buried yesterday at Rose Mound cemetery south of this place. She has been a sufferer from disease almost from the settlement here and her trouble has been at times almost unbearable. Mr. Petch (sic) and family came to this section from Lena, Ill., some twenty years ago and have many friends and relatives at Republic and in the country (sic) south of this who hold them in high esteem that will be true mourners of her death. - from the Hardy Herald

Source: The Nelson (Nebraska) Gazette, Thursday, August 30, 1894; pg. 3

Rose Mound Cemetery
Republic County, Kansas

Upcoming Events in Omaha

Greater Omaha Genealogical Society fall conference

The Greater Omaha Genealogical Society fall conference will be October 30, 2010 at Nebraska Methodist College, 720 N. 87th St., Omaha. Advance registration is $20 for membership and $30 for nonmembers. Lunch is available for $4.50

Sessions include:

• Land Records - presented by Lynne A. Farr
• Oral Histories - presented by Lucille Saunders
• Organizing Your Files - presented by Cyndy Salzmann
• What You Can Do With a Digital Camera - presented by Jeff Ramsell

You can download a brochure and registration form here.

Tombstone Tour of Omaha Cemeteries

A motor coach tour of three Omaha cemeteries led by Joni Fogarty is planned for October 24, 2010. The tour includes Forest Lawn, Holy Sepulchre and and Prospect Hill. Cost is $40 and registration deadline is October 19.

For more information and to register, click here.

If you can't make the cemetery tour, I recommend a virtual visit at the Graveyards of Omaha, a wonderful site by Marta Dawes.

Omaha Nebraska - Tombstone Tour - September 12, 2010

The Douglas County Historical Society has announced its Tombstone Tour of Forest Lawn, Prospect Hill and Holy Sepulchre cemeteries.

Source: Douglas County Historical Society

September 12, 2010
2 p.m.

“Tombstone Tour”
with local historian Joni Fogarty

Our Second Sunday Talk goes mobile in September as we visit three historic cemeteries on a motor coach tour. Local historian Joni Fogarty will provide cryptic commentary about the notables interred, and we'll toast the departed with complimentary beverages.

Cost is $40. Reservations due by Sept. 7. Send check to address below, call 455-9990 for credit card payment or use the PayPal option.

Board bus between 1:30 and 2 at General Crook House Museun, Fort Omaha. Bus leaves promptly at 2 and will return by 5:30.

DCHS
5730 N. 30th St. #11B
Omaha, NE 68111

Tombstone Tuesday - Jens Tinus Christensen

This week, I'm featuring two entries for Tombstone Tuesday. The quest to locate the tombstone shown here began with a mysterious photograph in an album that belonged to my grandmother in the early 1920s. There were a few photographs taken in a cemetery and I had no idea where the cemeteries were located, or if the tombstones had any connection to our family.

This photograph caught my eye, as you might imagine, because of the airplane propeller perched atop the stone. I couldn't even read the inscription on the stone in the photograph with the naked eye. I scanned the photo at 600 dpi so I could view it on my computer. I was then able to ascertain that it was a monument for someone named Tinus Christensen.

My first stop was FindAGrave.com. Fortunately, there was a memorial for this person. The memorial on that site states that Tinus Christensen was an air mail pilot who was killed in 1921. I needed to learn more and turned to Google. From that search, I discovered the Blair Historic Preservation Alliance web site which tells the story of how this brave pilot sacrificed his own life rather than risk the lives of others in an emergency landing in a street in Cleveland. Reports state that thousands of people attended his funeral in Blair, Nebraska.

Another recent photograph of his grave site my be viewed here. The propeller atop the stone in this more recent photograph is not the same one as in the photograph in my grandmother's album.

I know that members of the Petersen family lived in Blair. I am speculating that my grandparents went to visit sometime after the funeral once the monument was set and they took the photographs at that time. The pilot's mother's maiden name was Pedersen, but I'm not aware of any relation to my family.

Still, I think it turned out to be an interesting discovery, one based only on a photograph in an album. Hey, does that make me a History Detective!?! Not quite, but it was fun to look into this.

Tombstone Tuesday - Byron Atkinson and Lillie Jones Atkinson

Byron Atkinson and his wife, Lillie, are buried in the Greenwood Cemetery in Greenwood, Nebraska.


Byron's parents, John Atkinson and Ann Grunshaw Atkinson, are buried at the Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery, a few miles away. Their tombstone was featured on Tombstone Tuesday last week.


The tombstone of Byron's brother, Nelson Atkinson, is also at Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery and was featured on Tombstone Tuesday two weeks ago.

Byron was born in Wisconsin on March 5, 1850. According to his obituary, the family moved to Nebraska circa 1865, two years prior to Nebraska statehood.


1870 census records show Byron, age 20, living with his parents and sister Eunice in Lancaster county, Nebraska. He married Lillie Jones on September 23, 1873, according to Lancaster county marriage records. [source: Lincoln-Lancaster County Genealogical Society database]

Census records show Byron and Lillie starting their family and living in Oak Creek, Butler county, Nebraska in 1880 and 1885. In 1900, they lived in Brainard Village in Butler county. Daughter Ollie had moved out of the family home by this time, but children Charlie and Minnie were living with Byron and Lillie. Also living with the Atkinsons were Lillie's father, William Jones, a niece, Carrie Jones, and a nephew, Elmer Jones.

The 1910 census shows Byron and Lillie again living in Oak Creek, Butler county, Nebraska and by 1920 they had moved to Greenwood, Cass county, today about 20 miles north of Lincoln.

The information reported on the census records is interesting to me because Byron's 1931 obituary states that  he had resided in Greenwood for 16 years (probably accurate) and prior to that, he had lived in Lancaster county for 65 years. The census shows that he had lived in Nebraska for 65 years, but not in Lancaster county the entire time. Tip: Don't accept anything as fact without checking several sources!

Byron Atkinson
1850 -1931


Early Nebraska Pioneer

Take a walk through Wyuka

Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln, Nebraska is probably the most peaceful, majestic and beautiful cemetery in my hometown. And, best of all for genealogists, all interments are available through an online search. Take a walk through history with this video.

Follow Friday: Nebraska Tombstone Photo Project

This week I am pleased to recommend the Nebraska State Genealogical Society Photo Project. It is managed by the Nebraska State Genealogical Society. To date, more than 45,700 gravestone photo records have been added.

The site is free to use and is always in need of volunteers to photograph gravestones in all areas of the state and upload the images to the site. Users can browse the site by cemetery or search by surname. Females are cross-referenced by maiden name, when the name is known.

I would certainly encourage anyone who is a FindAGrave volunteer in Nebraska to also consider adding gravestone photos to NebraskaGravestones.org. People search the 'net in many different ways and it doesn't hurt to have digital images available in both locations. However - please remember to upload only photographs you've taken yourself. Do not "steal" photos from one site to add to another.

Tombstone Tuesday - John and Ann Atkinson - Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery

John Atkinson and Ann Grunshaw Atkinson - Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery - Greenwood, Nebraska

This is the second in a series of posts about interments at Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery, north of Greenwood, Nebraska.

John Atkinson was born in Lancashire, England in 1800 and arrived in the United States sometime before 1832. He was married to Ann Grunshaw, also of Lancashire, England. Both names are on the tombstone, although no dates are listed for Ann. She died 10 years after her husband and presumed to be buried by her husband.

The Atkinsons lived in Rhode Island, where their third child, Nelson Atkinson, was born. Another son born in Rhode Island was Samuel. After the family moved to Wisconsin, they had two more children, Byron and Eunice.

The family then settled in Nebraska. By 1857, when Nebraska was still a territory, they moved to Rock Creek, west of Greenwood and erected a saw mill.

Reference: Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery: The Lives of Those Interred, fourth edition, edited by Rose Anne Hockstra

Kearney Cemetery records on line

Kudos to the city of Kearney, Nebraska for putting a detailed listing of interment records from Kearney Cemetery online!


The table of records (alphabetized by last name) includes the following fields:

• Name of deceased
• Late address (that's what the header says, I think it means LAST address)
• Interred on Lot Number
• Space
• Field
• Date of Death
• Date of Interment
• Age in Years, (Months, Days)
• Cause of Death
• Lot Owned By
• Owner's Last Address
• Remarks (mainly name of mortuary); some dates of birth

City of Kearney Nebraska - Kearney Cemetery interments

Who would have ever thought I'd find a treasure like this while channel surfing in my Kearney motel room last night? You never know what's going to show up on those public access channels!

Tombstone Tuesday - Nelson Atkinson - Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery

Nelson Atkinson
Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery - Greenwood, Nebraska

This is the first of my Tombstone Tuesdays featuring interments from Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery, north of Greenwood, Nebraska. Click here for my original post about this cemetery.

As I mentioned in my original blog post, none of those interred at this cemetery are my direct line ancestors, but many are what I call shirttail kin. Nelson Atkinson is one of those people, whose relationship to me is that he was the brother-in-law of my great grand aunt. You can't get more shirttail than that!

Nelson Atkinson was born in Rhode Island on June 20, 1841. He died June 20, 1869. According to the book, Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery: The Lives of Those Interred edited by Rose Anne Hockstra, Nelson operated a mill on Rock Creek, west of Greenwood. The book states, "There was a flood on June 20, 1869, and Nelson jumped into the water to try to dislodge a log jam. His brother Byde tried to jump in to save him, but he was held back by the other men there." Nelson left behind his widow, Lydia, and two daughters, Elcina and Matilda. A son, Nelson Jr., was born two months after his father's death. Lydia returned to Wisconsin, married and gave birth to eight more children. (source: Sheffer book).

Nelson's death is documented in the U.S. Federal Census Mortality Schedule of persons who died during the year ending June 1, 1870. He died at the age of 28 from drowning in Lancaster county, Nebraska.

Nelson was the son of John Atkinson and Ann Grunshaw.

Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery - Greenwood, Nebraska

For several months, I've wanted to take a field trip to Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery, which is about halfway between Greenwood, Nebraska and Ashland, Nebraska in Cass county.

Entrance to Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery
Greenwood, Nebraska

Directions: Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery is located halfway between Greenwood, Nebraska and Ashland, Nebraska. From Highway 6, turn north on 226th Street. Cross the railroad tracks and go about one mile to Country Club Road. The cemetery is located at the end of the minimum maintainance road beyond a private farm residence.

It had probably been about 25 years since I last visited the cemetery with "cousin" Joy Deal Lehmann when she was researching her book on the Landon family, which included a marital connection to the Loder family.

The cemetery had not yet been included in the FindaGrave.com site. Since it is a cemetery with historical significance and the resting place of many of the early pioneers of the area, I wanted this cemetery to be included on that site. So a few months ago I set up the cemetery on FindaGrave.com and began entering the interments that had previously been documented in other sources, most notably the fourth edition of Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery the Lives of Those Interred edited by Rose Anne Hockstra.

The information in that book was originally compiled by Mabel G. Laughlin in 1939 and later updates were made in 1967 and 1978 by Ethel M. Buck. The book was published by the Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery Association.

Descendants of those pioneers still meet at the cemetery for an annual picnic, something they have done for many decades.

I can't say that I've come across any other cemeteries that have an adjacent picnic area, but I can certainly visualize these tables with plastic red and white table cloths, with fried chicken, potato salad, devilled eggs, iced tea and cherry pie waiting for the descendants as they come to celebrate their ancestors each year.

Yesterday seemed like a good day to take a field trip to this remote location, so I recruited some assistance from a long time friend to go with me. And I was glad that I did! Having been raised on a farm, she easily spotted any poison ivy and other flora that might prove dangerous. So I tiptoed behind her as I took photographs of the graves that still had readable inscriptions. A couple of the smaller stones were located in too much overgrowth for me to want to get any closer. I love cemeteries, but I do not like snakes, critters, anything that stings or a plant that might make me itch. I did the best I could within my comfort zone! There are just over 80 interments, and my camera captured those stones that were accessible. There were a few that had no visible inscriptions, another had either fallen or been set down after it could no longer hold itself erect. But once we had walked the small cemetery, I felt that I had done the best I could under the circumstances.

I have no direct ancestral line buried at this cemetery, but many of those pioneers who are interred intersect with some of my distant kin through marriage - the Loders, Laughlins, Colemans and Atkinsons all have a place in my family tree, distant though it may be.

I will continue to document interments at Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery on FindaGrave.com and feature many of the tombstone photos on this blog on Tombstone Tuesdays. I'm optimistic that all of the interments will be included fairly soon. I'm committed to this little project, and with such a small cemetery, it shouldn't take too long. I hope blog readers will enjoy the tombstone photographs from Sheffer Pioneer Cemetery in the coming months.

Follow Friday: Debra J. Richardson's Stoned

I'm pleased to recommend Debra J. Richardson's Stoned web site this week. She features one of my favorite aspects of genealogy research - cemeteries and gravestones.

Her photographs are works of art as her lens captures the unique artistry of gravestone sculpture.

Angels, hands, iconic symbolism - all are captured here.

Take some time and look around. You'll be glad you did.