Julie, from Courthouse Square, happened to stop by during our meeting and we talked about the Maple Hill Cemetery Tour they had, where they had High School kids play the parts of people during the year. They are going to do that again next year (for Maple Hill) with a Civil War theme. We talked about how something like this might be an idea for the Woodlawn cemetery (Vermontville), especially if Al & Tina complete their project of documenting the burials there next year. Just something for us to think about for next year.
Jerry brought in lots of good stuff! He has done some really nice panoramic photos of Pioneer Cemetery and Union/Partlow/Johnson Cemetery and he will end up with Information files for our website Cemetery page. He delivered the Oakwood Oneida cemetery photos on dvds. He is still working on details of the index reading. He brought photos for the Symbols project too.
We discussed taking photos, such as the best time of day most times seems to be the early afternoon (although some of us go whenever we can and just have to make the best of it) and how we sometimes take multiple photos of large monument type stones; one that shows the whole stone and/or maybe even a whole set of family stones, and another that shows a closeup of the information.
We talked about the items of information we want to see in an index. We always want to see the name, date of birth (if available from stone), date of death (usually on the stone) and whatever information is included on the stone along with any types of flags that may be there, such as veteran flags. This makes a good reading! If there is information on a Lot and/or Section number, this would be great to include. I like to keep track of the names that have a photo. With some cemeteries, we have kept track of the headstones by row, and by headstone within the row. Some folks like to do further research, or perhaps know from their own family history, and they can use another column to note this information and cite the source, such as parents, maiden name, etc. Everyone decides how much they can do and whatever is included with an index when it is delivered to me will be printed as is.
If possible, I like to include records from a previous reading on a new reading where we did not find a headstone to photograph. A stone may have been readable in a prior reading, where it is not now. I note in my Information column that the record is from a prior record.
Sue & I spent the day today at Eaton Rapids City Hall and took photos of the burial record books for Rosehill and some death record books for the early 1900s.
Al, from Woodlawn, reported that he received boxes of old records from the Sexton with some records over a hundred years old! There are meeting minutes that can tell a story (for example) of burials (and/or stones?) that were moved from Vermontville Pioneer cemetery to Woodlawn. There is the original paperwork of the steps they took to purchase the land for the cemetery and who the original shareholders were. There are old burial transfer records. What a find!!!! Al is working on scanning all of the information and will be sharing it with the Vermontville library and with us.
At our regular member meeting last week, Bob Strobel shared some photos of a new sign he had made for Skinner Cemetery. I've put these on our website at:
http://www.miegs.org/CemeteryInfo/SkinnerInfo.pdf.If anyone knows any history about this cemetery, please let us know!
I gave everyone a copy of the Cemetery Project Guidelines that we had come up with in 2007. I asked them to take them home and jot any notes they might have about guidelines and when we next meet in April, we will start off by going thru these and seeing if we would like to make any changes. Perhaps we can think of some things to work on next year and/or come up with some types of goals we may want to try and meet. I would welcome some ideas from people about what you would like to discuss at our meetings. I feel like even if I don't have much of an agenda, we always have such a nice meeting and come away learning something, no matter how small of a detail.
I have probably forgotten something from our meeting... let me know if you remember something I don't have here. (Thanks!)
Even though we will not be meeting in the next few months, everyone is free to contact me with any questions or comments!
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