This is a pretty common situation. The new people who move to an area have few
connections with the families who have left the area, but have ancestors buried there. In
a lot of areas, the maintenance of the cemetery is the duty of a defunct government
organization, such as the township. Also, many of the smaller cemeteries were located in
poor locations which suffer from flooding or being too close to roadways or other
developments. I'm not giving excuses, just explaining the situation.
I've traveled in the East (Indiana, Ohio, Massachusetts) to visit my ancestor's
graves, and I saw varying degrees of neglect. The stones in Massachussetts were inside
fenced cemeteries with a sign warning that vandals and trespassers will be prosecuted.
Apparently there is a state law. They seemed to be pretty well taken care of... but the
ones in IN and OH were not so nice.
I've gotten a lot of great clues from reading tomb stone inscriptions. I guess the
moral of the story here is:
"If you want to make it easy on your future genealogist descendants, place your
tombstone in a secure location with good cemetery laws."
By the way, the prettiest cemetery I've ever seen in the one where the film star Bruce
Lee and his son Brandon are buried in Seattle. great views of the surrounding scenery and
interesting stones. :-)
Randy Klemme wrote:
It is soapbox time!!!!
I paid a visit this weekend to the Laurel Cemetery in Laurel and was absolutely apalled
(sp?) at what I saw I could not believe....
First off, we were there looking for a stone for a gentleman in Alabama who found his
g-g-g grandfather was buried in the cemetery by way of our list. The cemetery looked like
a hayfield--freshly mowed. It appeared the cemetery gets mowed twice a year, but there
was so much grass debris it was hard to read alot of the stones. Then as we were walking
through we found people buried in an area not kept up and was completely covered with
thistle and weeds and was located in a ravine. There were stacks of broken stones STACKED
on other cement monuments. It was just unbelievable. This is one of the cemeteries that
is TAKEN CARE OF by the county. This cemetery hits home as my g-g-g-grandfather is also
buried there and is a CIVIL WAR veteran. Needless to say I never found the stone for the
gentleman in Alabama and I have never found mine as well. I just do not understand how
people can disgrace our ancestors like this. It just makes everyone
think----------where's the resp!
ect anymore
Randy Klemme
Franklin County
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