[AT] funny..

[Larry Goss]

Nope.  Farmer and I are serious about genealogical research and 
cemetery restoration.  For those of you who are doing this sort of 
work, keep in mind that your local or state genealogy societies may 
be able to give you some pointers on how to do it.  I used to do 
rubbings of old stones to bring out the weathered text.  Now, I take 
high resolution digital photos and enhance them in Photo Shop.  The 
results are a lot quicker and just as readable.  Think in terms of 
probing the cemetery grave sites to locate buried stones and/or to 
check for whether a grave site is occupied.  That is often an 
intevening step prior to repairing the stones themselves.  Genealogy 
societies often take on the task of inventorying and repairing those 
small burial lots that are out in the country and not under 
any "perpetual care" agreements.  New technology is bringing new 
ideas about how to do this work.  Now, besides taking digital photos 
of each location, researchers are taking GPS readings as well so that 
the exact locaton of a burial site can be catalogued.  Once the 
material is put into a computer (digital photo, transcript of 
engraving, GPS coordinates) in PDF format then the whole thing can be 
searched.  FWIW, Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional version will 
allow you to automatically make every file on your computer, system, 
network, etc, infinitely searchable -- whether it is open or not.  
You obviously can't do a search on the visual images, but you can 
search the identifying documentation that accompanies it.  This is a 
function that is built in to the Adobe program.  So if you have 
thousands of documents (diaries, letters, journals) once you have 
them transcribed and stored as PDF files, you can locate any mention 
of a person, event, date, location....  It is an unbelievably 
powerful function.

On Thursday, we were "touring" Union Cemetery in Steubenville, Ohio.  
The weather was ideal, the foliage was spectacular, the deer were 
tame, and we found nearly two dozen gravesites of ancestors.  This is 
a marvelous cemetery.  It is on a par with Pere la Chausse in 
Southeaster Paris where anybody who ever was anybody in Europe is 
buried -- Federic Chopin, Maria Callis, etc.

Larry

On Sat, 28 Oct 2006, John Hall wrote...

>Don't know if you guys are trying to be morbid  with all this 
cemetery talk 
>or just trying to get in the season with Halloween next week, but 
I'll go 
>with the flow. How common was/is it in your neck of the woods to 
have 
>cemeteries on the farm? We used to have 2 farms leased that had 
cemeteries 
>on them. One had a large cemetery on it while there were two smaller 
>cemeterys on the other.
>
> The large cemetry was smack in the middle of a 50 acre field (BIG 
field for 
>my area). It had a stone wall around it. If I remember correctly it 
had 
>filled up on the inside and they had started to bury folks on the 
outside of 
>the wall. Never got off the tractor to check any dates though. We 
farmed 
>practically within a few feet of the cemetery. It was overgrown with 
trees 
>although none of them were huge.
>
>The other farm actually had 3 gravesites come to think about it. One 
was in 
>a field, one was in the woods (tombstones dating to the 50's at this 
site) 
>and another gravesite was discovered when that farm began growing 
its 
>present crop (houses). Guy was clearing a lot in the woods and saw 
something 
>that looked like bone. Got off and checked and he noticed a row of 
mounds. 
>Long story short they had to hire someone to come in and  move that 
>gravesite. Speculation was that is may have been an old slave 
cemetery. 
>Couldn't find any markers except one piece of stone that looked like 
it had 
>a date chiseled in it but it wasn't very legible.
>
>John
>
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Francis Robinson" <robinson at svs.net>
>To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-
tractor.com>
>Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2006 12:16 AM
>Subject: RE: [AT] funny..
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
>> I found a new "need" for a butt buggy today.  I'm tramping through
>> some pretty rough terrain in cemeteries in the upper Ohio valley,
>> and it sure would be nice to have my Jim Dandy (Economy) tractor
>> with me equipped with the dual transmissions and 12.25:1
>> differential to cruise around looking for tombstone inscriptions
>> (genealogy work).  With the sunken graves (no vaults), a super-slow
>> tractor would be a tremendous help.
>>
>> Larry
>>
>>
>> Hi Larry:
>>
>> As it happens I also was out of state tramping cemeteries for the 
last
>> couple of days. I didn't really have the time but the planets 
lined up or
>> something and an opportunity presented its self.  It would have 
taken a
>> good-sized dozer to have gotten through one that I was in this 
morning...
>> Really over-grown...   ;-)    Really sad how little respect people 
have 
>> for
>> those former living breathing souls that came before us and gave 
us the 
>> best
>> of what we have today. I found out yesterday that I need to return 
to one
>> cemetery soon to replace 5 vandalized stones of family members. 
They were
>> damaged since I was there last maybe 4 years ago. They are small 
stones 
>> but
>> it is going to be a bit expensive and it is a 5-hour drive one 
way.  On a
>> brighter note, three small cemeteries that I had not been in 
before were 
>> in
>> nice shape and very well kept.
>> We did once use a tractor in a cemetery. When I was a teen my 
local 4-H
>> club took on the care of a small abandoned cemetery only a quarter 
mile 
>> from
>> the farm. It had so many deeply sunken graves that the club had a 
big load
>> of fill dirt brought in and then I took the John Deere 40C crawler 
in and
>> carefully leveled the whole thing. The club then reseeded it and 
held the
>> mowing contract with the TWP for many years. That was in the 1950s 
and the
>> club got $50 a year for maintaining it. The club is now gone but 
the TWP
>> still pays someone to mow it. It still looks quite nice. I'll bet 
the TWP
>> has to pay a lot more than $50 a year now.   ;-)
>>
>> --
>> "farmer"
>>
>> The brave may not live forever but the easily frightened may never 
live at
>> all.
>>
>> Francis Robinson
>> Central Indiana, USA
>> robinson at svs.net
>>
>> 
>
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