Saturday, August 17, 2013

She's Baaaaaack!

It has been well over a year since my last post. It's not that I left behind my love for genealogy. Quite the contrary, I've made exciting discoveries and met many new family and friends, and even made plans to travel to Sweden next summer! It's just... Well... I Stopped writing about it. So I guess I suck at blogging. Please forgive me. I will try to do better.


But after a year, so much has happened, I don't know where to start.

   I suppose I will explain my current obsession, although I have a feeling I may turn it I to a blog of its own.

   Remember that app that I reviewed? In a previous post? Over a year ago? (You can go back and look now, I will wait.........)
            Yes! The billiongraves one! Well I love it. Now everywhere I go I am looking for a cemetery to register or upload. I've racked up quite a collection of photos.... Almost 4,000. Yup. 4,000.... Random...dead people. *shrug* I have no defense.

          Anyway, there is a cemetery in our city that is a pretty historical one. I have fallen in love with it. It is in the middle of the city, but set apart with its hills, rivers and 100+ year Oak trees. And Indian burial mounds. Mmhmm.
          I began to go there and upload other peoples' dead people. I went into the office one day to ask for a map of plots so I can check them off as I go, and I was greeted by the cemetery manager, Steve, who happens to be a friend from church. His first question? "Is everything...okay?" . Lol. After I told him why I was there the floodgates opened, and I realized I had found someone who loves this place much much more than I do. And, lucky me, he took me for a short tour around the cemetery sharing a TINY piece of the history it has, with me. And I was honored.  I learned a lot...I learned that probably 30-40,000 people are buried there. This is where everyone who was ever anyone in this city, and everyone who lived the average joe life in this city was buried. Plus a circus man who was killed by his elephant when the train stopped in our city... But I digress....
     I made a goal to upload the ENTIRE cemetery. Steve printed out all 35 sections of the cemetery for me to knock off one by one. I realized as I started that the names in this cemetery are names I've come across my whole life and never knew the back-story. I was unknowingly uploading first Mayors,  Revolutionary War veterans. Abraham Lincoln's photographer. And I'm thinking to myself, Besides the place being hauntingly peaceful and beautiful, there is a LOAD of history here!
     After seeing an interesting epitaph on a headstone, just out of curiosity I began to research the name. And I found the person, and their back-story, and began to see the relation of all the different surnames that were buried around her, and I thought, this is, well,  awesome. And it's someones family. And then, the idea to make a blog on this very special cemetery was born. It would be a place of history for our city, a place of information for other genealogers, if that's actually a word, and a place to fascinate me.

   Yes, I know. I haven't even kept up on this blog.... Get over it. ;) I'm ambitious. And i have a few little kids. and i try. Lol. I'm not making any promises and it may be slow going, but, it's a goal.
  And in the mean time I will find a place in my work to begin catching up on all the treasures and stories I have been blessed with, in my own family stalking over this past year, and leave them here, for you.

          Nice to see you again. :)
                -Dani