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From: John Ruch <>
Subject: [OHWASH] Re:Unmarked graves
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 10:08:47 -0400
References: <200009151223.e8FCNkl11788@lists3.rootsweb.com>


My congratuations to Linda on her new post and thanks again for all your work in giving us so much cemetery information.

About the unmarked graves message: It's a good (if discouraging) point. I have relatives who died within the past 30 years who lie in unmarked graves in Rockland Cemetery, Belpre, Ohio. My mother and older family members
know where the graves are, but because of lack of money or whatever, some plots are not marked. She and other relatives are trying to place markers as funds are available. If this situation occurred a hundred years ago,
some graves no doubt remained unmarked and eventually, their location, or even knowledge of their existence, would have been lost.

Also, we were discussing Quaker gravestones the other night with my husband (a birthright Quaker) and other family members and I learned that Quakers sometimes did not mark graves at all. If minutes of the Quaker
meeting/cemetery were later lost, there would be no record of grave locations.

And remember that some rural families had their own burial plots on isolated farms. These can be impossible to detect unless you know from older relatives, for example, that they exist. Even then, it can be an adventure
getting to them, involving snakes, poison ivy and other obstacles.

Then there's the problem of old gravestones being moved or destroyed. We belong to a preservation organization that owns two 19th century cemeteries. One is easy to maintain because it contains the graves of 100 members
of the Christian communal Harmony Society that stressed equality to the point of not marking any graves. The second is a Mennonite cemetery filled with old stones. We mow around the stones these days, but have learned
that in the past, caretakers removed broken or fallen stones. We've done our best to catalog this cemetery, but today's list doesn't match up with surveys done just 30 or so years ago because of misplaced markers.

So...just because you don't find a gravestone doesn't mean your ancestor isn't there.

Shelby Miller Ruch Researching THOMAS & CAROLINE BARTLETT WALKER & DAUGHTERS ALLEY
& ROSA, PORTLAND, OHIO 1860s, BARTLETT, FELKER, CLARK, MCCARL, SANDERS, RUTAN, SKEEN, ROBERTS, ALLEN, ALLARD, BARROWS, MILLER, PLACE, JOHNSON, WALKER, CODY, BICKFORD, WILCOXON, FRYE, HICKMAN, COE, RAWSON, MOREHEAD, JETT

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