My Obsession With Cemeteries

What do you call a person obsessed with cemeteries or graveyards? That's easy ... a GENEALOGIST. I can spot cemeteries a mile away and sometimes think chopped down tree trunks are gravestones and imagine fallen tree trunks will lead to a mysterious graveyard in the woods. Yes, the imagination takes over.

On the constant lookout for cemeteries, I have been known to go out of the way to locate them, altering my schedule to the point I have to speed to arrive to my destination on time. After spending hours looking for an old, nearly abandoned cemetery, I was startled to see that it was under lock and key. A few graves within the site were old and I was not about to leave without getting closer to them. Tossing my camera gently over the fence, I discovered a spot near the gate that was low and I began crawling into the cemetery. It had rained the night before. The first push I gave through the mud I remember that I was wearing white slacks. Fortunately they came clean. I got my "high" for the day and took photographs of the stones. All in a day's work!

Have you ever been stalked in a cemetery? It can happen and especially if somebody wonders what you are doing or if you are alone in a cemetery. A few years ago I was enjoying my lunch in a cemetery when I realized there was a Nebraska, dirt-spitting, rip-roaring truck going up and down a road along the perimeter of the cemetery. Same truck, over and over, back and forth. Two young men in it kept watching me. Just as I got out to deposit my lunch remains in the dumpster, they were heading pell-mell through the cemetery at me. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. Holding it in front of me and pointing to it, I drew it to my ear while watching them. They abruptly stopped and backed out of the cemetery, never to return again unless perhaps to bury one of their friends. Incidentally there was no cell phone signal in the cemetery!

Genealogists never stop when it comes to cemeteries. Three years ago, two of my friends and I decided to spend a crisp November day in search of abandoned, hard to locate cemeteries in this area. We packed our lunches and could hardly wait to set out in exploration of what was bound to reveal interesting tombstones in strange places. We discovered the tombstone of a young child in a flat field of corn rows. The current farmer and those before him have plowed and planted around the stone, leaving it standing in isolation for over one hundred years.

Next we discovered a few stones on top of a hill ... yes we have hills here in the Platte River Valley. Once at the top of the hill, we were not only short of breath, but breathless from the view of the valley below. For miles we could see the meandering South Platte River and could envision pioneers in their wagons, riding horses and walking thousands of miles westward. Many never made it and from that vantage point I mused on the many unmarked graves along the route.

As the sun was going down we decided, with some speedy maneuvering, we could visit one more cemetery. It was surrounded with a fence and the farmer had recently picked the corn around it. There were several graves and some were rather unusual. It was getting dark and soon even darker. One of my friends produced a small flashlight. A dim light, but better than nothing! While they struggled with the gate, I managed to return to our vehicle. About that time a corn picker in a truck came along, stopped and offered to help. That's sort of a Nebraska thing ... they either stalk you or they help you!

The other day my granddaughter and I gave a demonstration to friends on how to witch for graves. She makes it look like child's play and often grabs people's attention while witching. Some people just don't get the hang of it. Maybe they have blocked, non-believing minds. That's okay as we witch enough for everybody. Imagine walking two-thirds of a sandy, prairie-dog infested pasture before finding the place of a child's burial. We aren't nuts, just close to it!

My granddaughter says that cemeteries are peaceful and not spooky. When you visit a cemetery it has a different appearance. The stones brushed by snow, covered by red and gold leaves, surrounded by wild flowers and dripping in the summer rain, all add to the comfort and serenity of death. They rest there, but their souls are with the ageless.

You Go Genealogy Girl #1 .... Ruby (look for me in the graveyard!)

Mt. Rushmore Guards Their Souls...part 2

Our recent trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota took us on a side trip to find some old cemeteries that still exist today but were a large part of the early frontier days of the Black Hills. The second one we visited on this trip was the Mt. View Cemetery located in the active mining and now tourist town of Keystone, S. D. This cemetery, while quite small for the amount of years it has existed is probably one of the most unique that we have visited. The varied history of the community it serves gives this scenic little cemetery a proud and unique character, one which also by it's serene location seems to command one to view the final resting place of it's inhabitants with silence and reverence. Established long before the construction of nearby Mt. Rushmore, it is, none the less, protected by night and day as the granite stone "faces" of Mt. Rushmore stand guard over all the souls who are resting there. It is the only cemetery in the world with a view of Mt. Rushmore.

To imagine what the lives were like for many who are buried here, one must learn about the history of this unique area of the Black Hills. Mining in the area dates back to around 1876 with the discovery of placer gold along nearby Battle Creek. Several small settlements sprung up in the area until 1883 when the Harney Peak Hydraulic Gold Mining Company was organized to mine the area which was later to become known as Keystone. Also in 1883, the Etta Mine which was rich in mica was opened and soon the area began to produce tin oxide which was in great demand. The town was officially platted in 1891 and named after the Keystone Mine. In 1894 a rich ledge of gold producing quartz was discovered and named The Holy Terror mine after one of the miners wives! The Holy Terror mine became one of the richest gold producers in the country. Gold, mica, feldspar, tin oxide, quartz, many other minerals and even arsenic played rolls in the success and even the later failure of the economy. Early in 1900, the narrow guage railroad reached Keystone which encouraged further development of many of the mines and later was used to haul goods and equipment into Keystone to aid in the carving of Mt. Rushmore which was started in 1927. Many local men and miners were often employed in the construction of Mt. Rushmore as the wages were good in a time that mining had started to decline. During WWII, minerals from the mines near Keystone were in great demand and used in production of war goods.

Keystone had a varied and checkered past during the years of miners and saloons and the small community has seen many ups and downs since the turn of the twentieth century. Clashes over claims, serious mining accidents, several early fires which destroyed the town, and floods have claimed many lives in the area of Keystone. The devastating flood of 1972 destroyed again a large part of the business district which had been resurrected over the years to become a premier tourist area and also took out most of the original railroad tracks into the community. Loss of life in the Black Hills area was substantial and Keystone was hit hard..again.

Many times over the last century, the Keystone town and community has rebuilt- each time it has gotten bigger and better. The lumber industry, some mining, and most of all the tourists have kept this little city alive. As a kid who frequented Keystone in the 1950's and has visited many times over the years, I have watched the old town grow. Once it was a sleepy, small tourist town with wonderful little shops and now has grown all the way through the valley in all directions. Top name hotels now scavenge for land to build on, spreading into the small fingers of the valley. Beautiful eateries, shops and museums line the once again busy streets. The whistle of the 1880 Train can be heard through the valley as it stops close to the town of Keystone. The ever present Mt. Rushmore watches over the daily life.

All the while that the town of Keystone has lain beneath her, the Mountain view cemetery has taken in the inhabitants of this proud little town. An infant girl which was relocated from an old cemetery downstream was the first burial here in 1900. The older Harney Cemetery was abandoned and reclaimed by "Mother Nature".
Mountain View cemetery also is one which has seemed to reflect the history of the area with its often stylish old headstones... and beautiful handmade monuments. Several well known historical figures are interred there. Many more photos that we took in the cemetery can found here and they are as varied and unique as is the area's history.

The day we visited, we stood and marveled at the stone of Zeke Valdez, which is pictured above, it showed us that he was a worker on the construction of Mt. Rushmore. A week after our trip to Keystone was my 40th class reunion in Alliance, Nebraska. One of my classmates and friend who happens to live in Hill City, S. D. was attending with her husband. Oddly, we happened to start talking to them about our recent trip to the Hills and about visiting the old cemeteries. The stone of Zeke Valdez came up when I mentioned the unique engraving on it and it turns out that Zeke was the uncle of my friend's husband. His family has been in the Black Hills for generations and several of his relatives (including the Grover and Valdez names) are buried in the small cemetery at Keystone. How truly small this old world is! His family's pride will mark his uncle's resting place for eternity.

The little Mountain View cemetery high above Keystone is certainly a beautiful little known gem in the otherwise hurried and bustling tourist community in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

(photo link: Keystone, S. D. cemetery pics)
(photo link: Hill City, S.D. cemetery pics)
(link to part 1 of this set: "Resting in Forested Beauty")

You Go Genealogy Girl #2 --Cheri

Resting In Forested Beauty...part1

Camping in the wonderful outdoors usually conjures up thoughts of fun, relaxation, fireside cookouts and wild life. My family is no different than most others as we love all those things and spend as much time as possible in the summer seeking the solace of those beautiful forest settings. During part of our recent vacation, my husband and I had been perfectly content to lounge around camp and get caught up on our reading which had gotten too far behind. The afternoon of the fifth day was very quiet, as the camp had nearly been vacated of the last of the before school travelers. We were discussing taking a short drive and a picnic, but where to go? We had frequented our favorite camp site in the Black Hills of South Dakota for many years, knew nearly every back road and were not in any mood to visit Deadwood or other tourist filled streets in the Hills. There were only a few places which we had not yet visited over the years. At the same time as I was thinking of suggesting it, "Go Hubby" asked if I would like to visit a cemetery. Boy, did I! We could think of two which were very near where we were camping and we could have our picnic while out for the drive.

We headed down the road towards Hill City, just 13 miles away. Hill City is the oldest existing city in the Pennington County area of the Black Hills. It is part of the original lands of the Lakota Sioux. In 1874 when then Major General George Armstrong Custer led his famous expedition to the Black Hills area, gold was discovered along French Creek which lies just south of Hill City. By 1876 the Hill City area (called Hillyo) was being settled by miners who came first for gold and then to mine tin. During the early years of the Harney Peak Tin Mining, Milling, and Manufacturing Company, Hill City was quite the rowdy town with many saloons lining the streets. Over the first few decades the city had many ups and downs mostly due to fluctuations in the mining business. Population counts varied from year to year.

As a child during the 1950's, my family spent nearly every summer around the Hill City area and the town itself seemed like a second home to me. Mom and I would wander the little two block long main street looking in the few souvenir store windows. It was a fairly quiet little city during those years.We bought our groceries at the corner grocery store which in later years closed and became a biking and climbing shop and I spent countless hours watching chipmunks run in their little wheel at a corner gas station which has been replaced by a new modern tourist stop. Time has certainly changed Hill City as it has blossomed into a first class "artist's" center and tourist stop. It has now expanded its business district to cover many more blocks and the famous Black Hills Central Railroad 1880 train has helped the city to thrive since the late 1950's. Through the years of early settlement, mining, the timber industry and tourism, the Hill City Cemetery has overlooked the little community from far atop a hill to the NW of the town. Many times we had passed the cemetery as we headed to Deerfield Lake for a day of fishing but the cemetery was one place we had never stopped to see.

As my husband and I located and strolled the cemetery a couple weeks ago, I was at first surprised to see the wide variety of tombstones and markers, but in retrospect, they seem to mirror the history of the town. There are simple stones, elaborate memorials that reflect the one time residents who may have had made money in the mining business, and unusual homemade headstones. Many babies are buried there, telling the story of the hardships and difficult living of the early settlers to the area. I believe the cemetery is a perfect reflection of the community that it serves. The Hill City cemetery is certainly a place of solitude and seems to be filled with the voices of those from the distant past. Those that rest on the hill are surrounded by the forested beauty of the Black Hills.

I have added a few interesting photos of the Hill City cemetery here .

Photos of our visit to the well hidden Mountain View Cemetery in the historic mining town of Keystone, South Dakota can be found here. The follow up article about Keystone and the Mountain View cemetery,"Mt Rushmore Guards Their Souls" can be found here.

You Go Genealogy Girl #2- Cheri

A Day At The Museum: Genealogy Style

The past Saturday was our long awaited day to have some fun in the park and tour some great Nebraska museums. The You Go Genealogy Girls were the hosts for "A Day At The Museums" in Alliance Nebraska. Since we both belong to the genealogy society in North Platte, Nebraska and I live in Alliance, Nebraska; we thought it would be a nice field trip to bring the genealogy group to Alliance.

You Go Girl came to visit me and we stayed busy for two days beforehand, getting things ready for our picnic meal and planning the tour for our group. We were anxious to get started and looked forward to seeing our friends on Saturday.

Finally the day arrived. We busily gathered all our supplies with the gracious help of my niece and "Go Hubby". Everyone at my house had to work if they wanted lunch! We arrived at the Knight Museum and Sandhills Center at 9 am to set everything up. The museum director was kind enough to let us use the indoor patio facility at the museum when the weather that morning was to exceed 100 degrees! It was very nice and surely did make the long day more bearable. By 10:30 AM our guests had arrived and we were ready to get started. Our group included friends from North Platte and Alliance, with some staff ladies from the museum who very kindly helped out with lunch and our tours.

First stop was a walking tour of the basement, kitchen, storage, and archiving area of the Knight Museum/Sandhills Center. We got a behind-the-scenes tour of their great system for storing all the collectibles and archiving the thousands of family history documents that are housed there. The museum director, Becci Thomas, was very thorough and our group got to see the unique movable shelving systems and see how they integrate into the new museum. The basement tour concluded with a look at the facility's full service kitchen that is used for meetings, weddings, and city celebration parties: all these gatherings can be held on the beautiful indoor patio area that we were using for our gathering that day. Our museum is a complete community facility.

Lunch was next on the agenda! Everything was served buffet style and while the group ate and visited we held our door prize drawings. Several guests went home with small mementos of the day. Immediately after our lunch, the group gathered and split into vehicles for the short drive to the nearby Sallows Military Museum which is part of our overall museum system but housed separately. A few of the genealogists elected to walk the three blocks, passing by our historic city fountain. Once again the director filled everyone in on some of the history of the area and told about the displays in the military museum. That building also houses a small but impressive indoor botanic garden which was an added bonus.

Back to the main museum at 1 PM. There we were introduced to the impressive holdings of genealogical,family history,county histories and vital records which are housed in the gorgeous "Heritage Room" of the Knight Museum/Sandhills Center. The research room was designed and built into our new museum for the purpose of housing those records and anyone is welcome to come and research there. Staff is always on duty to assist patrons and welcomes all visitors to the new facility. From there we journeyed into the new little theater to view a Nebraska Sandhills film which introduced everyone to the main museum. Western Nebraska history from the age of the dinosaur through prairie pioneers, native Americans, soldiers, railroaders and agricultural families is all beautifully represented in the museum. It had been a busy day for everyone but we were not quite finished yet!

Two o'clock brought us all to a museum conference rooms where we were treated to a power point presentation on the new Nebraska Veterans Cemetery at Alliance. The administrator of the facility, Allen Pannell, showed many photos of the project as it has progressed in construction and told about the ways the veterans and their families will be honored. The cemetery is built on part of the land that was once the Alliance Army Air Base. Nearly all the first troops into Normandy during WWII were trained here at this base so it is a special honor for us to have this new facility located here. It is the first Nebraska State Veterans Cemetery. The program was enjoyed by all and we went away with a lot of new knowledge and pride about the cemetery.

A few in attendance took some time to do some research at the days end before the three hour drive back to North Platte. Many said they were surely going to make the trip again and spend more time getting to know the wonderful museum system we have here. The day was long but a lot of fun for all and best of all was that one of the ladies in attendance met a relative that she never knew. Her unknown family had just came to the museum as patrons and in the course of writing a check for a gift shop purchase, our museum director noticed their name as being the same as one of our tour guests. She introduced them and sure enough, they were related and had never met--who knew? That is one of the things that most genealogists dream of! A nice ending to a fun genealogy day in the park.
----------------------------------------------------

My next big outing will be the Family History Expo in Kansas City on July 30-31st. The agenda is available on their website and includes great topics as Southern State researching, Swedish record acquisition, and using Twitter and Facebook. For those who can't attend, we will have daily live updates from the conference--right here!


You Go Genealogy Girl #2, Cheri

Buffalo Chips, Cow Patties...and Such!

Cow patties, buffalo chips and such things. This is literally the kind of "___" that sometimes keeps me awake at night. Sleep...who needs it?

My husband, AKA "Go Hubby", has written a short story which is posted over on my personal genealogy blog: Those Old Memories. You can click here to read "Grandpa's History Lesson". I am thinking that reading and publishing his story about Grandpa and cow patties must be the source of the thoughts that were running around in my brain last night.

Today, I know more about "cow patties" than I ever wanted to. Buffalo chips and cow patties have been used since the days of the pioneers in our country and for hundreds of years before in other cultures. They are gathered, dried and burned for warmth. Many people in India still harvest cow patties for daily use and some bronze artisans burn them because they offer uniform and hotter heat as fire box material. I read an interesting story at Texas Escapes about the Texas chips and patties. If you care to further investigate the history of this subject, please feel free to follow these links to enlightenment! Cow Patties by Mike Cox, and cow-patties-make-good-energy offer different points of view. If you have an afternoon to fritter away, try a Google search on the subject, the images are awesome to say the least. Did you know that chips and patties are dried and crafted into clocks and paperweights? They are also popular items for the playing of cow pattie bingo which often involves betting on the winner and his placement of the smelly surprise. Cow pattie tossing contests still live in the west! How about cow pattie cookies...the recipe may be found here---Yummy!!!

If you are a serious genealogist and cemetery researcher, I am sure you have also encountered a few cow patties, deer droppings and such along with those left by "graveyard rabbits". Alas, the ones left by the real graveyard rabbits, those furry, long eared, four legged types!

Until next time: may your powder stay dry, the sun always shine upon you, the wind be at your back and may your boots stay clean and dry. Don't be discouraged from trekking across fields and cattle watering holes to visit that old abandoned family cemetery. Just buy some taller boots!!!

LOOKING FOR ADALINE

On a recent trip to eastern Nebraska, the YGGGirls made a visit to the quaint old cemetery at Blue Springs, Gage Co., Nebraska. It was a nasty and cold day with high winds but we were determined to find the final resting place of our Great Grandfather as well as some of our Great, Great Grandparents.

We arrived at the beautiful old iron gates of the cemetery which is located about a mile north of the little community of Blue Springs, Nebraska. This cemetery was started in the year 1860 and is the oldest recorded cemetery in the state of Nebraska. There is a great old central building in the middle of the cemetery with an old water pump next to it which made it a very picturesque scene. We could hardly even stand up due to the wind but started out to locate our ancestors. We first found Great Great Grandmother, Mary Eberhart on the west side of the cemetery. By then we were about to freeze out, having only brought sweaters on an extremely cold day, but we pushed onward while trying to not blow over in the wind!

Finally, we discovered the rest of the family who seemed to be all together. Father, Joel Moore and his son Thomas Moore were close together. It seemed natural that Adaline Moore who was the wife of Joel should also be close as we knew she was buried in the same cemetery. No stone for her, that was odd--but as we pondered her whereabouts, we noticed that an area of grass that was next to Joel's stone seemed to appear slightly sunken. Down on hands and knees, we began to probe the area with our hands. Sure enough , it seemed as though Adaline's marker was indeed there. We pulled grass and moved as much dirt as we could by hand in order to bring her marker to light. Both of these people had only the original metal plate markers which had been set in cement many years before. Adaline's had sunken below ground level and become completely overgrown over time.Her first name had been spelled incorrectly on the old metal plate. We cleaned the area out as best we could, knowing that she would surely be covered up again when the first rain came through and washed dirt over the stone. We hoped that at least for a few short weeks that she might "stay in the light of
day".

It was a great day to be able to find our Great Great Grandparents and other family in that beautiful little cemetery. I will visit there again someday but wonder who will look for our "Adaline" in the distant future and again re-discover her final place? We put out flowers, the first to be there to honor our relatives in many, many years and then hurried back to our little red car to turn on the heater and recover from our freezing outing. It was a great discovery for us and soon we were off to yet another cemetery for more research!

LET'S GET ACQUAINTED

Hello! I am sometimes called The Go Girl #1. That's because I'm the oldest and I like to think the wisest. I've been doing genealogical research for more years than I really like to admit. My late husband was very supportive of my interest in genealogy, but I always dreamed of having a genealogy companion who was as passionate about it as I am and who could travel with me. That someone is my sister-in-law, better known as The Go Girl #2. We really are not "girls" anymore, but "grannies". As long as we can, we prefer to be known as girls. My daughter, who blogs at Growing Up Genealogy, is the one who decided we are really Grannies and she likes to write of our escapades as well as her wonderful genealogy related memories.

Cheri, my sister-in-law, and I live over two hundred miles from each other, so communication is by e-mail and telephone. We plan our genealogy outings and trips that way and then make them happen. The little red car from our logo is mine. Go Girl #2 packs it, cramming everything possible into it. After all, we would not want to get somewhere and be without a thing! I think most of it is her "stuff". I have learned to economize because of the air traveling that I do. We have yet to pull a trailer behind or add a roof rack, but give us time. The trunk and back seat is always full.

It will be full to the brim again when I travel to the panhandle of Nebraska to attend the Nebraska State Genealogical Society conference in Scottsbluff the first weekend in May. I'll meet up with Go Girl #2 in Alliance and head to the conference together. Ten days later I return again to Alliance and we will travel to Cheyenne, Wyoming to do research and then go on to Salt Lake City for a week of research. The little red car will be dragging by the time we journey back home the end of May. This is just the beginning of our spring and summer jaunts. We'll keep you posted about new things we discover, where we are doing our research and how much fun we're having doing it.

You Go Genealogy Girl #1, Ruby





Hello again.....This is from Go Girl #2. This will indeed be a busy season for The You Go Genealogy Girls. I was always working full time and during the time that Ruby and I were both younger and busy with families, we could not just take off and go when we wanted. Although circumstances have not always been pleasant that have brought us to this point in life, we are thankful for this time together and it has been great fun for us both so far.

Go Girl #1 has been teacher, companion, driver and even at times the comic relief of the trip. We are both as different as night and day but we have a great time together wherever we go. If we could just get our days and nights in sinc, then we would have it made. I am a night owl and like to read and compute late, she is a morning person, but our mutual love of jelly beans and unraveling a good family mystery keeps us going all hours. We missed a lot of years of not being able to pursue our interests so it is great fun to get out and explore. Explore we do-- museums, cemeteries, libraries, court houses,antique shops, more cemeteries, and even an occassional good eating establishment in order to keep our strength for all that brain work. We have even been known to stop and visit our" living"relatives for short periods of time!

Our children are raised so we are almost as free as birds. Join us in our adventures if you like genealogy, history, or a good laugh now and then. Pour a cup of coffee or tea and relax with us for some fun, some researching tips, and unusual insight into the world of Genealogy.

You Go Genealogy Girl #2, Cheri