Hi Gail! Remember me? - from Oscar Laurila's second wife's side. Tilda was my grandmother's sister. We were in touch a lot a few years ago sharing our information. Your letter about the cemetery now reminded me of calls I received from the cemetery from my daughter and daughter-in-law a few years ago! They were walking around, stumbling in and out of graves as you mentioned, talking to me on their cell phones for direction on how to find my grandmother's grave! The graves must have sunk even more since we were there in 1987. Remember how you were going to help me in getting a stone for her grave? Well, they found, from records at the library, that someone else, an unrelated male, was buried in that grave a few years before my grandmother's burial, so now we don't know for sure which record is right, or if two people from different families are buried there! Do you have any knowledge of this being done back in the early 1900's? I would like to follow up on that and see if we can determine if my grandmother really is in that grave (Emma Rapakko - d. Feb. 1907). I wonder if they could be of more help with this at the library or where else I could find this information? Regarding the project you are speaking of - what an undertaking that would be! If the funds were raised, are there enough interested, able-bodied people in Leadville to carry it through? It would be wonderful to restore and preserve the area as much as possible. I'm still in Minnesota - are you still in Arizona? If you will write me at my email address and send yours, I'd appreciate it and wouldn't take up this forum with personal details. Do keep us posted here, however, on any ideas for a cemetery project. I wish I were there to help! My best, Carole Johnson At 09:56 PM 9/18/2010, you wrote: >On my way home to Nathrop from Copper Mt., it was such a beautiful day. In >the mid 60's in Leadville and hardly a cloud in the sky and the color of the >Aspens was awesome. I decided to stop off at the cemetery, there is never >an end to that cemetery... and stumbled in and out of sunken graves and got >down and dug to unearth some stones. I have sat here this afternoon and >evening blowing up and pulling back trying to figure out names on these >stones. I found some stones that aren't listed in the cemetery records that >the library has and I found some stones that the cemetery records say there >isn't a marker. > >Lingren from Sweden, one stone the man was from Norway, another the Dr. was >from Germany so I went and looked and that area that he was from is now in >SW Poland. I found some missing Civil War Vets and some Woodman stones. >The Civil War Vets stones are deteriorating very fast and hope that we can >get them replaced. > >It is a shame that what looks like the stones sinking, which I am sure some >of them are, but I also think the forest floor is covering the stones. Wish >we could have a huge fund raiser and get in there and repair all the broken >stones and fill in all the sunken graves.. knee deep to higher.. take the >stones and cover them so we can get a name off them and then replace the >stone. Those stones have huge pores that chalk would stay in the groves and >breaks in the stone and I am afraid would make matters worse. I used chalk >on a CW Vet's marker in AZ, sure the rain will wash it away... bet me... two >years and every time I went there I still saw the damage that I did to that >stone and I apologized to the vet and finally got the VA to get him a new >stone. I wanted today to chalk up a lot of stones but was afraid to do >it. The info is still on the stones if there was a way to bring it up. >Then out of the clear blue is a little wooden maker with the name etched in >the wood just as visible as could be and I think it was a still born child >born in 1904 and the wood was very legible. > >I will try and get back up there this week if the weather holds and spend >some time with pen and paper, which I did not have today to make notes and a >spray bottle with water in it. > >Should call a day in Leadville to meet and hit that forgotten area and see >how much we can get transcribed and photographed. > >Any ideas... I am open for suggestions... > >-- >Tschüß, >Gail > >Have some fun, join "Trails to the Past" at http://trailstothepast.org > Check out our new Genealogy Project!! > >http://trailstothepast.org