Another story about bones: Last year about this time, my cousin and I were planning a trip to Europe -- Germany and Austria were our focus since we believed at that time that our gggrandfather and family may have been from Austria. We were trying to find out all we could about traveling in those two countries. One evening I was watching our local (Houston, Texas) PBS station and caught an hour-long travel show called "Rick Steves, Travels in Europe''. The focus of this particular episode was Austria so I watched, anxious to find out all I could about the country. Featured was a small town just off the beaten path between Salzburg and Vienna (I don't recall the name of the town) with a tiny church and cemetery. Apparently the cemetery was so small that the bones were kept in the graves for only a short time (12 years, if memory serves me), and were then taken out of the grave, cleaned off and placed in a small chapel. The chapel was shown and there were bones stacked against the walls and under the altar in a very organized manner -- all the leg bones under the alter looked like cords of wood stacked up. On top of the altar were the skulls of the departed -- decorated lovingly by family members -- and each skull had a name painted on it. The first skull that came into focus was that of Josef Steiner -- THE NAME OF MY GGGGRANDFATHER!! Chills went through me!! I was very moved by the sight of these skulls and bones -- and especially by seeing my ancestor's name on one of them! As it turns out, it was NOT my ggggrandfather's skull, but the coincidence was astounding! My cousin and I did visit Germany and Austria in May of this year and saw in Saltzburg a beautiful cemetery with many graves where multiple persons have been buried per grave. This is the cemetery that was featured in 'The Sound of Music' and is a lovely place. The graves are very small -- about 2 x 3 feet -- and are miniature flower gardens with beautiful crosses and other decorations on them. Our guide told us that there is one grave per family and when a person dies, the top of the family grave (where the flowers and other decorations are) is removed, the person's remains are placed in the grave -- on top of the ones already there -- and the grave is closed. After the grave 'settles', the decorations and flowers are placed again on top of the grave. There was nothing mentioned about the bones being removed from these graves, however, so perhaps that is a local custom as is the burial of one person on top of the other in Salzburg. Regards, Jayne