First of all these are for CATHOLIC CEMETERIES in and around St. Louis, not all of them are included. Secondly just because a cemetery is named a St. Something or Holy Something doesn't mean it is a Catholic Cemetery. Third, the St. Louis Diocese does not own all the Catholic Cemeteries in St. Louis, some are owned by the individual parishes. The CD is basically set up for Alphabetic Searching by Surname. The output columns are: SURNAME GIVEN NAME(s) CODE (Code for Cemetery name for example C01 is Calvary, ST is Sts Peter & Paul, R is Resurrection BORN (if this was found) DIED/BURIED DATE AGE This CD contains basically 3 types of cemetery records: 1. Records from the cemetery records, (these for the most part are the Archdiocese owned cemeteries) 2. Surveys done by volunteers walking and copying tombstone data, (it is estimated that only 60% of the burials in any given cemetery have tombstones. In other words if you rely on these surveys you may not find your person of interest, you will still need to go to the actual records. 3. A combination of the above two. SURNAME: 1. You can search by surname of the person. This can get a bit tricky. For example my great grandmother has a tombstone which has her surname as CASSIDY (her first husband), however when she died she was married a 2nd time and the office records have her listed as WALKER. 2. There are a massive number of surnames that are misspelled. I did a lookup for a person on an 6 grave lot which contained 10 burials. The name was rather unusual and of the 8 burials with the same surname only two were spelled the same, and they were wrong. 3. I did another lookup for a person, different cemetery, she claimed that the office told her that they had no record, she stated that she knew they had been buried there she had photos and had visited the graves. I finally found them she had the name spelled incorrectly. 4. This is a straight alphabetic search, not soundex. GIVEN NAMES 1. Same as above. 2. If you do a tombstone search you will frequently find "Nick" names used. My mother is buried in Walnut Hill, her tombstone reads FERN, the office record reads ESTELLE F. 3. If this is a tombstone survey the you may only find the person listed as MOTHER or FATHER CODE The individual cemeteries are coded. BORN Chances are when you see this the cemetery has been tombstone surveyed. DIED/BURIED Date of Death probably came off of a tombstone Buried Date, probably came off the office records/ AGE Age at time of death, could be from office record or tombstone. Over all it is fairly good, however you will still have to check with the office to get the information on what section and lot the persons are buried in. This is the most important bit of information and it is missing. I haven't had the chance to closely check the St. Louis Catholic Cemetery Site to see if it covers all the same cemeteries, but from my initial check I think you will need both the CD and the St. Louis Web Site to get the whole picture. Since the CD may have some cemeteries that the Web Site does not. One of the biggest advantages to the WEB site is that you can check nearby burials. Finally, you must remember that both the Site and the CD are nothing more than a TOOL, they are not perfect and they do, both of them contain errors. Bill Buchholz Some Data on cemeteries and funeral homes <http://genealogyinstlouis.accessgenealogy.com/buchholz.htm> Surnames of Interest: BUCHHOLZ anywhere -BECKMANN-CASSIDY-DeL0NJAY-DREES-MOSBACHER-NENTWIG-NEUTZLER-PONCOT-RENSIN G-STAUDER-STIEFFERMANN ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.