It is good to see the strong support for preserving local cemeteries. After all, we genealogists love to "hang out" at such places! It is also appropriate to defend a trustee who has tried to be faithful to one of the responsibilities of the office, assuming that contracts are let with due consideration, as appropriate, to competitive bidding and so forth. I had been working with the trustee of a Boone County (IN) township to hopefully restore a fairly large country cemetery (no longer associated with a church), but I was not successful. On the other hand, I have heard of an apparently strong volunteer effort that was recently undertaken to restore the Howards Cemetery, near Fayette, Indiana. It involved the local 4-H club and other volunteers, some with experience in protecting, cleaning and resetting grave markers. My personal view is that local cemetery preservation should be left to the local governments and volunteers and not, somehow, use Federal funding. I don't think the fact that someone in government (as raised in one post) is playing basketball to stay in shape, or whatever, is on point for this issue! That should be a Hoosier-approved activity :~)) The work of local volunteers in various preservation efforts is certainly commendable, and if my trustee proposes a local tax to help with preservation work, I will vote for the tax. I am also glad that the State passed the requisite laws to give trustees this responsibility. As for Federal and other governmental jurisdictions, I am just very grateful that the National Archives has done such a wonderful job in preserving and making available invaluable sources such as census and military records, and for the work by local governments to preserve land and probate records and more. Vernon Threlkeld

On 1/25/2011 8:09 PM, ThrelkeldStein wrote: > It involved the local 4-H club > and other volunteers, some with experience in protecting, cleaning and > resetting grave markers. Our local "Pioneer Cemetery" has stone resetting down to a science. They push the stones over backwards, bury them face up, and MOW over them. Jeff -- Jeffery Scism, IBSSG Doing nothing now means that there is nothing to be done about it later.