If anyone is interested in the short story of St Johns and the Latest go to; www.rootsweb.com/~inpcrp/Barrenscem.html There are before and after pictures. Judge for yourself if there is a difference Personally I feel like the effort was worth it. But Judge for yourself. Some day you may have to decide your course of action. Jack E. Briles Sr. Floyd Co. PCRP Coordinator Po Box 444 New Albany, Floyd Co. In. 47151-0444 E-mail jb502000@aol.com

A small syntax problem with that URL. It should read: http://www.rootsweb.com/~inpcrp/barrenscem.html Later, - Rich Green Historic Archaeological Research 4338 Hadley Court West Lafayette, IN 47906 Office: (765) 464-8735 Home: (765) 464-8095 http://www.har-indy.com ----- Original Message ----- From: <Jb502000@aol.com> To: <INPCRP-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 10:14 PM Subject: [INPCRP] Latest;St Johns Lutheran, (barrens) > If anyone is interested in the short story of St Johns and the Latest go to; > > www.rootsweb.com/~inpcrp/Barrenscem.html > > There are before and after pictures. Judge for yourself if there is a > difference Personally I feel like the effort was worth it. But Judge for > yourself. Some day you may have to decide your course of action. > > Jack E. Briles Sr. > Floyd Co. PCRP Coordinator > Po Box 444 > New Albany, Floyd Co. In. > 47151-0444 > E-mail jb502000@aol.com > > > ==== INPCRP Mailing List ==== > Blessed are the Elderly, for they remember what we will never know. > >

To all: I have a question on how to interpret the WPA cemetery plats. At first I thought the grid indicated graves, but in examining cemeteries with marked military burials, sometimes two burials are in one square. So we've interpreted the grid of rectangles to indicate overall size, and it is tied to the legend at the bottom of each cemetery, i.e. 1 inch = 20 feet. Now, if you're working from copies which were generated from microfilm, you've lost the actual size of the drawing. On the originals at the State Archives the grid squares are 1 inch (long side) by 1/2 inch (short side). You can easily calculate the size of the cemetery from this, although it's obvious that the WPA survey team was guessing many times. (As we do when we're standing in the middle of a thicket trying to figure out where the edges are.) But it's a start - when you're showing the plat to the neighbors you can at least say that in 1940 someone thought the cemetery was, say, 40 feet by 50 feet. Has anyone else worked with these plats? Are we interpreting them correctly? I find them incredibly valuable when trying to prove the existence of a cemetery which no longer has stones, particularly. And on plats ... the other old record to check for cemetery locations are the assessor plat books at your local courthouse. These are drawings of each section of land, with property boundaries. We have a series on microfilm which were done every four years from 1903 through 1925 - cemeteries are prominently marked on these. Again, for one particular cemetery in this county it's the only formal proof we have that the cemetery existed. Dale Dale Drake Morgan Co History & Genealogy Assn

Dale, Thanks for bringing up the issue of WPA cemetery plats. I have no answers for you on interpretation, except to say that I attempted to use one of these maps, copied from the Indiana State Archives collection, and discovered the cemetery was on the other side of the road from where it should have been on the map. At the time the Redenbaugh cemetery in Montgomery Co was not visible, because cows had broken up the headstones. If one had gone by the map instead of the recollection of life-time residents, the cemetery would never have been found. When graves sites were eventually identified, they had no relationship with the plots, lots, rows, or lines on the WPA map. This cemetery was visible until about the 1950's, so the WPA should have been able to draw graves accurately. I'm working with a second set of WPA cemetery maps. This large cemetery has about 3 small section maps and one large over-all map. When sections overlap, the numbering system for lots does not compare accurately. Roads are shown that never have been created. I don't find a reference in the cemetery records to any discussions the WPA had with cemetery association members. There are no previous maps in the cemetery records, of which I have what appears to be a complete set. So did the WPA go out and map independent of meeting with people in the community? There is some relevance to the way grave sites have been laid out and sold but there are some differences too. Thanks for mentioning the assessor books from the early 1900's. I intend to look these up for additional clues to the boundaries for the second cemetery, where some stones may have been removed from a section or two. Sharon Mills At 09:15 AM 4/5/02, you wrote: >To all: > >I have a question on how to interpret the WPA cemetery plats. At first I >thought the grid indicated graves, but in examining cemeteries with marked >military burials, sometimes two burials are in one square. So we've >interpreted >the grid of rectangles to indicate overall size, and it is tied to the >legend at >the bottom of each cemetery, i.e. 1 inch = 20 feet. > >Now, if you're working from copies which were generated from microfilm, you've >lost the actual size of the drawing. On the originals at the State >Archives the >grid squares are 1 inch (long side) by 1/2 inch (short side). You can easily >calculate the size of the cemetery from this, although it's obvious that >the WPA >survey team was guessing many times. (As we do when we're standing in the >middle of a thicket trying to figure out where the edges are.) But it's a >start >- when you're showing the plat to the neighbors you can at least say that in >1940 someone thought the cemetery was, say, 40 feet by 50 feet. > >Has anyone else worked with these plats? Are we interpreting them >correctly? I >find them incredibly valuable when trying to prove the existence of a cemetery >which no longer has stones, particularly. > >And on plats ... the other old record to check for cemetery locations are the >assessor plat books at your local courthouse. These are drawings of each >section of land, with property boundaries. We have a series on microfilm >which >were done every four years from 1903 through 1925 - cemeteries are prominently >marked on these. Again, for one particular cemetery in this county it's the >only formal proof we have that the cemetery existed. > >Dale > >Dale Drake >Morgan Co History & Genealogy Assn > > > >==== INPCRP Mailing List ==== >Please do not send queries through this list.

Dale, We have the WPA plats for 144 cemeteries that were done in Gibson County in 1939 & 1940, and used these many times to locate old cemeteries. Two main obstacles were that the roads have moved in the last 60 years, and some old reference points and landmarks have changed. Most have been right where they said they were if we could figure out those changes. Sometimes they were not real clear on starting measuring points. One plat had a line and an arrow which indicated 1 3/10 miles from a curve in the road to a point where they measured 475' off the road to the corner of the cemetery. The actual starting point was at the edge of a small town 2/10 mile from the curve, so we were off that far on the starting point. The cemetery was actually 463' from the road, the road much wider and straighter than it was in 1939. In another one, it showed rhe road 75' from the cemetery where the road was actually directly beside the cemetery. Old County plats confirmed that the road had been straightened and improved. The actual grave plats are a different story. You are correct that the microfilm process has skewed the actual size scale. And there seems to be differences on what the squares represent. It seems to depend on how easy it was for them to determine actual demensions. The first one we worked with was fairly simple to determine, a grave was 2' 8" wide and 10' long, (7' grave, 3' walkway between the next row). Others appeared to be slightly over 5' wide and 11' long. By measuring the stones or bases still in place, it looks like these were laid out with a lot of 2 graves and a 4' walkway. On some, walkways and drives were platted. We found one where the drives no longer existed, but noticed the dates on the graves where the drives were platted were burials within the last 25 years. Apparently as they ran out of room they began to eliminate some drives and sell the space as lots. An easy test of lot widths and depths is to find a cemetery that has been maintained over the years where you can be fairly certain that the stones are in the original location, and has at least three or four Veteran's markers. Measure the distances between them and compare that to the number of spaces/rows on the WPA plat. The older deteriorated cemeteries will not be so easy, but will give you reference points when searching for graves and buried/missing markers. The objective of the project was to locate Veteran's markers, and at least that information seems to be accurate on most of ours. I think on some they estimated the size of a cemetery based on how many lots and rows it would take to square off a cemetery to include only a few markers. There were probably never that many lots/graves, but measurements between graves indicated that X number of graves and rows could be there. We have one that shows four rows of five graves, twenty graves total, but only seven graves exist in the cemetery. Others are not completely platted, one showing a 20' by 20' cemetery, and dotted lines indicating four rows. One plat on a still-active cemetery shows larger sections that seem to be eight and 12 grave family plots, but do not have individual graves marked out. It seems to all depend on what crew measured and drew the plat, how well they could obtain accurate measurements on original stone locations, and whether or not they could determine actual outer boundaries of the cemetery and the actual number of lots contained within. Ernie At 09:15 AM 04/05/2002 -0500, you wrote: >To all: > >I have a question on how to interpret the WPA cemetery plats. At first I >thought the grid indicated graves, but in examining cemeteries with marked >military burials, sometimes two burials are in one square. So we've >interpreted >the grid of rectangles to indicate overall size, and it is tied to the >legend at >the bottom of each cemetery, i.e. 1 inch = 20 feet. > >Now, if you're working from copies which were generated from microfilm, you've >lost the actual size of the drawing. On the originals at the State >Archives the >grid squares are 1 inch (long side) by 1/2 inch (short side). You can easily >calculate the size of the cemetery from this, although it's obvious that >the WPA >survey team was guessing many times. (As we do when we're standing in the >middle of a thicket trying to figure out where the edges are.) But it's a >start >- when you're showing the plat to the neighbors you can at least say that in >1940 someone thought the cemetery was, say, 40 feet by 50 feet. > >Has anyone else worked with these plats? Are we interpreting them >correctly? I >find them incredibly valuable when trying to prove the existence of a cemetery >which no longer has stones, particularly. > >And on plats ... the other old record to check for cemetery locations are the >assessor plat books at your local courthouse. These are drawings of each >section of land, with property boundaries. We have a series on microfilm >which >were done every four years from 1903 through 1925 - cemeteries are prominently >marked on these. Again, for one particular cemetery in this county it's the >only formal proof we have that the cemetery existed. > >Dale > >Dale Drake >Morgan Co History & Genealogy Assn > > > >==== INPCRP Mailing List ==== >Please do not send queries through this list.