My friends - Through an arrangement with our good friend, Don Howell(our JP artifact "finder"), I have acquired the monument order records for the Beasley Monument Company of Paducah, which had its origins in Tennessee in the 1870's. The company moved from Clifton, Tennessee(Wayne County) to Paducah in 1905. This business remained in the same family for three generations, and created many thousands of grave markers, as well as grave covers, and even large mausoleums, for their customers. They were a first class operation which produced fine work. The records to which I refer are the actual orders placed by a relative(usually), for a grave marker for one of their family members. These orders can contain everything from a single page contract giving the dimensions of the marker, the epitaph, the location to be placed, the name of the deceased, dates of birth and death(and sometimes other information, such as the parents of a married woman). There are some which contain actual drawings of the monuments themselves, and many contain letters from the relatives about details of the monuments, dates to be inscribed - wonderful genealogical material, to say the least. The records which I have begin in 1890 and continue until 1935. The earliest year of birth I have yet found is 1798, used on a marker ordered, very likely by a son or grandson of the deceased. The signatures of the purchasers very often give evidence of the relationship(e.g., if the marker is for Eva Edwards, and she was 60 years old at the time of her death, with the purchaser being a William T.Edwards, the chances are very high that William is her husband). These records cover several states - Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi and an occasional one in Illinois, especially after the firm removed to Paducah in 1905. In Tennessee, the counties generally mentioned include Wayne, Perry, Hardin, Hickman,Lewis, Decatur, Benton, Stewart, Henderson, Carroll, Henry, Weakley, Obion, Gibson, Carroll, Montgomery, Robertson, and others. In Kentucky, the counties most often mentioned include all 8 counties of the Jackson Purchase region, as well as Trigg, Lyon, Livingston, Caldwell, Christian, Logan, Todd, Hopkins, Webster, Union and others. So these records are valuable to both the TN and KY Jackson Purchase area, and to other areas as well, even in other states than TN and KY, although the majority of the firm's business was in TN and KY. An announcement concerning these records will be in the September edition of the Genealogical Books Super Store newsletter, and I am now in the process of indexing them, which is a tremendous undertaking. About a thousand records have been annotated(and my estimate is that there are perhaps 5000 individual records in this collection), and about 700 are in draft form for the Index, which will eventually appear in the GBBS catalog. The purpose of the project is to make digital copies of these records available through the Store at a very minimal cost, whether the record contains two pages or twenty. The records are old and brittle, some have been in or near moisture, and a few have had some burns inflicted on them over the years, but, in general, they are in remarkably good condition for their age. Some are even typewritten, especially the later ones. In keeping with my long time practice of advance notice to the subscribers of the lists I host in the JP region, I wanted to let our subscribers know that if any of you would like to see the draft of the index *so far completed* - with thousands more names to be added - if you will contact me *off list*, I will be glad to send a copy to you. Please bear in mind that the draft index now contains probably only about 10% of the names it will eventually hold, but since it covers many counties in both TN and KY, it may be of interest to those of you pursuing TN lines as well as JP and KY lines. This project has caused me to place the Graves County Circuit Court Order books work on temporary hold, since these records offer so many opportunities for genealogical clues, and in so many different places. Many thanks to our good friend, Don Howell, for saving these records from going to the landfill. -B =====================================================================================================