(Sorry if you receive this twice!) Hi folks! Here's an article from the Rocky Mountain News I thought was interesting! New life for old tombstones Cemetery searchers uncover, preserve epitaphs for the ages By Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News October 25, 2003 LEADVILLE - Deep within a dark forest inside one of the highest graveyards in the nation, Gail Meyer Kilgore digs her bare hands into the dirt, reaching for a long-forgotten name, hoping she's not too late. "A-N-..." she says, tracing her hands over the worn letters on a tombstone partially buried. "A-N...I can't get the next letter." At the back of the Evergreen Cemetery in Leadville, thin shafts of light fall on cold stones sunken so deep into the ground that it's often impossible to read the names. Some have dropped even deeper into the dirt, erasing the date of birth, the date of death and everything in between. "A-N...N...I-E," Kilgore says, finally making progress, deciphering the name. The knees of the 61-year-old's jeans are crusted with dirt. It's stained her hands, but she doesn't seem to notice as she walks over decaying trees and a spongy carpet composed of centuries of dead pine needles. "T-I-M...M-O-N-S," she says, her fingers tracing each letter. "And what's this? M-R-S... "Mrs. Annie Timmons!" It's likely been decades - if not a century - since that name was spoken aloud. Kilgore stands up and grins, as if she's just recognized an old friend. "I'll be darned, Mrs. Annie Timmons!" She pulls out her only tools - a notebook and a digital camera - and captures the image of the fading gravestone. When she returns home, she'll load the photo and name into her computer. There, Mrs. Annie Timmons will join millions of other names, in a place where once-forgotten pioneers are kept alive. As she walks through the graves, Kilgore spots one of the few stones that's been well maintained - a gated plot adorned with fresh flowers. She walks right past it. "I'm after the ones that we're losing," she says hurriedly. "The ones that may not make it through the winter." Thousands of inscriptions JOHN C. GIBSON Born Jan. 8, 1852, died Dec. 7, 1888. There is no death; What seems so is transition. This life of mortal breath is but a suburb of life's elysian, whose portal we call death. MOOBERRY, EZRA DAVID Aged 4 mos. 2 Days. Sweetly sleep in the grave so low, our precious darling we cherished so... Thousands of these century-old inscriptions from Colorado graveyards haunt the Internet, accessible by people who may never visit them. Some entries include epitaphs, some just a single photo, but the names are always there. Each day, more tombstones are uploaded onto Web pages such as savinggraves.com and cemeteryjunction.com, sent by preservationists such as Kilgore, who scour graveyards around the world, transcribing the stones of strangers. Some are genealogists searching for lost relatives and helping friends find their ancestors. Some are historians looking for tangible links to people from the past. Some simply enjoy the peaceful exercise that comes with quiet walks on hallowed ground. "My daughter says, 'You don't ever want to go on a vacation with my mother because you always end up in cemeteries,'" Kilgore says with smile. Random acts of kindness Kilgore grew up in Twin Lakes and lived most of her life in Leadville. She recently moved to Arizona, where she oversees all Colorado and Arizona cemeteries for the Tombstone Transcription Project. A sister Web site, the Tombstone Photo project, enlists a cadre of cemetery shutterbugs who take photos of graves and upload them for anyone to see. Each time she visits Evergreen Cemetery - which at 10,430 feet boasts some of the highest burial ground in North America - she also responds to requests over the Internet from people asking Kilgore to send a picture of a particular grave from a certain cemetery. She frowns at researchers who charge money for the service. Like many other headstone hunters, she takes the photos for free, as "random acts of genealogical kindness." Some volunteers specialize in photos of famous figures, focusing on the largest mausoleums or artistic statues. A few, like Kilgore, are more interested in the ones that nobody's heard of, the ones that have no caretaker. "Some of these people were lucky to have any stone at all," she says. The wave of digital tombstone transcription began in the mid-1990s and has since gone worldwide. Kilgore says she has a backlog of photos and transcripts that she is typing into her computer with the help of her granddaughter, who often accompanies her to the gravesites. Kilgore insists that it's not just retirees prowling the cemeteries - she's also received e-mails from Boy Scouts who want to transcribe cemeteries for their Eagle project. The Web site findagrave.com, which was started in Colorado, is run primarily by people in their 30s who take occasional "road trips" together and give out free temporary tattoos with their logo: a gravestone emblazoned with a question mark. According to Kilgore, it's a good thing the youngsters are taking notice. "There are so many (graves) here," she says, looking out into the trees. "This is going to go on past my lifetime." The last signs of life Her knees in the dirt again, Kilgore softly rubs her hand over the rough-cut rock, feeling for faint letters, like a doctor searching for the last signs of life. A smooth stone means there's likely no hope. Suddenly, at the bottom, her fingers find the indentations. "M...A...R-T-I-N," she spells out. "Died April. Four months old." The tiny graves, she says, still get to her. Sometimes, she still cries for them. "Oh, Baby Martin," she says, and writes down the name. When she looks over the stones, she sees more than names. Even when the inscriptions have long since faded, she says, the marker still means something. "You wonder what they did," she says. "You wonder who they were." As she continues to the back of the graveyard, she carefully steps around a few of the sunken spots, past a wooden marker that's split and separated. She walks to another stone that teeters on the edge of a grave, nearly lost in the thick of the forest. "How long's that going to be there?" she says, bending down. "I'm surprised it's lasted this long." She rubs her hand over the stone, sweeping away the dirt, feeling for a name, a date - anything. Her face falls. The stone is smooth. "There's nothing left," she says. "It's gone." sheelerj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2561 Ann Allen Geoghegan AKA "AnnieG" CC Jefferson & Claiborne MSGenWeb Project Coordinator, Mississippi Families on the Internet CC Kenedy County TXGenWeb Project State Coordinator - Mississippi American Local History Network