This is so true. I believe I have discovered the location of the lost Poor House cemetery for Greene Co. Will track it down in the spring. Few people even know it exists and I am sure there is no marker to designate the spot. We'll see. And, it is true many stones were plowed under, others taken up and used by folks as foundations to buildings or stone pathways, others just picked by joyriders and taken home. Actually have seen some for sale in antique stores. That's why I am trying to get out there and transcribe them all. Sooner or later I will get that done! Sylvia ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Brady" <brady.j@att.net> To: <NYGREENE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 5:42 PM Subject: RE: [GREENE COUNTY] cemeteries > >However back to the cemeteries - Jim, there is a master map at the Vedder >>that shows an approximate location of cemeteries they have transcribed >>intheir collection. I have a copy of that, but also additional dots on >>mine >>that show cemeteries I have found. > > Thanks, Sylvia, that well answers my question. Going back to our > conversation on the Van Loon cemeteries, I remember in Beer's History of > Greene County that some of the chapter authors spoke of cemeteries > disappearing way back in 1884. And your surveys sometimes note missing > stones in still existing cemeteries. I wonder if some of the old private > cemeteries were simply overtaken by nature and neglect. More ominously I > wonder if some of the gravestones in plots in the middle of fields > disappeared below plow depth - you know just sink the stones a little bit. > Or wound up dragged away for use as footings for the porch steps. > > In my built-up town in North Jersey I went looking for a Reformed Dutch > Church cemetery as a random act of kindness last year. Somebody had seen > an > old transcript of it that had been put on a website. I had never heard of > the cemetery and initially told him there was no such thing, but after > some > digging into old building records found out where the old church had been > before being torn down sometime in the mid-1900's. According to the old > records, the cemetery was off to one side of the church. So I went down > and > paced off to the best of my ability where the old church and cemetery > should > have been. There was a small, relatively recent apartment building, a > parking lot, an unpaved area and then a property line for a private home. > No > cemetery, no stones, just that small piece of unpaved, unused ground. > Begging the question - was that it and, if so, what happened to it. Nobody > knows. The interred are still there or they were moved. Maybe there's > something at the county level, but nobody local knows what happened to the > previously interred. > > One break in the chain of knowledge and a cemetery gets anonymous real > quick. > > Jim > > > > ==== NYGREENE Mailing List ==== > Over 200 Greene County cemeteries fully transcribed - look up your > ancestor! > http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygreen2 > > ============================== > Search the US Census Collection. Over 140 million records added in the > last 12 months. Largest online collection in the world. Learn more: > http://www.ancestry.com/s13965/rd.ashx >