I finally visited Maplewood Cemetery this week. It was raining lightly both days (tail end of Isadore), but I was moderately successful. My first observation is that the graves in the old section of the cemetery are in really bad shape. Many are of that white marble that tends to dissolve over the years, and especially in acid rain. Many of these are now totally unreadable. Most of the gravestones are also obscured by a heavy growth of green moss. All in all, not good for research. I also think that if someone attempted to do a "reading" of all the graves in this part of the cemetery that it would be a very difficult task. The city offices were very helpful as they do have books that document the purchase of the gravesites. However, these only show the name of the person who bought the plot. They said that they don't know who is actually buried there because those books were lost in a flood some years ago. I also wonder if the cemetery itself used to be flooded once in a while -- that could be another reason for the poor condition of the older graves. Using the information from the books and a map of the cemetery, I was able to find the gravesite and a knocked-down monument from one of the families that I was looking for. So at least my visit was successful to this extent. I was unable to find graves for some other people that I was looking for who died in Ripley between about 1870 and 1900. Were there any other public cemeteries in Ripley at that time? Any idea of other cemeteries to check out? Doug Gordon