Cemetery books are very important. I am sure we all appreciate the effort gone into collecting and publishing this information. I assume updated cemetery books are the result of volunteers, generously donating their time, going through cemeteries, grave by grave. And this effort probably occurs every fifteen years maybe. I recently received a comment that the only thing that should go into a cemetery book should be what recorders read off the grave stones. I have a problem with this. Does this mean that: o we can not use what was previously printed as being on the grave stone because time has now made the grave stone partially or totally unreadable? o we can not make corrections based upon previously identified errors or omissions? See my recent email on Campbell Deckard. o we can not add information about a grave site person that will further help identify that person? See http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/oh/tombpics/index.htm Gallia, Gerald A. Deckard, Vinton Memorial Cemetery, Roas M. Deckard o we can not add grave site information that will help us locate a grave site if we have a grid map? If the answer to the above questions is yes, I think we will have a cemetery book that may not be worth printing. One partial solution might be to print, in bold characters, what the recorders actually read on the grave stone followed optional information in non-bold characters. I would appreciate the owners of the cemetery books making comments on this email. Thank you. Jerry Deckard

Jerry, I agree with you.....any added notations can be a huge help!? One example of this is the name "George Lewis"? In the cemetery book that has his father "Hiram E Lewis" it shows a George Lewis, his wife Martha, and their son who died at an early age.? Many people have mistaken this George for mine and so have the wrong George in their research (This George is George Washington Lewis whom I have not yet found a connection to).? Someone has hand-written in a description of the cemetery and directions on how to get there which was most helpful!? It is on Private Property and has not been in use since about 1915.? Many of the headstones are broken and/or unreadable.? We have documented and taken photos of what is left even tho none are of my family and have uploaded info from the trip and others from pages copied and sent to me before my trip from another researcher who has been helping me out (She lives up there and I only get about 2 days a year there with visiting family! too).? When someone knows who someone is/was married to and possibly even the childrens' names...it helps to know if you have the correct person or not.? Louisa -----Original Message----- From: Gerald Deckard <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: Neil G_Elvick <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 8:07 pm Subject: [OHGALLIA] Updating Printed Cemetery 'Books Cemetery books are very important. I am sure we all appreciate the effort gone into collecting and publishing this information. I assume updated cemetery books are the result of volunteers, generously donating their time, going through cemeteries, grave by grave. And this effort probably occurs every fifteen years maybe. I recently received a comment that the only thing that should go into a cemetery book should be what recorders read off the grave stones. I have a problem with this. Does this mean that: o we can not use what was previously printed as being on the grave stone because time has now made the grave stone partially or totally unreadable? o we can not make corrections based upon previously identified errors or omissions? See my recent email on Campbell Deckard. o we can not add information about a grave site person that will further help identify that person? See http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/oh/tombpics/index.htm Gallia, Gerald A. Deckard, Vinton Memorial Cemetery, Roas M. Deckard o we can not add grave site information that will help us locate a grave site if we have a grid map? If the answer to the above questions is yes, I think we will have a cemetery book that may not be worth printing. One partial solution might be to print, in bold characters, what the recorders actually read on the grave stone followed optional information in non-bold characters. I would appreciate the owners of the cemetery books making comments on this email. Thank you. Jerry Deckard ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com.