Hello everyone. I just got back from visiting Snyder County for a week. I found a lot of information in the courthouse, which is better organized than it usually is. All in all, it was a helpful experience. However, my consternation lies in not being able to find tombstones of several of my ancestors which were in existence as little as five years ago. A case in point: I am a descendant of a Jacob and Mary KRATZER and a Jacob B and Rachel KRATZER, all of whom are buried in the Kratzerville Union Cemetery next to the United Church of Christ. Five years ago, I had checked their tombstones and wrote down all of the information. This past week, I visited the cemetery again because I had found some new information on their children and was checking the cemetery for the children's dates. When I tried to check on the two Jacob KRATZERs, their stones and those of their wives were nowhere to be found. I noticed that the UCC church had built a new piece on to their building which now comes perilously close to the part of the cemetery that contains the graves of several Revolutionary War veterans, but the building did not come close to the area in the cemetery where I remember my Jacob KRATZERs being buried. The stones are simply gone. I did the same thing in my hometown cemetery of New Berlin, just north of the Snyder County border. In 1970, I copied all of the known, legible inscriptions in the cemetery (not a bad feat when you consider that I was only in high school at the time). Now that I have gone back to field check some of my original information, some of the stones are mssing. Where have all the stones gone? I suspect that as stones fall over, cemetery custodians just pick them up and cart them away to be used for fill or whatever. At one time, stones used to be at least propped up against a nearby fence or tree, so at least you had the inscription, even if you didn't have a marker anymore. I understand that cemetery custodians have a hard time mowing and trimming around the many stones in a cemetery. But can't someone take the time to repair stones that have fallen over or are broken? I'm sending a copy of this e-mail to the Snyder County Historical Society to alert them of this problem. Thanks goodness we have George W. Wagenseller's "Tombstone Inscriptions of Snyder County" which records inscriptions through 1899, or we would have lost many many more inscriptions over the years. Thanks for letting me sound off. Logan Garth Swanger Williamsport PA [email protected] Snyder Co PAGenWeb Coordinator http://www.rootsweb.com/~pasnyder [email protected] List Owner