Hello all, As many of you know, the Snohomish Cemetery trial sparked an interest for me in Washington state's old or abandoned cemeteries quite a while back. It affected me so much so that I gathered support from some concerned citizens and formed the Kitsap County Cemetery Association to care for old or abandoned cemeteries in Kitsap County. That group grew to become the Washington State Cemetery Association which has made remarkable strides over the last year. We want to protect these old cemeteries as they are a vast resource for genealogists and they are disappearing at an alarming rate. Our main goal was to introduce new legislation which would protect these old cemeteries. Over the last year, I and several others have worked hard at understanding cemetery laws and watched the Snohomish Cemetery trial to learn all we could. We also started putting together a listing of cemeteries in Washington state (it can be found at the web site below) as we felt that those who do transcriptions might like to know all of the cemeteries available to transcribe. We found that there are as many forgotten cemeteries as there are active cemeteries. A week ago on my bi-weekly trip to Olympia, I stopped in my legislator's office to ask a few questions about legislation and after speaking with her aid, was hustled into a meeting just today which went very well. In the meeting was an aid who will actually write the legislation and he said it would be done tomorrow. The calendar for this bill is very quick. Everything must be done by March 6. THAT INCLUDES THE PUBLIC HEARING. And this is where all of you come in. I'm getting the word out now that sometime in February there will be a public hearing in Olympia on the new legislation. This bill will need people to call in to their local legislators to voice their support, and especially it will need people to come to the hearing to show their support. The more people there, the better it will go. If you would like specific information on the bill, please send me an email with your name and email address and a note that you would like the information, and as it comes in, I'll forward it to each of you. Anyone wishing to forward this message to another list, or to other individuals, please feel free to do so. I am contacting senior citizens groups and historical socieities as well as genealogical societies. -------------- Andrea D. MacDonald "Andi" andimac@oz.net Washington State Cemetery Association http://www.rootsweb.com/~wapsgs/