One of the things JoAnn and I wanted to do was see local cemeteries where our family are buried. On Saturday JoAnn and I went out the Lakewood Memorial Cemetery in Empire. My grandparents are buried there along with JoAnn's parents. It's probably been 30 years since I was at the cemetery and seen my grandparents site. I had never been to JoAnn's parents site. It's been a long time since she was there. We had to go to the office to find their grave site.
On Monday we drove up to Dixon, CA, not far from Davis, CA and stopped at the Silveyville Cemetery where a number of JoAnn's mother's family are interred. The secretary at the cemetery was so helpful. They keep all of their records on cards that are individually typed. In fact they had an old fashioned manual typewriter of the kind that JoAnn and I learned to type on in the early 1960s. I haven't seen one of those for years - especially in an office. They had a computer too.
As I stated, the secretary was incredibly helpful. Each 3 x 5 card had detailed information on the front and the location the back that listed the individual and individuals who were buried adjacent to the person's card. As JoAnn looked at the back of the cards she found additional people that she had heard her mother talk about, or had met at some point during her childhood. What turned out to be a search for a few people turned out to be a search for many people. The secretary photocopied all of the cards for us, located all of the gravestones on a map and sent us out, but not before offering to have someone help us. Fortunately while this was going on I went out and walked around and got the lay of the land. It was, by today's standards, a small cemetery. We found and photographed all of the gravestones.
It was fun to spend a day together doing family history. Now we have work to do at home to fit the names we found to the family. It made a great weekend with our family even more memorable.
2 comments:
That is so cool that you were able to do that. I love family history! Thank you for sharing!
Cemeteries are big places. We had to go to the office when we were in SLC to find Chris' grandpa's who had only been buried the year before and we were there. That's neat you got some pictures of their headstones'plaques.
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