WPA Cemetery Records

I doubt I can help you unfortunately Puma, and execuse my ignorance but what does WPA stand for?

Puma, I'm not sure about where to go for purchased copies but how about the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne for viewing them? I made the trip from Tiffin, OH to Fort Wayne in an afternoon.

They are on a par with the LDS Library in Salt Lake City. Maybe check their website or call the information desk? I just had a Mapquest map, and they were pretty easy to find.

http://www.acpl.lib.in.us/genealogy/index.html

A lot of documentation, oral histories, photographs, etc from the WPA projects are at the Library of Congress and many have been digitized at their American Memory website.

Did you try the rootsweb site for Ohio? A lot of that, especially cemeteries, are online. Ohio's is here. Its free, and I see cemeteries on the list.

Also during this era local DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) Chapters went around the cemeteries to document them. We have some in our office (Wyoming Co., NY Historian's office). They are invaluable as some of the tombstones are no longer there. Type this "DAR + cemeteries Ohio" in google (leave off the quotes) and you will get a lot of hits.

Is there some reason they have to be the WPA records for a cemetery and not the same cemetery recorded by another?? Any cemetery in particular?

I would still check the Ohio rootsweb link above. Sometimes people go pull a record then put it on line. People like me who enjoy a trip and digging through an old box of stuff. Although I see from a previous post that might be unlikely. I commend your effort to want to get it straight. I can't believe they did it alphabetically rather then by cemetery. What a mess.

Some good stuff came up at the DAR. This one is for cemeteries in Ashland County 1936-1941 . That's before your date. Maybe they have their stuff on CD or accessible through one of their chapters?

Click here to see.

Long link above but it worked. The DAR library catalog is here. I just picked "subject" and typed in Ohio Cemetery Records.

Well, if I think of anything else, I'll let you know. I've been at this years myself and sometimes you do need to just bounce ideas off another person who does the same thing to trigger something that makes you say, "Wait a minute! That reminds me!"

We have the same problem with transcriptions. We have people come in and give us a "new and improved list" they put in a database, and ya, doesn't match. Then I got to go out there. In fact, I am working on rewalking one in my town for work because it hasn't been updated at our office since the 70s. The Wyoming County (NY) historians office has been around since 1946 (not me of course) so we have a lot of stuff. But our cemeteries are in binders by town (as well as our databases on computer which is not accessible to the public). Then separate sections for the cemeteries in the binder, THEN alphabetical by name. Plus we update them through the obituaries, plus contacting the active cemeteries. Then the obits are put into it's family file---and we got a LOT of those!

I'm glad to see the care you are taking with this project. Unknown burials, and unknown cemeteries are quite a problem. Wish we had GPR equipment!

You two are my heroes. Everything you do makes it so much easier for me to do what I'm trying to do!

I've gotten to be very good friends with the Newfield historian in Tompkins County, NY. He gave me tons of great info on my GGgrandparents there, so now whenever I find something, I share it with him, so it can be disseminated more. And whenever I have a page of obits (besides just my person), I usually try to send it to the rootsweb people to post on their sites.

It's all a matter of paying it forward. Genealogists are some of the most generous people out there.

Thank you for your thank you Hip-Hop! We mainly do history at our office, but we often get requests by mail from genealogists. We charge copies and postage and a very small fee, but we really have to, to justify to the county keeping our office open. However, if it is someone who shares with us, we share back, barter info. Plus we get quite a few who travel to see us, mostly in the summer though... unless their fairly local.