In The Beginning, Why I'm Even Doing This? Part II

So last time I was telling you how I got started into genealogy because of a forgotten cemetery in my neighborhood.  Over the last 4 years I am made an attempt to find and document where the last resting place is for all my family.

Below is just a small shot of what I have mapped out so far.  Each place marker is a GPS marker of where the tombstone is, with some margin of error.  I couldn't get my Google Earth Embeder to work but I will keep working on it and maybe in a future post you can see an interactive map to explore.  If anyone would like a copy of my Google Earth file, post here or email me and I will send it to you.  I have links to each FindAGrave memorial in the placemarkers.  The cool thing about that is while you might not be up for a road trip to a cemetery, you can still visit the memorial via the web.

These are just the people and cemeteries I have personally visited.  There are about 40 other cemeteries that I haven't visited that are outside of a day's drive.  Its neat seeing all of the cemeteries that I need to visit as most of them start on the east coast and end in MO.  When you look at the whole thing you can see the migration path that the family took to get here. 

I will put something out closer to Memorial Day but if there are any family members who would like a map or if you see someone who I have missed, let me know.  Please feel free to send me your pictures, it lets me see how the stones are aging.

Cousin Bait (In The Beginning, Why I'm Even Doing This?)

Guess if I am going to start blogging and especially about Genealogy I should start of with explaining my beginnings into the genealogy world.  Its all started about 4 years ago while out for a walk in the neighborhood, my wife Kathy got stopped and asked about a cemetery in the area from some random stranger.  Neither of us knew about it but just a couple of doors down there was a cemetery, the Roberts Cemetery.  We immediately went to find it.  On our way back we stopped by our neighbor who had been in the neighborhood since the houses were build back in the 1960's.  After talking with her and a few other neighbors we found out that what we had found was only about half of the original cemetery.  The builder of our neighborhood tried to buy the property but was unsuccessful because of the cemetery.  However just a few short years later a new builder came into the area who was going to build apartments for section 8 housing, the North Brighton Townhomes.  For what ever reason they where either able to skip past the red tape of buying the cemetery or just completely neglect that there was one there all together.  This lead to the cemetery being bull dowsed over, before the cemetery was completely wiped from the face of the earth the neighbors stopped the construction.  To mend their mistakes the construction company picked up and laid all the tombstones in concrete, face up.  Now after already surviving some 100 years the cemetery faced its next big struggle.  Normal tombstones are standing upright which protects a lot of the stones from the weather.  After 50 years of being in concrete the elements are greatly taking their toll.  Snow, ice, dirt and wind are slowly erasing the names, dates and last loving words.  Even if you look at the photos of the Roberts Cemetery which where taken in 2008 and then look at the stones now you can see a big difference.

This all lead me to my big question.  Where is my family?  Where are they buried?  Is anyone taking care of them or have they been bull dowsed over and forgotten?  My father's parents have already passed, but both of my mother's parents are still alive.  What do they know and what may be lost if something where to happen to them?  

Our home owners association just got reactivated and is starting to have regular meeting.  I have plans to bring up the Roberts Cemetery and hopefully get the neighborhood or a local boy scout troop to adopt the cemetery to help clean and preserve this little piece of history.  

I am going to leave you with this for now.  Next time I will try to share with you how I solved these questions and where I am going from here.  If you are ever in Kansas City ask me about the cemetery and I can take you to see it. 

Roberts Cemetery  http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=cr&GScid=2251323&GRid=27524449&CRid=2251323&

New Year, New Topics

Ok I am going to try to do a new resolution this year and keep this blog going.  So to do this and keep it going I am going to use this thread to keep Idea's of topics.  If you think of something feel free to let me know and we can add it to the list.


First that is coming to mind.

• Clyde Short and the USS Savo Island.

Latest update

Ok ok. So I’m not very good at this whole blogger thing. I just don’t make time to reflect and write what’s going on.

That being said here's what’s going on in my Genealogy world.

Two weeks ago I got my request back from the AF Archives. A few weeks early mind you. It was like Christmas. Kathy text me a pic of the package while I was at the Community Blood Center, donating blood. When I finished I drove home as fast I could, I was so excited. I received two CD's and after popping them in the computer I found out what I had in store for me. 4000+ Pages of PDF from the 92 Bombardment Group. It took some time to break it down but eventually I got it down to Months and then even further to Narration, Operational Reports, Publications, Crew Lists, and then Appendix.

WOW was there a lot of info. I first had to go find the 407th and specifically Merl on each crew list. Then I took that and had to match the crew list with the Operational Reports. This took almost a week working on it whenever I could usually a couple of hours at a time.

All in all I found out he flew on 31 Combat missions and flying on 17+ different aircraft (some AC I couldn’t figure out the tail number).

I have plotted all the mission targets on Google Earth. Most were just listed as the town bombed so not 21st Century accuracy but still impressive when you look at.

My next step is to work on getting these all time stamped. Hopefully I can figure out the spreadsheet work around to make it smother.

We'll see.

Eric Stitt

Finally

After much trial and error I finally figured out how to embed a globe into this blog. I also have been working on a system to make ground overlays "plat maps" more accurate. I don't know if there is criteria to say it's geo-correct but it's damn close.

Eric Stitt

First Blog

This is my first Blog.  The whole reason I am creating this is to be able to share what family history I find.  How this will be a great place to share tips and tricks I have learned in my research.  Hoping this helps share some of my google earth discoveries.