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Friday, November 17, 2017

How would you like to live in a condo built over a cemetery?

https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46199149&nid=148&title=family-concerned-about-potential-relocation-of-gravesites-as-cemetery-buyer-eyes-development
If you have ever unsuccessfully looked for burial information about an ancestor, you should realize that cemeteries and burial plots are not necessarily permanent. The above news story points out what can happen when a cemetery is on privately owned land. Even cemeteries that are owned by public entities such as towns or cities can be subject to changes in land development. In my own ancestral lines several of the graves turned out to be unmarked and in one case the grave was moved long after the person died. In the above case, the development company intends to move the graves.But this is not always the case. See "New website for Chicago and Cook County Cemeteries."

In the above case also, think about the consequences of having the developer move the graves. What records might be available to show the new locations of the existing graves in the developed cemetery? This important understand from the standpoint of doing genealogical research, that any particular record concerning an individual may have either never been created or may have been lost.

As I pointed out in the title to this post, how would you like to live on an abandoned cemetery site? By the way, you may be living on an abandoned cemetery site and not know it.

2 comments:

  1. Ron,
    My BYU Family History intership was at the Georgia National Archive. One project volunteers were working on was creating an index to all the people and graves that were moved by the Tennessee Valley Authority when they flooded the Tennessee valley. Wonderful interviews of people, maps of cemeteries all in Federal Documents available to the public if they just knew.
    Talk about abandoned cemeteries.

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    Replies
    1. This is James, not Ron. Thanks for your note. It is amazing how many interesting and valuable records there are if you know where to look and take the time to look.

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