There is a cemetery in Aiken County South Carolina that has headstones dating back to before the Civil War. Some of them are so weathered you can barely read the names. A few of them have already become unreadable. And nobody has been out there in years to document what is left.
That cemetery is not unusual. There are thousands like it across this country.
What Is in Those Cemeteries
Old cemeteries are one of the richest sources of historical information that exists for ordinary people.
A headstone tells you a name. A birth date. A death date. Sometimes a relationship. Sometimes an occupation or a cause of death or a brief description of who the person was. All of that is historical information that exists nowhere else for many of the people buried there.
Family cemeteries on old farmland often contain multiple generations of a single family. Church cemeteries contain the history of entire communities going back as far as the congregation existed. Municipal cemeteries contain the records of everyone who died in a place over generations, including people who left no other documentation behind.
Why They Are Disappearing
Many old cemeteries are on private land that has changed hands multiple times. The current owner may not even know the cemetery is there. Or they may know and not care about maintaining it. Or they may be planning to sell the land for development.
Wooden grave markers rot away in a few decades. Stone markers crack and weather until the inscriptions become unreadable. Without someone to maintain the vegetation around them, headstones get covered by brush and eventually buried.
In some cases cemeteries have literally been paved over. Highways and parking lots and developments built without anyone bothering to check what was there before.
What You Can Do
Go out to old cemeteries in your area and photograph every headstone you can read. You do not need special equipment. Your phone camera is sufficient.
Upload your photographs to Find A Grave at findagrave.com or BillionGraves at billiongraves.com. Both of these sites are free and allow volunteers to add photographs and transcriptions of headstone information. What you upload becomes part of a permanent searchable database that genealogists and historians around the world can access.
If you find a cemetery that is overgrown, contact your local county historical society. Many areas have volunteer cemetery restoration groups who will come out and help clean up and document a neglected site.
If you find evidence of a cemetery that has been destroyed or built over, document what you know and report it to your state historic preservation office. Many states have laws protecting burial sites even when they are on private land.
Those names deserve to be in the record. All it takes is someone willing to go out there and write them down.
Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.
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