I’ve been working on this project for about 8 years, in my available time. One of the “random acts of kindness”-type things I enjoy doing is going to cemeteries and fulfilling requests for pictures that have been submitted through Find a Grave. It melds a lot of my interests: photography, genealogy, and history, and it sometimes intersects my husband’s interests too (in that it involves driving around on back roads and finding forgotten places).
I guess my interest in cemeteries was sparked by my grandfather, who used to traipse around the backwoods of Alabama, locating old family graves, cleaning up forgotten gravesites, and spending time with distant cousins. Not that he took me with him–admittedly, the stories of snakes and other natural threats he encountered probably show that was the right decision to make. Still, I grew up hearing about his adventures, and the visits that we did make to our family members’ graves in manicured, safe, accessible sites sparked my love of cemeteries.
After finding (or often, not finding) a grave of which someone has requested a photo, I upload the photo to the site and usually that’s it: the end of the story. I kept thinking I wanted to do something more, especially with some of these cemeteries that don’t have much information about them, or were hard to find, or seem to have disappeared or become inaccessible over time. I have a historic map of the area that shows hundreds of cemeteries that don’t have any information online about them, for example.
My “lofty goal” is to visit and photograph every “historic” cemetery in my area (which includes Frederick County, and maybe parts of Clarke and Warren County, depending on how ambitious I want to get). I’d like to research these places, and maybe highlight some of the people who are interred there, if I can discover their stories. Even in my area of fairly slow development, historic cemeteries are disappearing or being forgotten, and I don’t want history to be lost.