​Robin R. Foster

Reclaiming History and Legacies Abandoned in the Cemetery

 

My first few trips to glean information about my family buried in  Fairview Cemetery (Greenwood, SC) left me in tears and with great heartache.  It was totally inaccessible to me with briers and vegetation that towered over my head.  This was the first time in all my years of research (since 1985) that I found a family burial site in such horrible condition.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Previous  visits to other cemeteries were productive and enjoyable experiences where I learned details that helped to identify the deaths of my ancestors and other family members.  Adopt-A-Cemetery is especially devoted to the reclaiming of abandoned cemeteries for several reasons which include: 

 

• The headstones in cemeteries help family historians discover family members missing on the census or born before deaths were officially recorded. 

• ​When you research the census you learn about members of the family that lived together and neighbors living nearby.  The same is true when you research cemeteries.  Often those to lived together or alongside each other in life are buried together, and you can find important clues about your ancestor and the community from cemeteries.  A study of the lives of those buried in the same cemetery can be quite enriching.

• If no one is left in your family to answer questions about your ancestor, perhaps living descendants of others buried in the cemetery can help fill in the missing details.

• When headstones crumble or waste away, we lose information that can connect us to historical documentation of a person’s life such as wills, marriage records, deeds, the census, and newspaper obituaries.