Image A: Photo-editing options under the Quick Fixes tab are good for correcting simple mistakes.
Leaving the cemetery with a huge amount of new information is always exciting, but what do you do once you get home? Figuring out what to do with all your hard-earned research—and how to make it fit with your pre-existing work—can be a challenge. You’ll have to decide how to rectify conflicting facts, plus how the puzzle of your research fits together.
This chapter will discuss what to do after you return from the cemetery, with tips for incorporating your findings into genealogical research, a guide for touching up tombstone photos, and case studies that put all these ideas together to show cemetery research in action.
You’ve set down your cemetery bag, dusted off your shoes, and finally collapsed into your favorite armchair. So what comes next?
Begin by organizing what you’ve brought back. Scan paper files in your computer and put them in the corresponding family folder for later research, and make sure you upload your digital photos to a desktop computer and/or external hard drive. Make sure you make multiple copies of all important research material—sooner or later, your hard drive will crash, and you don’t want to have to repeat your hard work!
Now it’s time to start looking at records. Take all of the information you’ve found and compare it to other sources and the data you’ve already proven to be true. If a newly discovered name, date, or event at first glance appeared to fit with your research but now doesn’t, make a note and return to the fact later. Record-taking inconsistencies or errors, such as spelling variations in names or incorrect or illegible tombstone inscriptions, could help explain a discrepancy.
Say Thank You: Take a few moments before you dig in and send a “thank you” to the folks who helped out. In addition to letting them know you appreciate their time and effort, you’ll also help establish a network of locals who can keep you posted on future finds, maybe even paving the way if you ever need a favor.
If you took plenty of photos (You did, right?), go through those as well. Look for symbols or inscriptions you didn’t notice in the cemetery, and (if tombstone inscriptions conflict with your previous research) try to look at them in different ways. What else could these symbols mean? Could you have mistaken one letter for another? If stones are difficult to read due to old handwriting, look for a transcribing program that can help you make sense of those notes. Make sure that, like with your cemetery documents, you create multiple back-ups of your photos. See the next section for tips on how to use photo software to digitally enhance your photos.
Once you’ve analyzed your research, see what holes are in your family’s story and whether your new research has helped fill them. What research questions have always plagued you, and can you fill in any information with the materials you’ve brought back from your trip? Be sure to read and record all parts of a document, as you never know what clues they can hold for a dutiful researcher.
Also be on the lookout for family naming and burial patterns. Pan out and view all your ancestor’s information together, perhaps in a five-generation ancestor chart (see appendix A). Names, places, or burial sites that affect multiple ancestors might clue you into another aspect of your family’s life, belief system, or traditions. For example, having an ancestor named John in every generation might present a research challenge, but the consistently appearing name tells you that it had a deep connection for your family. Find out why.
Take it One Ancestor at a Time: Don’t get ahead of yourself! While you might want to jump into all of your research at once, make sure you’re examining records for only one family ancestor at a time. Working on too many files at once will feel overwhelming, and you’re more likely to make mistakes when juggling multiple ancestors’ information.
Once you’ve wrapped your head around the research you’ve already done, start planning your next steps. Identify new lines of research that you’ve uncovered in your time at the cemetery. Start a file for further research, as one answer may lead to another question—jot down your thoughts as they come to you.
For example, if you discovered from a tombstone that your great-great-grandfather served in the Civil War, investigate those Civil War military records. Which regiment did he serve with? What was his rank? Who was his commander? Did he receive a pension, and (if so) who claimed it? Cemetery research can help answer many genealogy questions, but it raises several new ones as well.
Be especially on the lookout for additional resources you need to consult in future research. If you didn’t have a chance to go by the local funeral home for information, for example, get in touch now. Tell funeral home staff what information you’re seeking and see if they still have the records—it’s amazing what some undertakers kept in their files! Take time to look through old newspapers, as well, to see what family stories you can uncover. Research the time period when your ancestors lived in an area, and do some sleuthing into the region’s history to gain a better understanding of what their lives were like.
Once the majority of the paper trail has been dealt with, look for old maps of where your ancestors lived and find the property they owned. With the names and information you gleaned from your cemetery trip (maiden names, in-laws, neighbors, etc.), you may be able to view online property maps by county and find your ancestors’ property.
Finally, put all that information in a list. This will be helpful when you plan another trip; all you have to do is print out your latest list of what needs more investigation, and you’ll be ready to head out the door.
Once you’re home, you may have some cemetery photos whose quality leaves a bit to be desired. You might not have had the appropriate lighting or equipment in the field and so simply took the best picture you could. But you don’t have to settle for these low-quality images. Modern technology allows you to manipulate digital photos to make them easier to read. In this section, we’ll provide a few tricks and tips to at least perk up (if not salvage) your images so they’re readable.
The photo program you use will likely depend on what kind of smartphone/camera and computer you have. I use iPhoto, which offers an edit tab at the bottom of each photo. Let’s find out what it can do! (Note: Every photo software program will differ somewhat, but certain key tools are available in all of them. The strategies I outline here should also apply to other photo-editing programs.)
From your desktop computer, open your photo-editing software and import the files you’d like to edit. Alternatively, you can select a file and tell your computer to open it with your photo software. Once you’ve imported a photo, select it and click the Edit button to view three options: Quick Fixes, Effects, and Adjust. The Quick Fixes button (image A) is a simple answer to minor photo problems, with a handful of options:
Image A: Photo-editing options under the Quick Fixes tab are good for correcting simple mistakes.
You have more advanced options under the Effects button (image B). The six buttons labeled Lighten, Darken, Contrast, Warmer, Cooler, and Saturate allow you to work magic on a photo that might be too dark by applying different filters and adjusting color levels. Make a couple of copies of a photo, then click on the Lighten or Darken button to apply a different brightness level. Likewise, Contrast will heighten the distinctions between light and dark (possibly making text easier to read), and you can manipulate an image’s colors to make them “warmer” (bringing out red, brown, and yellow) or cooler (bringing out blue and purple) with the appropriate buttons. The Saturate button makes colors richer, which is probably most useful to you if you’ll be displaying your pictures or sharing them with family members.
Image B: The Effects tab in iPhoto has more complex tools that will allow you to manipulate the lighting in a photo.
Other effects are less useful for tombstone tourists, but might still provide entertainment and (in some cases) be useful. For example, you can turn a color photo into black and white/sepia tone, or even give it an antique look. Likewise, the Matte, Vignette, and Edge tabs allow you to create a border around the photo, and the Fade and Boost buttons let you wash out (or heighten) the color. The None button comes in handy when you’ve overdone the adjustments by setting the photo back to its original tones.
The Adjust menu allows subtle tweaks to photos. Again, start with a couple of copies of the same photo and work with the different slider bars to discover what they do. Once you’re familiar with the abilities of each, you can make minute adjustments to photos like the pros.
With your photos cleaned up and organized, now it’s time to do some sleuthing.
Let’s take a look at cemetery research in action. In the case studies that follow, I’ll outline how I used information I found in the cemetery to grow my family tree and enrich my family’s story.
My first foray into family history involved locating my great grandmother, Rachel (Gladish) France’s grave. As I described in chapter 1, I found the cemetery with great difficulty, but I had a concrete plan once I knew where I was going—except I hadn’t prepared for what I discovered.
According to her death certificate, Rachel France was buried in “Biddel Cemetery” on August 17, 1970. As I later learned, the cemetery was actually named Bedell for the Bedell family who occupied a large number of plots. After walking the remote cemetery’s perimeter, I found her grave—or should I say graves?—in about fifteen minutes. In addition to her grave, I discovered two “bonus” graves: my great-grandfather, Marion France, and his son, Jessie France, someone I had no knowledge of. This was definitely information to tuck away for later research.
Upon returning home, the France mystery intrigued me. Why would the France family (or at least the parents and one child) be buried in the Bedell Family Cemetery? I discovered a Dr. William Bedell of Vincennes who grew up in Johnson Township on a nearby farm owned by his father in the 1850s and ‘60s. (Could the cemetery be located on part of that farm? Plat books might yield an answer.) William began studying medicine in 1877 and graduated from the Missouri Medical College in St. Louis three years later. Dr. Bedell lived in Vincennes where he continued to practice medicine. Maybe he had been the France family doctor?
What else could I discover about the France family? I started by researching this “new” relative, Jessie. Thanks to census forms, I knew my great-grandparents lived in Vincennes since the 1920s; indeed, Jessie died there in 1937. In the 1920 and 1930 censuses, Jessie was one of five of their nine children still living at home. According to his death certificate (image C), he died of a “coronary occlusion” at the age of eighteen, but someone of his age listed as a “farmer boy” who worked on the farm his whole life was unlikely to die from a heart attack. (Maybe he instead died from a pre-existing heart condition he’d had since birth?) The certificate indicated that Jessie was embalmed and buried in “Biddle” Cemetery on May 2, 1937, with Marion France (his father, my great-grandfather) serving as an informant on the record. The genealogical society didn’t have records from the undertaker who created the death certificate, so I was out of luck on that front. I was running out of leads, but I was determined to come up with something.
Image C: Jessie France’s death certificate has a curious cause of death: “coronary occlusion.”
Little did I expect to find an entire generation of ancestors, least of all while searching for places. Bedell Cemetery was known locally as Biddle, located in Johnson Township next to the town of Decker, Indiana (once known as Deckertown). Curious about other place-name changes, I searched for other communities in the area that had changed names and came across a town called White Oak Springs (now Petersburg, Indiana). A historical article from Indiana University explained this was probably the first settlement in the region, providing a list of the town’s founding families from 1807 to 1810. As I read, I began to recognize surnames, and I had found several of my ancestors by the time I finished the article. Apparently, my ancestors settled in this “White Oak Springs” after crossing the Ohio River in the early years of the nineteenth century. Rachel France (neé Gladish) was among them, and I now have a long list of her Gladish kin, along with other family names. The article also mentioned a book (The First Families of White Oak Springs) that I need to investigate, another item for my to-do list.
Thanks to this find (and to hunches from cemetery research), I discovered more about my ancestors in one afternoon than I ever had before. They lived near the White Oak Springs Fort, keeping vigil against the Indians who threatened their homes and farms. Many times, the entire settlement would go and stay at the fort until the threat of an Indian attack had passed. My seventh great-grandmother was credited with bringing the Cumberland Presbyterian faith across the Ohio River, and my eighth great-grandfather (noted as being Irish) was the only blacksmith in town to own his own tools. What great details!
I have since verified most of the information I found on that day, visiting numerous cemeteries and finding most of the graves of these early Indiana pioneers. I found marriages recorded in church and county records, which helped keep track of how the family grew. Death certificates, likewise, have provided me with essential tidbits from time to time. And those county history books keep offering up clues that need to be investigated.
While I didn’t manage to find much more about Jessie France himself, in going to the cemetery, finding his stone, and deciding to dig deeper, I set myself on the path to this once-in-a-decade discovery. What had started as a research exercise for Jessie France had turned into a family reunion, of sorts. The bottom line to cemetery research and genealogy is never be afraid of pursuing a far-fetched idea—you never know where it might lead.
While researching my maternal fourth great-grandparents (Peter Burkhart and Elizabeth Snyder), I discovered they had died on the same day. Could it have been an accident? Had the couple died of the same disease, hours apart? Digging deeper into this mystery would uncover a family secret of enormous magnitude.
After coming up empty-handed in an online search for death certificates, I traveled to Stewart Cemetery where they were buried. This gave me lots of photos—and a shocking answer to my question. In the cemetery, I could see raw coal pits where mining still occurs, the ragged earth echoing the melancholy of the graveyard. After a few minutes of searching, I found the couple’s grave (image D) set apart from the others, a traditional archway used in the 1800s to indicate a married couple. One section of the stone was cracked, but overall it appeared in good shape. When I walked up to it to get close-up shots, I saw the epitaph, which explained why the two died on the same day: “He killed his wife while in a mad rage and then killed himself.” This was definitely not what I had expected. I had my answer, but the tale was far from told. I had quite a lot of research still to do.
Image D: Peter and Elizabeth Burkhart’s grave is set apart from others—perhaps to conceal a tragic family secret.
I wanted to learn more about my ancestor-turned-killer. A stop at the local library netted me a biographical sketch of Peter Burkhart (image E) in the History of Pike County, Indiana. According to his biography, Peter was a model citizen who was known as “the greatest hunter and of always keeping the largest number and best bred hounds of any man in the county…. He succeeded well as a farmer.” The book went on to describe his family: Elizabeth and Peter married in 1844, and they had nine children. Eight of them had families of their own, all of whom lived nearby.
Image E: A biographical sketch of Peter Burkhart paints him as a model citizen. So what led him to murder?
Biographical sketches of the time present Peter as a wealthy model citizen, well liked by the town: “one of the most successful office holders and prominent pioneer citizens in the county.” State census forms backed up Peter’s wealth, and plat maps of the time showed him owning a vast amount of land that he had parceled out to his sons over the years.
Everything in the biography also fit what I knew about that branch of my ancestry. My ancestors were pioneers in Indiana, settling in the rich and farmable land of Pike County near what would become the town of Petersburg. Raising dogs for work and companionship had been a part of their lives for generations, and longevity has always been a strong suit—with some members making it just short of one hundred years old. Peter’s prominent leadership qualities also fit the narrative. So what had happened for Peter to murder his wife and kill himself?
With no one alive who would know the answer, researching newspapers of the time was my best bet. Sensational news was quite acceptable back then (especially when dealing with such a tragic and scandalous event), so take everything you read with a grain of salt until you can find a way to verify it. With that in mind, I read the Pike County Democrat newspaper and found it to be the least sensational of all of the reports: “The most startling case of [illegible] and suicide which has ever taken place in Pike County. Peter Burkhart shot his wife, Elizabeth with a shotgun. She ran out on the porch, followed by Burkhart, where she soon died. He then took the same gun and emptied it into his heart.” Wow! That was stunning to see in print. From there, I began to check other local papers, then branched out to regional reports.
Since it was horrifying and dramatic, the story was carried throughout southern Indiana. One paper reported that a local boy heard the shots and summoned neighbors. Another local newspaper headline read “An Awful Tragedy .. Frenzied by Jealousy, an Old Man Slaughters His Wife and Then Kills Himself” (image F).
Image F: You can often learn about your ancestors’ more salacious stories in contemporary newspapers.
Apparently, tales became more lurid as they left the immediate community that had known the Burkharts, and I had to take extra care to parse out the fact from the fiction. A regional paper, the Vincennes Weekly Western Sun, slanted the information a different way with the headline, “Monster at Work in Pike County ... An Old Husband Murders His Young Wife and Then Suicides” (image G). “Young” wife? Peter was born January 26, 1822, and Elizabeth was born two years later on October 11, 1824. Elizabeth was sixty-three years old at the time of her murder! So much for the “jealous of the young wife” angle.
Image G: Some publications sensationalized the Burkhart story more than others.
Regardless of the location, newspapers all stated Peter’s motive was jealousy. One notes him as “crazed of the ‘green-eyed monster’...accus[ing] his aged and faithful wife of marriage infidelity,” while another states “He was not too old to be jealous of the young wife, whom he had married late in life…whether she gave her aged husband any real cause for jealously does not appear.”
Yet another paper mentions that “he was given to drinking whisky and when under the influence was very jealous of his wife…” And another newspaper article ends with the line, “It is thought he was insane.”
The Vincennes Weekly Western Sun provided another interesting detail: Peter’s will (image H). The paper claimed his five daughters had been denied his estate because their husbands were “the bane of old Burkhart’s suspicion—of intimacy with their aged mother-in-law.” Another paper told the same story: Peter “hated his son-in-laws [sic] and charged them with undue intimacy with his aged wife.”
Image H: This article about Burkhart’s will lends support to the theory that he hated five of his daughters and so wrote them out of his will.
Seeing allegations like this, I knew I had to see Peter’s will myself to get some answers. After some research, I found four handwritten pages. Peter left his “beloved wife Elizabeth” the bulk of his acreage and estate at the time the will was made, two years before the murder. But if Peter questioned her fidelity, would he have left hundreds of acres of valuable farmland to a woman he did not trust? It seemed an odd question to have to consider, but relevant given the circumstances. However, the will seemed to support another of the newspaper’s claim. Only four of his nine children were mentioned: sons Noah Ark, Adam Gideon, and General Burkhart, and one daughter, Caroline (Burkhart) Morgan. Peter closed his will by writing, “The remainder I authorize to be sold off at public auction and the proceeds of the sale be used to pay my personal debts.”
The will was silent on Peter’s reasoning, but the press went on to say, “There is a feeling that only one thing can be done … and that is by breaking the will of the deceased so that all of his children will share alike in his property.” Peter had three men witness his written will and signature, evidently adamant that five of the girls were not to inherit anything from his estate. Regardless of what this feud was really about, he was making sure his five daughters were punished.
Did Peter Burkhart act out of jealously on that fateful July night in 1887? No one knows for sure, but I intend to keep digging to find out what can help me understand it. And who knows what other family secrets I may uncover.
The family had many reasons for letting this secret pass quickly and quietly into history. But unfortunately, with my direct-line ancestors (including my grandparents, who may have known parts of the real story) gone, I’m on my own. Even in this day and age, some will want to “protect the family secret” of a murder-suicide that happened more than one hundred years ago. But this is what genealogy is all about: researching and discovering facts about your ancestors, including the life celebrations, hardships, and unexplained decisions they made.
• Analyze your cemetery research finds and compare them to the work you’ve already done. Look for any discrepancies, and figure out what may have caused them.
• Make a list of what other research you need to do and what resources you’ll need to consult.
• Use photo-editing software such as iPhoto to make your images easier to read.