We have a small cemetery here that I am working on transcribing, There less than 100 graves, but it was started nearly 100 years ago. There are probably 30- 35 older graves that are not marked and the only record of who is there, is in the Burial Registry book.
I contacted the lady who has the book the other day and she invited me over to get the names to add to Find A Grave. While I was there she mentioned that she had 2 books, an old one and one she had rewritten for herself. She asked if I wanted the old one because if anything happened to her or her house all records would be lost - I jumped at the chance to have it!
I was going through it tonight and saw that my mother had been the "recorder" for many years, something I knew but had forgotten. Some of the entries by others were hard to read, the lot and block not recorded, the dates left blank, but my mothers was neat and every i dotted and every t crossed, just like she was in real life. Sadly I noted she recorded her parents burials as well as those of her son, her granddaughter and her husband. How sad that must have been.
This is why so many of our ancestors graves have been lost, only one set of records held in one place, that place is destroyed and all is gone. If there are no headstones in the grave yard to remind us and families move, within a generation or two no one remembers. The fog of time can obliterate all traces of your past.
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