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Graves older than 200 years


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Morning,

 

yesterday i visited a graveyard.

I noticed that only a few gravestones were older than ap. 200 years.

1300 graves -> only about 5 older than 200 years.

 

It would make sense to waymark them because often the really old ones decompose within time, so pictures and names are away.

 

I'm doing genealogical researches for my family, so having dates from old graves online would be great.

 

Perhaps there is a category for them yet?

 

Cheers lumbricus

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Well, I'm not sure that there is anything inherently interesting about a grave that is 200 years old. And, if one visits an old cemetery, there could be dozens of these, making it meaningless to waymark them all. I think it is better to define a category based on some other quality - the person's role in history, etc. rather than on just age. But, I'm not totally opposed to the idea.

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Morning,

 

yesterday i visited a graveyard.

I noticed that only a few gravestones were older than ap. 200 years.

1300 graves -> only about 5 older than 200 years.

 

It would make sense to waymark them because often the really old ones decompose within time, so pictures and names are away.

 

I'm doing genealogical researches for my family, so having dates from old graves online would be great.

 

Perhaps there is a category for them yet?

 

Cheers lumbricus

It would keep you pretty busy in some of the older cemeteries out east. Below are three of many sites I have used online.

 

http://www.daddezio.com/cemetery/junction/index.html

http://www.potifos.com/cemeteries.html#directories

http://www.findagrave.com/

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The other thing is, unless you confined it just to the US, you would be inundated. My local churchyard has loads of graves over 200 years old, and that doesn't include the grave markers in the church itself.

 

As a side note, there are local history organisations here in the UK that document every grave inscription in churchyards/cemeteries. Maybe they do that in the US too....

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The other thing is, unless you confined it just to the US, you would be inundated. My local churchyard has loads of graves over 200 years old, and that doesn't include the grave markers in the church itself.

 

As a side note, there are local history organisations here in the UK that document every grave inscription in churchyards/cemeteries. Maybe they do that in the US too....

 

The OP is in Germany thus in his area they are fairly rare. I know in some areas they would be very rare and in other areas they would be very prevalent. In some of the cemeteries I stop at in the UK and Ireland there would be several and the same in some of the old cemeteries in New England in the states. Now in the St. Louis area they would be rare but I have a few I could waymark already as I have them waymarked in other categories.

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In the area of Germany that my ancestors were from, you were only able to keep the cemetery plot a certain number of years. After that someone else was planted there.

 

The negative is that there are no helpful headstones for genealogy research, but the plus is that all the plots were well maintained. More like a Botanical Garden than a cemetery.

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In the area of Germany that my ancestors were from, you were only able to keep the cemetery plot a certain number of years. After that someone else was planted there.

 

The negative is that there are no helpful headstones for genealogy research, but the plus is that all the plots were well maintained. More like a Botanical Garden than a cemetery.

 

Learned something new! Dare I ask what they do with the body when it was time to place someone else there?

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There is usually hardly anything left. Here in Switzerland in most locations a tomb period is 25 years, the family can buy an additional period if they wish. After that time the body and the coffin have completely decomposed.

 

It is normal here, in a country with nearly 8 million inhabitants on only 40,000 square kilometers of which 60% are unhabitable there is siply no space for long term maintenance of cemeteries. But it is a problem for members of denominations and religions that set value on eternal tenure of burial.

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In the area of Germany that my ancestors were from, you were only able to keep the cemetery plot a certain number of years. After that someone else was planted there.

 

The negative is that there are no helpful headstones for genealogy research, but the plus is that all the plots were well maintained. More like a Botanical Garden than a cemetery.

 

Learned something new! Dare I ask what they do with the body when it was time to place someone else there?

 

I was told that they go in with a machine that essentially presses down into the grave to create a new hole. Is that really true? But bones last for ages don't they? So if that is true, would that mean that if someone dug up one of those grave spots they would find 'generations' of crushed bones? Glad I live in Canada, lots of land for long lasting graves. :o

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