Old Basil Cemetery, Baltimore, Ohio

Old Basil Cemetery is located on Market street in  Baltimore, Fairfield County, Ohio.

Why, you may ask, is it old?  Well, there's a new Basil cemetery too (I think it's official name may be Memorial).

Why, you ask next, is it called Basil when it's clearly in Baltimore?  I was told that Basil and Baltimore were separate towns that grew into each other.  When they decided to merge, after playing a bit with names like Basilmore, the merged town took the name Baltimore.

If you are quite finished...

This is a lovely little old cemetery.  It's very easy to find, but hard to park -- I didn't find any on-street parking, and the only driveway technically belongs to a mechanic's business tucked away behind the cemetery, but no one seemed to mind when I parked beside one of their buildings.

I do wish Fairfield county genealogists would get as organized about on-site directories as those in the Nebraska counties I visited last year; I got spoiled!  Fortunately, it's not that big and I did have a list of people to look for from my visit to to the genealogy society.

I found lots of Langels and related folks, mostly from the line of Daniel and Susannah Langel.  You can see my finds here.  Find A Grave appears to have good coverage -- see their page here.

Mt. Carmel Cemetery, Fairfield County, Ohio

Tuesday after NGS2012, I started a grand tour of cemeteries used by my Langel folks up in the Columbus area.  First up on the tour: Mt. Carmel Cemetery, on Basil-Western Road about a quarter mile west of Eversole.  It's pretty well hidden by trees if you're travelling west, so I didn't find it until I turned around and headed back east.  I didn't see a driveway or parking area, so I just pulled off the side of the road, ran over to the cemetery, and snapped a few quick pictures.

The two markers I was hunting here were the ones for David and Eliza (Behney) Langel, my GGG-grandparents, and Eliza and Elnora Langel, two of their daughters.  The stone for Eliza and Elnora presented a new mystery:

The death date for Eliza hasn't been finished!  My best guess is that Eliza was still alive when Elnora died in 1914; Eliza bought one stone for both of them and had this carving done.  The question is why the date wasn't updated when Eliza died.  Did the family (and mortuary) forget?  Seems unlikely.  Was there not enough money?  Perhaps she's not even buried there.  Perhaps she moved far enough away that her new neighbors or family didn't know about the old stone.  Or maybe she got married and is buried with her husband, under her married name?  As usual, one new piece of information creates as many questions as it answers...

Charles Langel, 6th Ohio Volunteer Infantry

It seems fitting that I'm spending Memorial Day looking into the military service of Charles Langel, my great-grandfather.  I found his cemetery marker during my trip to Ohio:

and look at that little marker stuck in the ground.  Here...let me get you a closer look:

Apparently, he served in the military.  I didn't know!

Ancestry.com has some more information.  He served in the Ohio National Guard for several years, and then joined the 6th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in 1898.  He was the captain of Company E during their stays in Tennessee and Georgia, and when they were to sent to Cuba for about 4 months.  Ancestry has a scanned "war album" of this year of active duty, which has lots of lovely information, but it is incredibly frustrating -- it's a picture book, but the scans of the pictures are all high contrast and, therefore, useless. I wish they would rescan in grayscale so we can see those pictures of camp kitchens and Thanksgiving dinner and the company prank!

Well, I'm off to order a pension file.  I also need to find out why we were sending soldiers to Cuba in 1898...

Genealogists to the Rescue!

Newsflash!  Someone found some old headstones in a ditch south of Wichita, the sheriff's office makes the names public while continuing to investigate, and within hours genealogists have found the cemetery while the police are still looking.  How?  Easy -- the sheriff's staff were searching actual cemeteries and genealogists were searching findagrave.com.  Thanks to the work of the local genealogy societies, Find-A-Grave has Wichita covered.

My favorite part of the article is this remark from the officer in charge of the investigation: "He estimated he heard from 50 people within an hour. “I didn’t realize how many people do these genealogy searches,” Pollock said."

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2012/02/21/2224386/headstones-dating-from-the-1800s.html#storylink=cpy

Vienna Cemetery

One interesting stop in Vienna last week was the cemetery, Zentralfriedhof .  Our guide was interested in showing us the showpiece markers, like this one for Beethoven

but I kept hopping out to take pictures of the normal people sections, like this one

It's an interesting cemetery.  Firstly, it's huge; apparently a far-sighted city leader decided that the cemeteries around the city's churches were filling up and somewhat unhygienic, so they extrapolated out the number of residents they would have for the next century and established a cemetery out on the projected outskirts that could handle everyone.  While they were establishing it, they created some zones in the center for luminaries, especially the musicians, and moved their graves to the new cemetery.  There's a marker for Mozart, although the actual location of his body is unknown.  It's much more densely filled than many I visit in the U.S.

And remember the scene in the movie Amadeus where Mozart's body is dumped out of a reusable casket?  The scene gave viewers, particularly Americans, the sense that his was a pauper's funeral.  According to our tour guide, this is wrong -- that same leader had decided that burying nice caskets was wasteful and decreed the use of these reusable ones; it was too radical an idea for the time, so the practice didn't last, but it was used for a while.

For more information about this cemetery, check out Wikipedia or the official website (in German).

Gaylord Cemetery

This cemetery is just south of Smith Center, Kansas.  It's a bit tricky to find, because you have to drive through the tiny town of Gaylord. Do NOT trust any computer map that shows a road running directly east-west from the cemetery to the highway -- it's just a rut in a field and is not a road at all.

It's very well kept, but I didn't find a directory.

Athol Cemetery

There's not much left of the town of Athol, in Smith county, Kansas, but they have a lovely cemetery.  I've seen it referred to as the Athol Cemetery, Pleasant View Cemetery, and Meyers Cemetery.  There's a good directory.

After Googling for directions, I found myself on a little dirt road, driving through a corn field.  As I came over the hill, I saw an incredible panorama view which included a lovely cemetery.

As it turns out, there was a shorter route, but it wasn't nearly as picturesque!

This cemetery had the Moore and Frazier families.

Scandia Cemetery

In the tiny town of Scandia, Kansas, is what may be the prettiest cemetery I've seen -- the Riverview Cemetery sits on top of a bluff overlooking the Republican River.

I didn't see an index, but found my Hays/Sigsbee marker easily from the road.

Pawnee City Cemetery

If you find Pawnee City, you've found the cemetery -- it's right on the main road through town.  It's a big, well-kept cemetery with a very good directory and map in a little house onsite.  Beware -- there are half a dozen sections, with names, and the block and plot numbers repeat, so you really do need to write down the names (guess who didn't do that the first time!)  Most of my Shellhorns and Aikins have markers; the Colony plot, however, has several names in the directory but only one marker.

DuBois Cemetery

The DuBois cemetery is just south of the town of DuBois on the main road through town. It's very easy to find and very well maintained.

I didn't see an onsite directory, but the Pawnee Historical Society has a directory and map.

I found a few Shellhorns and Miners here, and lots of Britts.  Selected photos are here.

Cincinnati Cemetery

Because the town of Cincinnati pretty much disappeared many years ago, the cemetery is located in the middle of a cornfield.  It is very well maintained today, but shows signs that suggest it has not always been so.  There is no onsite directory, so I would recommend stopping at the Beatrice Public Library or the Pawnee City Historical Society before heading out into the countryside; the cemetery is small enough to walk around looking for stones, but you'd want to be sure you are looking for Cincinnati rather than the DuBois or Pawnee City cemeteries before braving the gravel roads to Cincinnati. It also appears that there were a lot of burials for which there are no markers visible today.

I found markers for several of my relatives, both direct ancestors like Elisha and Flora DeWitt and Elizabeth DeWitt, and for other Miners, Lores and DeWitts.  I've put them all on my website at Cincinnati Cemetery.  (I only took pictures of relatives or probable relatives, which I estimate at approximately 1/4 of the visible markers.)