Notes from the White County Historical Society

By Charlene Shields

Notes from the White County Historical Society as they appear in "The Carmi Times."

Copyright ©2000 by "The Carmi Times" Permission to reprint granted to Cindy Birk Conley and the ILGenWeb by Tammy Knox, editor, "The Carmi Times."


Column reprinted in Wyoming paper
Cemetery help still needed  3/8/2000


A nice letter from Annetta C. Smith enclosed a clipping of a column from a Riverton, Wyoming newspaper in which one of my columns was re-printed in its entirety. So word about the Genealogy Library seems to get around! Annetta Smith is a descendant of Zachariah Cross of White County fame.
.....
As the weather makes it more enticing to be outside, expect to read more and more here about the cemetery project. When Harriet Vaught did the cemetery books some 40 or 50 years ago, she put the entire county into two volumes. However, she did not include children's tombstones in any of the cemeteries. And there have been many more deaths during the past 40 or 50 years since the books came out. Plus, we hope to have an every-name index in our books. All of which means we will have to have more than two volumes. Several counties are putting these books out by townships, so that's a possibility.

Reminder: Read the tombstones by rows. DO NOT ALPHABETIZE--we want to know who is buried next to whom. Be sure to put your name as a reader. Already I'm getting mixed up on a couple of cemeteries and may give credit to the wrong person.

It would help library visitors tremendously if you would give directions from Carmi to the cemetery. We often have visitors who want to go to some little cemetery, and I don't know where many of these cemeteries are. With all the roads being numbered now, it should be fairly simple to come up with some kind of directions.

And all of the little family cemeteries listed in Vaught's books are giving me trouble. For instance, in Hawthorne Township, there is listed Raglin Family, McHenry Family, Jones Family, Tanquary, Bryant, Cemetery in Sec. 22, Pomeroy Family, Harper Family and Holderby Family. I need help from some of you who live in that vicinity. Are all of these little cemeteries still there? Whose farm are they on? Who will read some of them and report to me? I'm not acquainted in that area and know of no way to find out where these places are and/or if they still exist. HELP!
.....
From the CLEVELAND FAMILY CHRONICLES come a few gems:

Genealogy: Chasing your own tale. (This is the best definition of genealogy I've read!)

Every family tree has some sap in it.

Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.

Theory of Relativity: If you go back far enough, we're all related.
 



Return to the Notes from the White County Historical Society Page

Return to the White County ILGenWeb Page

The Coordinator for the White County, Illinois ILGenWeb page is Cindy Birk Conley


Copyright © 2000 byCindy Birk Conley, all rights reserved. For personal use only. Commercial use of the information contained in these pages is strictly prohibited without prior permission. If copied, this copyright notice must appear with the information.