I have awarded my latest grant (the first of multiple recipients this quarter) to the Vine Lake Preservation Trust of Medfield, MA to assist with enhancements to their website search feature and app.
In this week's Roundup: What family members shared in obituaries for deceased loved ones who perhaps hadn't spent their lives in the most aboveboard way, saving a graveyard from development, a new resource for genealogical research, and more...
In this week's Roundup: grim history beneath a Baltimore parking lot, homes for sale for $1.25 in an effort to keep a Sardinian town alive, and more.
In this week's Roundup: The smallest, oldest cemetery in Paris, upcoming genealogy reads, the remains of a recently identified missing soldier from WWII are being returned to his family for burial with full military honors, and much more . . .
In this week's Roundup: Goat yoga in cemeteries, two soldiers accounted for and returning home, gardening the graves of strangers in a historic cemetery, and more . . .
In this week's Roundup: Get your heart warmed, reading about one bride's 'something blue'. Also: explore the 65 symbols on US military tombstones, check out Ancestry.com news, and more.
This quarter, I awarded a grant to the Westside Cemetery Preservation Association to support their work of restoring and cleaning up the gravesites of enslaved African Americans and their descendants, found in cemeteries that have become overgrown and are largely hidden in secluded woods near sugar cane fields in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Click through to the post for more details and to see how you can join me in supporting the work the WCPA is doing.
Get ready to time-travel this week: past, present, and future! To start, cemeteries face special challenges in densely-populated urban areas. Check out the fascinating history of a Hong Kong cemetery where lie diplomats, missionaries, opium smugglers, soldiers, revolutionaries and local Christian converts and then concept art for a light-filled potential cemetery in New York City. Next, enjoy a story in which DNA plays a role in introducing two half-siblings to each other. Round off this week's exploration with more on the 2016 Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards.
Lots of goodies in this week's Roundup! British celebrities highlight their "refugenes" in an effort to help refugees. We also have two stories around DNA, two stories in which blacksmiths play a part -- one forging awards from pieces of the Statue of Liberty and the other performing marriage ceremonies(!) -- two stories about segregation in cemeteries, and more.
In this week's Roundup: dream over Russian window art (stunning!), read the stories of some Missouri adoptees who were able to learn their biological parents' identities thanks to passage of a recent law, check out the world's tallest cemetery, and much more.
