Follow Friday: St. Louis Religious Cemetery Databases

I'm going to start participating in the Genealogy Follow Friday meme

For recommending genealogy bloggers, specific blog posts, genealogy websites, or genealogy resources.

I am already creating lists of specific blog posts for my Weekly Genealogy Picks every Sunday.  However, I will focus here on genealogy resources.

The two resources I'm starting with will only be useful for those whose research takes them through St. Louis, Missouri.  However,  these two databases contain burial records from over twenty cemeteries in the region.

• Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of St. Louis

Here you can search a database for fifteen Catholic cemeteries in the St. Louis archdiocese.  The website implies that the database was completed for those fifteen cemeteries in 2003, and has since been updated in 'real time.'

• Resurrection
• Sts. Peter & Paul
• Mt. Olive
• Calvary
• Sacred Heart
• St. Charles Borromeo
• St. Peter
• St. Ferdinand
• St. Monica
• Our Lady
• Holy Cross
• St. Vincent
• Ste. Philippine
• St. Mary's
• Ascension

For some of the cemeteries, the results provide a lot# with a link, which allows you to easily find everyone else in the same lot.

There is also historical information and photo galleries for each cemetery.

• Jewish Cemetery Index

Though some burials are missing, this database, on the St. Louis Genealogical Society website, contains records from seven Jewish cemeteries.

• Chesed Shel Emeth (1816-2003)
• United Hebrew (1849-2002)
• New Mount Sinai (1853-2002)
• Beth Hamedrosh Hagodol (1920-2002)
• B'Nai Amoona (1901-2003)
• B'Nai Amoona (Old Section) (1872-1895)
• Chevra Kadisha Adas B'Nai Israel (1924-2003)

	It's hard for me to overestimate how much I owe in my personal research to this one database. All four families of my father's grandparents arrived in St. Louis between 1885-1910.  Almost all of the immigrants, and many of the following generations are buried in these cemeteries.

Respect for the Dead

In Oxford, Alabama a 1500 year old Indian mound (likely a burial mound) is being destroyed and replaced by a Sam's Club.

Four employees at a cemetery outside Chicago are accused of digging up bodies and reselling plots at a historic black cemetery.

In positive news, the Osage Tribe may purchase an ancestral mound in the St. Louis area

Jewish Waldheim Cemetery - Chicago, IL

Images of graves submerged in water appear in the newspaper. My first thought was for my great grandparents - Samuel and Helen Deutsch - buried there, somewhere.

Coincidentally, on Monday, I discovered the cemetery's online request form Elsewhere I read they will email photographs, so I sent in a request. I haven't heard back, though the website says to give them 3-5 days, so I could hear tomorrow - if the graves are accessible.

In the cemetery there are 200,000 graves, only a fraction near the river. I live five hours away by car, and haven't been to the cemetery. My mother attended an aunt's funeral there five years ago. My great-aunt is likely a safe distance from the flood waters, though -- the newspaper says only the indigent have been buried there in recent years.

A map I found of the cemetery suggests the graves of my great grandparents are probably safe. They are in Section 37, (aka Progressive Order of the West), which is apparently to the East of Des Plaines Avenue, separating it from the river. I don't know how far East, or how far the river has flooded.

Even if their stones are safe, my thoughts go to the heartrending photographs. They are family of others.

Massive cemetery desecration in NJ

four teenagers over two nights, toppled 500 tombstones in a New Brunswick, NJ Jewish cemetery.

I don't know of any relatives buried in the cemetery, but the photographs, and video are heartrending. The police haven't yet found evidence of it being a hate-based crime, but I just can't comprehend why the teens would have done this. There was a lot of hatred against society in general at least to compel them to go through the physical labor of that level of destruction.

A cemetery restoration fund has been established by the local community.

Tombstone Tales

Last night I went to the monthly meeting of the St. Louis Genealogical Society. This month’s discussion topic was an appropriate theme for October: Tombstone Tales. There was a lot of good information presented on dos and don'ts regarding visiting tombstones. (Don’t clean a tombstone with household solvents. Very little is safe for a tombstone beyond water. If it’s a family burial ground, it’s not public, and you need to ask permission, or you could end up facing an unhappy landowner with or without gun. What you should wear. Tips on taking good photographs. Stuff like that.) There was also discussion and handouts about common symbols and artwork you find on tombstones and what they mean.

The presentation ended with several slides of tombstones…some from all over the world, and some from St. Louis. I had no idea that General William Tecumseh Sherman, who marched through Georgia, was buried here. But there were two graves shown, several slides apart, that caught my attention. After seeing the second slide, I wanted to raise my hand and ask a question, but I wasn’t sure if I recalled the first slide correctly, and didn’t want to embarrass myself if I remembered it wrong. So, alas, I said nothing.

The first slide was a picture of the tombstone of Dred Scott. It was originally an unmarked grave, but a stone was eventually erected. It says on the stone “Freed by my friend, Taylor Blow.”

Several slides later, was the tombstone of famed educator, Susan Blow.

Taylor was her uncle. Her grandparents were the owners of Dred Scott. Her father was Henry Taylor Blow, one-time ambassador to Venezuela. But census records clearly indicate brothers Taylor Blow and Henry Taylor Blow were separate individuals.

I either wasn't paying attention during the Local History section of my education, or the connection between these two was never mentioned. I actually couldn't remember much about Susan Blow beyond that she was important to education in some way. She introduced the concept of kindergartens to the US.

Dieku

Apparently a poet is putting up a new form of poetry around Manhattan. He is calling himself “Nick Beef” which is a reference to an empty grave next to the grave of Lee Harvey Oswald.

(Click to enlarge)

The words in Beef’s dieku above aren’t just references to chess pieces but to actual moves that can lead to a checkmate.

(source)

more dieku (including one that attacks my 10th cousin)

For a Reform Jewish amateur genealogist, this is the ultimate test of one’s religious education:

With the help of this guide, I succeeded.

Line 1: Here is interred
Line 2: Reb Moshe Leyb, son of
Line 3: Ahron Kruvant.
Line 4: Died five days into
Line 5: the month of Tishrei
Line 6: in the year 5672.
Line 7: May his soul be bound in the bonds of life.

5 Tishrei 5672 = Sept 26-27, 1911.

No indication at all of when he was born. Birth dates aren’t as important in the Jewish tradition.

Those of you who have always wondered what my middle initial “C” stood for…the picture above gives you a huge clue.