Perinchief Chapels of Mount Holly, New Jersey

It was in 2005 that I visited my sister in New Jersey and put 700 miles on her car in five days.  I did that by driving in every borough of New York City and the two additional counties on Long Island while I met about 25 cousins on my mother's side of the family.  I also drove around Mount Holly, New Jersey researching my father's family.  In addition to finding the house where his mother (my grandmother) was born, I visited the Brotherhood Cemetery three different times looking for the grave of my great-grandfather Cornelius Elmer Sellers.

You see, I had been talking with my grandaunt Betty, my grandfather's youngest sister, who at that time was the only surviving sibling.  I told her I was planning a trip to New Jersey and New York, and she asked if I could find out whether her father had a tombstone over his grave.  If he didn't, she wanted to purchase one and have it placed.  I adored Aunt Betty, so of course I told her I would try.

I knew which cemetery Elmer was buried in because I had his death certificate.  I had also spoken with the cemetery sexton, a Mr. Szelc, who had confirmed the burial and had found records indicating that a few young children were buried in the same plot.  I knew from my research that my great-grandparents had several children who did not live to adulthood, and I wasn't surprised that they were buried together.

The first time I visited the cemetery I walked up and down every row and path I could identify, looking for Elmer.  I thought I had done a pretty thorough job, but I was not successful.  I knew from my previous conversations with Mr. Szelc that he wasn't available during the day, so it wasn't going to do me any good to call him and ask where Elmer might be.

The only other option I could think of was calling Perinchief Chapels.  That was the funeral home that had handled Elmer's burial in 1918, and it was still in operation.  In fact, I learned that it was (at that time) the second-oldest family-owned funeral home in New Jersey.  (They might be the oldest one now.)  I was thinking that maybe they had a map of the cemetery, because they did burials there, and just maybe they could find Elmer on the map.

So I called and explained my request.  Well, no, they didn't have a map.  But the David Perinchief who answered the phone said that he would come out to the cemetery and help me look!  What a wonderful thing to do!  And a short time later, he arrived with his son, Patrick.  And the three of us tromped up and down the paths in the cemetery, again thinking we were doing a thorough job of looking at every tombstone, and yet we still didn't find Elmer.  I thanked them both very much, and they returned to work.

I decided to write about this today because it's National Funeral Director and Mortician Recognition Day, and I want to recognize the Perinchiefs for taking time out of their work day to help me look for my great-grandfather, even if we weren't successful.  I'm not sure that every funeral home owner would have done the same.

Now, because we hadn't found Elmer, I called Mr. Szelc that evening and told him about my adventures during the day.  He told me he knew exactly where Elmer was.  He would put an orange flag next to Elmer's stone the next morning, and I should go back to the cemetery and look for it.

I did exactly that.  I walked up and down those same paths and missed the flag the first time I passed it because it was very small.  But I eventually saw it and discovered why the Perinchiefs and I had not found Elmer's tombstone the previous day.  Not only was it small, it was made of marble, which had heavily eroded during the ensuing 87 years.  It was very worn, and even with Mr. Szelc's flag to point me to it, I still had trouble reading Elmer's name on it.  But I found him!

When I returned home, I told Aunt Betty about my search and that her father did indeed have a stone.  Because it was so worn, she wanted to order a new one.  And then came a strange wrinkle to the story:  Mr. Szelc's primary occupation was making tombstones.  But when I called him to order a new stone for Elmer, he didn't call me back.  I tried several times and never received a response from him again.  So Elmer still doesn't have a new stone, and I'm sure the current one has eroded even more over the past 20 years.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Most Recent No-Name Ancestor

I'm not going to write about the ancestor most people might expect for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  Sometimes an ancestor or relative has no name at all — not even a given name (for males, we usually can surmise a surname, but . . .).  We all have millions of them.

2.  Tell us about one (or more) of your ancestors that have no given name and no birth surname who has perhaps married an ancestor with a given name and surname from whom you are descended.  (Don't worry, we'll do unknown parents some time soon.)

3.  When was the last time you looked for this no-name ancestor?

4.  Share information about your no-name ancestor(s) in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

Okay, here's mine.

I'm sure many people would expect me to write about my paternal grandfather's father, whom I usually discuss when it comes to recent ancestors I haven't identified.  But in June I posted that I have decided his last name must be Mundy (or a spelling variant thereof), and I was already pretty sure his given name included "bert" in it.  So he really isn't a no-name ancestor anymore.

I'm going further afield.

The first person who next came to my mind is the father of my great-great-grandmother Beila, who married Simcha Dovid Mekler, possibly in Kamenets Litovsk (now Kamyanyets, Belarus).  I wrote about her in August for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, "Five Questions for an Ancestor."  I know her given name, and I have estimated her year of death to be before 1924.  That's all I know about her.

So it stands to reason that I don't know anything about her father, who I am calling my "no-name ancestor" for the purpose of this post.

I admit I have never looked for him.  To be honest, I have barely looked for Beila.  I'm pretty sure both were born in the Russian Empire.  I think Beila was probably born in what was Grodno gubernia and is now part of Belarus.  Her father might have been born there, or possibly in what is now Lithuania.

If I could find a marriage record for Beila, it might include her father's name on it.  But because of the dearth of records for Jews in the former Grodno gubernia (most having been deliberately destroyed during World War II, to eradicate the history of the Jews in the area), it is unlikely I will ever find that marriage record.

If I could find a tombstone for Beila, it might have her father's name on it in Hebrew.  But the Jewish cemeteries in that area were also pretty thoroughly destroyed during World War II, and it is unlikely I will find that tombstone.

If I could find the family in a Russian revision list, perhaps the 1897 list, it would probably list her father's name and maybe even a maiden name.  Even a Russified version would be helpful.  I actually have tried searching for her, Simcha Dovid Mekler, and the two children I know of in the revision lists as transcribed on JewishGen.org, but I have not found them.  I know that many of the revision lists did not survive.  Perhaps one day a page with my family on it will be found in an attic or tucked inside the wall of a house.

Tombstone Thursday: Cornelius Elmer Sellers

Cornelius Elmer Sellers
Born November 7, 1874, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania
Died September 14, 1918, Mount Holly, Burlington County, New Jersey
Buried September 17, 1918, Brotherhood Cemetery, Haines Township, Burlington County, New Jersey

My great-grandfather was born 150 years ago today.  It was an adventure finding his tombstone in 2005.  It took three visits to the cemetery to accomplish!  I wrote about it in 2017.

Calendar Coincidence

A couple of days ago, on November 9, I picked up a photo of my great-great-grandparents' tombstone which was sitting on my desk.  They are buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens.  And I saw that my great-great-grandmother had died on that exact date, November 9, in 1934.

Maybe she was calling to me?

November 9, 1934 on the Hebrew calendar was 2 Kislev 5695.  So my great-great-grandmother's yahrzeit (date of commemoration of her death) is 2 Kislev.

On the 2023 secular calendar, 2 Kislev will fall on November 15.

So even though I blew it by not posting this on November 9, I'm ahead of schedule for the yahrzeit.

And thank you to Steve Morse for the handy calendar conversion tool.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (on Sunday!): A Veteran's Service and Gravesite

I've missed the past few Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenges, mostly because they were repeats of ones from previous years and I didn't have anything new to say.  This weekend, however, Randy Seaver came up with a new twist for Veterans Day:

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along; cue the Mission:  Impossible! music!):

(1) To celebrate Veterans Day, pick one of your ancestors or relatives with a military record and a gravestone.

(2) Tell us about your ancestor's military service.

(3) Tell us about your ancestor's gravestone:  Where is it, what is the inscription, when were you last there?  Show us a picture of it if you have one available. 

(4) Write your own blog post about this ancestor and gravestone, or share it in a comment to this blog post or in a  Facebook post.

The reason I wasn't able to do this for Saturday is because at first I couldn't find one of my military relatives for whom I had a photo of a gravestone.  I went through several ancestors, futilely searching:

Umpty-umpth-great-grandfather Hananiah Gaunt, Revolutionary War veteran:  no known tombstone in his own time

Umpty-umpth-great-grandafther (one fewer generation than Hananiah Gaunt) Moses Mulliner, Revolutionary War veteran:  no known tombstone in his own time, unknown location of grave now

Father Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr., New Jersey and Florida Army National Guard veteran:  He doesn't have a tombstone.

That finished the ancestors whom I know had any type of military service.  Then on to collateral lines:

Maternal uncle Gary Steve Meckler, U.S. Army veteran:  I don't have a photograph of his tombstone.

First cousin John McKay Appleton, Coast Guard veteran:  I don't have a photo of his tombstone.

Second cousin once removed Victor Gordon, U.S. Navy veteran:  I don't have a photo of his tombstone.

Granduncle Sidney Gordon, World War II U.S. Navy veteran:  I don't have a photo of his tombstone.  At least I have photos of him in uniform during the war.

Great-granduncle William Brainin, World War I U.S. Army veteran:  I don't have a photo of his tombstone.  I used to have a photo of him in his Army uniform, but it has disappeared.

I also looked at individuals in my adoptive Sellers line:

Great-great-grandfather Cornelius Godshalk Sellers, Civil War veteran:  probably no tombstone originally, now unknown grave location (because the cemetery was sold for a housing development and only graves for which people ponied up money were moved)

Distant cousins Edwin Elias Sellers, career U.S. Army veteran, and his son David Foote Sellers, career U.S. Navy veteran, actually do have tombstones I can find images of.  I considered writing about one of them — and I would have had tons of material, because they both had long, well documented careers — but I kept hunting for someone on one of my blood-related lines.  And I finally found:

Great-granduncle David Harry Brainin, World War I U.S. Army veteran (and William's brother).  Born approximately March 25, 1888 (at least that's the date he used on some records in the United States), probably in or near Kreuzburg, Russian Empire (now Krustpils, Latvia); died May 6, 1971 in Vineland, Cumberland County, New Jersey; buried in Alliance Cemetery, Norma, Salem County, New Jersey.

I wrote about Dave and my discovery of what little I know of his Army service a few years ago.  He registered for the draft on June 5, 1917 in Butte, Montana.  According to his fast-tracked military petition for naturalization, he arrived at Camp Lewis, Washington on March 5, 1918.  He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen on June 4, 1918.  The two witnesses on his petition were a captain and a first lieutenant, probably officers in his unit.  I don't know when he officially entered or mustered out of the Army.

But I do have a photo of his tombstone:

There isn't much of an inscription:  Just BRAININ over DAVID 1888–1971 and BETTY 1900–1978.

Thank you to Mary Ann Missimer-Moore, who took this photo and has given blanket permission to use the photos she posts on Find A Grave.

There's about an 80% chance that any documents relating to Dave's service were destroyed in the 1973 National Personnel Records Center fire.  I actually live not far from what was Camp Lewis, now Joint Base Lewis-McChord.  I searched and discovered that Lewis Army Museum is on the base.  I doubt there will be anything specific to my uncle in the museum.  But I won't know for sure about either until I try, will I?

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Create Your Own Tombstone

Is it morbid to create your own tombstone?  Randy Seaver of Saturday Night Genealogy Fun apparently doesn't think so!

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) Create your own tombstone at http://www.tombstonebuilder.com/.  And/or create one for a relative who doesn't have one, or one for an event or significant issue.

(2) Share your creation with the genea-sphere in your own blog post, or on Facebook or Instagram.  Be sure to drop a link in a comment to this post.

Here's mine:

I couldn't figure out how long I want to live, so I left it up in the air.

I also created a tombstone for Moses Mulliner, one of my Revolutionary War ancestors.  His brother was a Loyalist who was hung for treason, yet he has a tombstone that is regularly replaced.  Moses has no surviving tombstone, even though he was a Patriot.  So I figure Moses deserves one.

IAJGS Conference, Days 5 and 6 and Going Home

The IAJGS conference runs longer than most genealogy conferences, so as you get toward the end you might not have quite as much energy as at the beginning.  On Thursday morning, the fifth day, I wanted to go to the Leadership Series session on membership database solutions, as the topic has come up at our board meetings for the past couple of years.  I really did.  But it was at 7:00 a.m., and I was up until 6:00 a.m. working on that day's presentation.

See, on Wednesday night I was going over the PowerPoint file for my Thursday talk, and then the computer rebelled.  It said it couldn't save the file.  I tried save as.  I tried again to save it directly.  The computer was adamant — nope, not happening; sorry, unable to comply.  After trying everything in my rather limited arsenal, I finally had to concede defeat.  And then I had to reconstruct the presentation from scratch, without the benefit of the graphics that were on my home computer.  I tried to remember what the original slides had said and made do with what I could download from Ancestry and other sites.  Around 6:00 I was too bleary-eyed to focus, so I gave up and fell asleep.

I knew I wouldn't make it to the database session (I hope they make the information available to societies later), and being awake in time for the 8:15 talk about Jewish settlement in the Caribbean didn't sound realistic, but I thought I had a chance of going to the Professional Genealogists Birds of a Feather get-together at 9:45.  I slept through my alarm.  So much for that idea.

I finally did wake up, in time to go to Dana Cohen Sprott's session on the "Lost Jews of St. Maarten."  She first gave a broad overview of Jewish settlement on several Caribbean islands (after pointing out multiple times that the correct pronunciation has the emphasis on the third, not the second, syllable) and then focused a little more on St. Maarten (where she lives) and on the "dead man found behind the Radio Shack."  Apparently a body was discovered behind what was at the time a Radio Shack but what previously was a Jewish burial ground (see page 10 of the "WeekEnder" section of the October 30, 2010 issue of The Daily Herald for more details).  Dana has been researching the Jewish presence in the Caribbean for several years.  It was an entertaining and informative talk.

For lunch Mark Fearer and I had a very small ProGen get-together (if any other ProGen alumni were at the conference, they didn't own up to it).  We had a lively discussion covering many professional genealogy topics, which helped make up for the fact that I missed the BoF meeting.

The first session of the afternoon was the reconstructed presentation, which was about my research on two Colonial Jews, Daniel Joseph of Virginia and Israel Joseph of South Carolina (the first Colonial research I ever did!).  I told everyone up front what had happened to the file and apologized for the situation, then gamely went on to give the talk.  Lucky for me, everyone was very understanding.  My most recent research results (learned only a couple of weeks before the conference) actually ended up running contrary to my original hypothesis, so I opened it up to suggestions from the audience on possible future avenues to pursue.  I received some very helpful ideas I'll be looking at, including checking with the American Jewish Archives to see if there might be original research notes from when Rabbi Malcolm Stern wrote his book on First American Jewish Families.

Since Thursday was the last day the ProQuest databases would be available, I bypassed the rest of the afternoon sessions and spent the next two hours looking for articles about family members in newspapers.  I was particularly successful with Schumeister cousins appearing in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune collection.  I have about 40 articles with lots of information on those relatives.  And I have copies of my cousin's and my sister-in-law's doctoral dissertations thanks to ProQuest!

I rounded out the afternoon with a mentor session that someone had even signed up for ahead of time.  The same woman who solved a brick wall because of information in my Sunday talk came back for more.  She's trying to determine where an ancestor came from.  I gave her lots of homework and resources to check out.  After that I hung around to enjoy the prebanquet reception (all vegetarian, but probably not kosher) and socialized with several friends before heading back to my room to collapse.

Friday is always the "afterthought" day of the conference.  It's only half a day, and a lot of attendees leave late Thursday or early Friday.  Given that, I was pleasantly surprised to see a good turnout for my 8:15 talk (someone really had it in for me at this conference with early time slots), which was on immigration and naturalization records.  Even the illustrious Hal Bookbinder was there (I think he enjoyed it).  The bad news was that the air conditioning appeared to be off, either because the conference organizers had decided to economize or the hotel saw fit to cut it off early.  I was not amused.

The same a/c problem reared its ugly head when I tried to enjoy Mark Fearer's talk on Jewish immigration to Texas.  While I didn't have a choice about staying in the room for my own talk, I did for Mark's, and sadly I had to abandon it in favor of the resource room, where the air condioning was still going strong.  Since I was there, I took advantage of the databases still available and focused on JewishData.com.  I found photographs of several tombstones for my friend's family.  I also tried to search on the Israel Genealogy Research Association site, but the entire site was down, which was very disappointing.

And that was it!  Poof, the conference was over!  Then it was just a matter of checking out of the hotel, waiting for the airport shuttle, and flying home.  As usual, overall it was a good conference, and I learned lots of new things.  There are always some duds, but they were definitely outweighed by the many informative talks, and it was great to see so many of my genealogy friends and colleagues in person.  Plus I had the opportunity to participate in the first annual membership recruitment drive of the Antarctica Jewish Genealogical Society!  I'm glad I was able to attend this year.  I wish I could go to Warsaw in 2018, but I suspect that won't be practical for me, so I'll focus on Cleveland in 2019 instead.

Representatives of the Antarctica Jewish Genealogical Society,
just before the keynote presentation on Sunday, July 23, 2017

My commentary on days 1 and 2 of the conference is here, and that for days 3 and 4 is here.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Unbroken Chain of Gravestones

I'm going to be pretty much a total failure tonight for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge.  Lack of digitization is part of the problem, but not all of it.

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I challenge you to:

(1) Determine what is your longest unbroken line of ancestral gravestones:  How many generations can you go back in time?  Do you have photographs of them?

(2) Tell us and/or show us in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog, or in a Facebook status or Google+ stream post.

Let's see how lacking my contribution is and the reasons for that.

I am happy to report that my father is still alive.  That means that he has no tombostone, and therefore nothing for me to have a photo of.

My mother was cremated and her ashes scattered in Choctawhatchee Bay in Okaloosa County, Florida.  She has no cenotaph or other marker.

So much for my parents.

On my mother's side, even though I have seen it, I don't think I have a photograph of my grandfather's tombstone.  I believe I have a photo of my grandmother's tombostone, but it was taken with a film camera and I haven't digitized the image.

On my father's side, I'm not sure if my grandfather has a tombstone.  If he does, I'm pretty sure I don't have a photo of it.

I do, however, have a photo of my grandmother's tombstone.  (Finally!)  Anna (Gauntt) Stradling [Sellers] was born January 14, 1893 in Westhampton Township, Burlington County, New Jersey and died January 20, 1986 in Lindstrom, Chisago County, Minnesota.

According to FindAGrave, neither Nana's mother nor her father has a marker in the Brotherhood Cemetery in Burlington County, New Jersey, where they are buried.  So I have one generation in this unbroken chain!

But let's get hypothetical.  IF I could find the photo of my maternal grandmother's tombstone, that would give me one for that family.  I do have a photo of the tombstone of her father, Joe Gordon, who was born about 1892, probably in or near Kamenets Podolsky, Podolia, Russian Empire, and died May 2, 1955 in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York:

That's my grandmother, Lillyan (Gordon) Meckler, standing on the left and her brother Sidney Gordon on the right.  I think this photo was taken at the unveiling of my great-grandfather's stone, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

I also know I have a nondigitized photograph of the tombstone of Joe's father, my great-great-grandfather Victor Gordon.  He was born about 1866ish in or near Kamenets Podolsky and died January 26, 1925 in Brooklyn.  So even though I'm not able to post them all tonight, I have a chain of three generations of tombstones on my Gorodetsky/Gordon line.  I have no idea when my 3x-great-grandfather Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky died or where he is buried, so I don't think I'll be adding that to my records anytime soon.  And my maternal uncles are happily still alive.  I think three is about as far as I'm likely to get for a while.

Obviously, I have not made a huge effort to photograph tombstones of my family members, nor to digitize the ones that I do have.  I guess I can't do everything!

Saturday Day Night Genealogy Fun: Your Best Genealogy Day Ever

I've noticed recently that several of the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topics appear to be annual themes.  Last year's request for "best genealogy day" was in October, however, not November.  But on to this week's request from Randy Seaver's:

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible music, please!):

1) What was your very "Best Genealogy Day Ever?"  It might be the day you solved a thorny research problem, the day you spent at a repository and came away with more records than you could imagine, or the day you met a cousin or visited an ancestral home.

2)  Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.  Be sure to drop a comment to this post if you write your own blog post and link to it.

I've already written about two really great genealogy days (figuring out my great-great-grandmother's actual maiden name and meeting a lot of cousins from one family line), so I had to think about another good one.  I have settled on the day on which serendipity played a part.

At some point I learned that my paternal grandfather's mother, Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland, had been living with him when she died, and I ordered her death certificate from the state of Florida.  The certificate told me that she was buried in the Valparaiso Cemetery, Valparaiso being essentially a "twin city" to Niceville, where I used to live.  Valparaiso also is not far from where my father has been living for several years now.  So I told my father that the next time I came to visit, we were going to find his grandmother's grave.

I think it was the summer of 1995 when I flew out.  My stepfather had agreed we would scatter my mother's ashes when my brother and I were both there, and my brother was going to be in the area for his high school 15-year reunion, so I made plans to be there also.  I reminded my father ahead of time we were going to the cemetery.

The day we went to look for the cemetery, my father decided we didn't need a map, because Valparaiso was so small it wasn't going to take us long to find it (ha!).  My stepmother came with us.  After driving around for an hour or so and finding absolutely nothing, my father finally listened to my suggestion to ask at the police department.  As I had suspected, they knew exactly where it was, and off we went again.

When we finally found the cemetery, it was a small, square, fenced-in plot.  A caretaker's building was off to the side, but no one was there.  The entrance gate was in the middle of one of the sides.  We had no idea where my great-grandmother's stone would be, so the three of us walked in and headed in three different directions.  My father went to one side, my stepmother to the other side, and I went straight ahead to the rear fence to start from there.

Just as I arrived at the far side, my father called out that we should probably be looking for a flat stone, because as we all knew, my grandfather was pretty tight with money and wouldn't have spent enough for a standing stone.  After we all laughed, I turned and looked down at the ground where I had stopped —and there she was!  And it was a flat stone, just as my father had predicted!

I thought it was nice that even though I never had the opportunity to meet my great-grandmother in life, I was able to find her tombstone and make a connection to her that way.

World War I Diaries, an Irish World War I Soldier, Holocaust Survivors, and More

It seems there are always more projects looking for volunteers, doesn't it?  The fact is that genealogy relies heavily on volunteers.  These are some projects that I've learned about recently.  Maybe there's something here that you can help with.

The National Archives of the United Kingdom have digitized World War I unit war diaries and are now turning to crowdsourcing to help make the information in them searchable.  They are looking for volunteers ("citizen historians") to go through the digital files, classify the types of pages in the diaries, and tag important data.  The idea is to create a detailed index rather than a full transcription.  The home page for Operation War Diary has a prominent link to a tutorial.  After completing the tutorial you can get started.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

Private James Brown, from an Irish family that migrated to England, enlisted with the 1st Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers when World War I began.  He died during the war on a battlefield near Comines-Warneton, Belgium.  It is believed that his body is among six sets of remains that were found near the village in 2010.  The Ministry of Defence is looking for relatives of Private Brown so they can test for a DNA match and positively identify the body.  An article on the Irish Independent Web site has information about the family's background.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

Amy Smith, the Ben and Zelda Cohen Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and a Ph.D. candidate at Yale, is conducting research on the lives of Holocaust survivors, specifically the experiences of survivors who created families after the war, spent time in DP camps, and immigrated to the United States or Canada.  If you are a survivor, or the child of a survivor, who fits these criteria, please contact Amy at amy.smith@yale.edu.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

Thomas Macentee posted about a grave marker found on some property in Portland, Oregon.  The names on the marker are Manin, Smith, and Templeton.  Death years of 1974 and 1975 are listed for two of the names.  More details are on the Geneabloggers site.  The hope is that the marker can be returned to family members.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

The current editor of Die Pommerschen Leute ("The Pomeranian People"), published by the Pomeranian Special Interest Group (PSIG) of the Immigrant Genealogical Society, will step down after the publication of the Summer 2014 issue.  PSIG is looking for a volunteer to be the new editor beginning with the Fall 2014 issue.  The editor solicits and edits articles and stories that deal with the history of the former Baltic duchy of Pomerania and the culture, traditions, and way of life of its people. The editor handles the layout and design of approximately 10 pages of content for each of the four yearly issues.  The "Die Vorfahren" section of DPL has its own editor.

All editorial duties can be accomplished over the Internet, so the editor can be based anywhere. MS Publisher has been used in the past.  The new editor could begin working immediately with the outgoing editor to get oriented and would have the next eight to ten months to work on the Fall 2014 issue.  This is a good opportunity for someone who would like to work on a publication about the history and culture of the Pomeranian people.

If you are interested, contact Toni Perrone, the president of PSIG, at tperrone2@verizon.net. She will discuss the editor's duties and responsibilities.

Wordless Wednesday

European Christian Burials in Malabar, India

Earlier this month a new book on Christian burials and memorials in towns of the Malabar coast was published.  Malabar:  Christian Memorials 1737–1990 was written by Dr. John C. Roberts, a social anthropologist, and N. P. Chekkutty, a journalist in Calicut.  It details Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English gravestones in the region. The book includes a transcribed list of Europeans buried in several cemeteries in Kannur, Thalassery, and Mahe during the past two centuries, based on burial registers maintained in various churches.

The book lists burials at St. John's Anglican Church and Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in Kannur, St. John’s Anglican Church and Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church at Thalassery, and St. Theresa’s Church and cemetery at Mahe.  Burials at the German Basel Mission cemeteries at Kannur and Thalassery are also included.

There is information about European regiments and native troops stationed at the Cannanore Cantonment and details on deaths in the armed forces.  Most entries have information on the cause of death.

The book was published by the South India Research Associates (SIRA), a network of researchers and scholars registered in New York.  It has two maps and many photographs.  The current publication is a limited deluxe edition with historic illustrations.  It can be ordered through info.sira@yahoo.in; the order will be processed through Thejas Books in Calicut.  A less expensive second printing is scheduled to be available on Flipkart in India and Alibris internationally in the near future.

Dr. Roberts has finished a second book, this one on churches and planter burials in the Nilgiri Hills.  Plans are to release it in early 2014.  He is now working on other areas of Malabar, including Portuguese burials and the Dutch Cemetery at Kochin.

Some of Dr. Roberts' research led him to Thrissur, where the tombstone of a man with a family connection to Christopher Columbus is now located.  The article mentions that all this information being collected could be good for tourism, as people look for where their ancestors are buried.  Gee, you think?

Preserving American War Memorials Overseas

A small nonprofit organization, American War Memorials Overseas, was organized in 2008 to help document, promote, care for, and preserve overseas war memorials and gravesites that honor Americans and that do not receive support from the U.S. government.  The Web site includes a database of overseas war memorials, for which they welcome additional entries.  They publish a (roughly) quarterly one-page newsletter which includes information about war memorials and short vignettes about Americans who are buried or who died overseas.  One feature is their stories about "isolated burials", where only one or a few people are buried in a particular location.  There is also an informative FAQ about how war memorials are supported, and a list of resources, including how to maintain headstones and memorials.  I'm not sure how much of this might be duplicative of other groups' efforts, but it appears to be a well meaning organization, and the newsletter has interesting stories.