Tuesday's Tip: How To Access Our Cemetery Collections

Rural Cemetery

The goal of the Godfrey's Ed Laput Cemetery Project is to update the Charles R. Hale cemetery collection that recorded vital information from the headstone inscriptions of approximately 2,400 Connecticut cemeteries circa 1932-1935.

The Laput Project differs from FindAGrave.com in that every stone is photographed; every Hale inscription is included; information from stones post-Hale are entered; and there are no unsourced data.

The Godfrey also has other cemetery records, including Connecticut burial and sexton records from 1847 to present.

How do you find our cemetery records? Watch the video below and see.

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Leave no Stone Unturned by Diane Reid

         Godfrey Memorial Library is an amazing place.  In the more than fifteen years I have been volunteering as a docent and researcher, I have met and been able to help genealogists from all across the United States, and in a few instances, those from other countries. Some people have lots of information about the ancestor they are researching, some have nothing more than a name, a general birth year, and, if we’re lucky, a town.  We are able to find information most of the time using the many resources available to us here at the Godfrey.   

Then there are the people that no one appears to be searching for.   They are the persons who died and are buried in cemeteries across the United States, most with no stone to mark their grave, buried in what used to be called “pauper’s graves”.  Most towns have lots for the burial of those without family or funds, and some churches have lots for that purpose also.

Indian Hill Cemetery in Middletown has both.  A beautiful cemetery opened in 1850,  Indian Hill Cemetery is the final resting place for more than 9,000 souls.  There is a large city lot, and a lot owned by the local Episcopal Church.   These lots contain very few stones to mark the final resting places for those buried here.  I have been researching those buried in the church lots to identify them and document something about their lives.  I hope to see a marker erected on the lots listing the names of those who rest among strangers.

The resources at the Godfrey have been of tremendous help in discovering the resting places of those who would otherwise be lost to history.   The Ed Laput Cemetery Cemetery Project has recorded names and dates from 950 Connecticut cemeteries and 37 in other states, along with photos of the sites if available.  This collection is just part of Godfrey's online materials available to members.

In addition, Godfrey has copies of the records of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity, and the vital records of Middletown and the Sexton Returns from 1892 to 1900. Add to this the Middletown City Directories, the Penny Press newspaper from 1884 to 1921, and the Indian Hill Cemetery burial records, and I have been able to locate information on close to fifty persons buried in the church lot since 1851.

As an example, the sixth and seventh burials in the church lot were the 800^th and 852^nd at Indian Hill.  They were of Elizabeth Martin and her son William Andrew Martin, who died six months apart in 1876. The Indian Hill Cemetery Internment Book says Elizabeth  was 35 years old when she died of pneumonia.  The Middletown Vital Records give her birthplace as Wilmington North Carolina and stated that she  was married to Henry John Martin, a stone worker.  The church records list two children, John Henry, b.2 Apr 1871, baptized the 12^th of that month, and William Andrew b. 15 Jul 1875, and baptized 15 Aug 1875.  William died in  Sep 20, 1876 six months following his mother’s passing and was buried with his mother in the same grave.   In 1880, John Henry was living in the Hartford Orphan Home.  Neither Henry John nor his son John Henry were located in the 1900 census.

This is just one example of the many resources we have available to help you discover information about your ancestors.  To learn more, come in or go to our website.

Volunteer Highlight: Wendy Berlind and the Ed Laput Cemetery Project

Interested in Volunteering?  Read this volunteer's story to learn about interesting projects you can help with.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the Godfrey could not function without our dedicated volunteers.  From greeting patrons and helping them find their ancestors in our resources to adding books and documents to the Scholar+ Online Library, volunteers are essential in nearly every aspect of our operation.  Wendy Berlind is one such volunteer who began offering her services at Godfrey in 2011 when she retired after 30 years of teaching.  She has worked on indexing information from a number of our collections to make it searchable online.

Wendy has worked on the Ed Laput Cemetery project from the beginning, typing information from the Charles Hale Collection of Connecticut Cemetery Inscriptions (a record of headstone inscriptions from every Connecticut cemetery that existed in 1932) to be used in creating the searchable database we provide on Godfrey Scholar⁺.  The Cemetery Project appeals to Wendy because she can work on it from home, allowing for greater time flexibility.  She typically takes on a single cemetery at a time, typing all the names and appropriate data from the Hale into excel spreadsheets.  The amount of data she types varies from cemetery to cemetery.  Inscriptions for a cemetery she is currently working on take up more than 100 pages of Hale.  At approximately 30 headstones per page she will be adding about 3000 entries to our cemetery project database. 

While time consuming, Wendy enjoys spending her spare moments working on the project. The tidbits of information she learns from the headstone inscriptions help her to imagine the lives of people whose names she is preserving.  One cemetery had a staggering number of children and young women, illustrating  how precarious life was for our early ancestors.  She also discovers stories in burials of family groups which may show a number of children dying in infancy, remarriages, or longtime widowhood.  Sometimes inscriptions carry a message, a place of birth or indication of relationship.

Wendy has found equally fascinating information when she has indexed church records for us.  Often these contain causes of death such as phthisis, dropsy, and old age.  Once in awhile there are unusual or suspicious reasons for deaths.  Unique to one  Middletown church, there were a large number of people who drowned in the nearby Connecticut River.  "Negro servants", their families and the families they worked for are documented in these records and possibly nowhere else.   Wendy says the fact that this is all local history makes it that much more interesting and intimate.

Wendy's interest in genealogy began when she was young, visiting a family home in New Hampshire every summer which was filled with artifacts that belonged to her ancestors.  Her grandmother readily told stories about the family members in pictures and to whom some of those artifacts belonged.  Since then she has always loved collecting and preserving family history.  She had the good fortune to have older relatives who were also avid genealogists and were happy to pass their research on to her.  One aunt in particular was an incredible researcher who loved genealogy and, even before the advent of the internet and digital research, was able to find a huge amount of information.



Wendy Berlind and her quilt showing five generations of her family.

Wendy combines her love of genealogy and quilting to make unique family heirlooms.  The first was a present for her husband's father, a quilt that included pictures of his family.  In February, she created this wonderful piece.  Eschewing the traditional family tree motif, Wendy instead showcased five generations of her and her husband's family on a five shelf bookcase, using 
family photos and symbolic decorations for each 
generation. 

The Ed Laput Cemetery Reaches a Major Milestone!

The Ed Laput Cemetery Project has eclipsed the 900 mark! Ed and his merry volunteer band of brothers and sisters have finished photographing and indexing 35 cemeteries in just the last two months. Recent additions include the first cemeteries we’ve cataloged in Willington, Stafford, Tolland, and Ellington.

“I started this project with the idea that this was going to be a local thing for where I live in Colchester and the surrounding towns,” says Ed Laput. “It has certainly turned out to be more than that, and now it is something that I am passionate about.”

The database now includes over 260,000 photos and 325,000 names. What’s even more exciting is the recent addition of over 100 headstones that were not recorded in the Charles Hale Index in the 1930s.

We have also just finished the cemeteries in Old Saybrook, adding Junction and Riverside. Godfrey Board member Charlie Beebe is currently photographing Duck River Cemetery in Old Lyme, one of just two cemeteries left in that town. Board member Bruce Tyler is photographing Rose Hill, the final cemetery to be completed in Rocky Hill.

Coming soon will be several large cemeteries with thousands of new names, including Pine Grove Cemetery in Middletown, Elm Grove Cemetery in Mystic, New Wapping Cemetery in South Windsor, and St. Michael’s Cemetery in Stonington. Photographs of all four have been completed and volunteers are currently working on the database for each one.

“The larger cemeteries take months of work after the pictures are taken,” says Gene Gumbs, one of the project’s volunteers. “We use the Hale Collection as our starting point and then add all the headstones installed since the 1930s. In addition, Ed and I like to go the extra mile and do the research to try and find the exact birth and death dates for anyone who died after 1949, using the Connecticut and Social Security Death Indexes. This takes extra time, but it is something that sets our collection apart and will be useful for many years to come for anyone tracing their family history.”

The Godfrey Scholar gives anyone complete access to the collection, as well as dozens of other genealogical databases, and it is growing daily. It is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to trace their family roots.

If you’d like to get involved with the project we need people who can type information into spreadsheets, rename digital photos, and help us find the abandoned and remote burial grounds throughout the state. If you know of an old cemetery that we have not photographed yet and want to help us out with the location, please give the library a call. If you love history and mystery this is the volunteer project for you!

-Gene Gumbs

An Inside Look at the Ed Laput Cemetery Project

One of the Godfrey's most valuable resources is the data collected by board member Ed Laput and his small army of volunteers in Ed's quest to update and improve the Hale Cemetery Inscription Collection.  The Ed Laput Cemetery Project, as it is called, currently contains data from over 700 Connecticut cemeteries, with more being added all the time.  Aside from Ed himself, the person best able to give a real insider's look at the project is Ed's right hand man, Gene Gumbs.

"When I signed on to join Ed Laput, former Godfrey Memorial Library Board Member, and his merry volunteer band of brothers and sisters in his effort to catalogue and photograph every cemetery in the State of Connecticut, little did I know that the project was about to become an obsession and a quest to find out more about some of the names I found on the stones. It’s a daunting task Ed has undertaken – there are more than 2300 cemeteries in Connecticut – but, if you’re a student of history and genealogy like I am, it’s also a fascinating and exciting look into the past. It’s a journey of mysteries and puzzles – some of which I find myself taking time to look into a little more.

A case in point…. Buried in Brewster Cemetery in Preston is Jonathan Brewster, son of William Brewster who came to America in 1621 on the Mayflower. In fact, Jonathan was supposed to be on the Mayflower but stayed in Holland with his sick wife who later died. He joined his father in Plymouth a few months later, making the trip west on the ship Fortune. He married again while in Massachusetts came to Connecticut in 1649, settling in New London where he died in 1659.

Another interesting inscription sent me scouring the Internet for answers. On the base of an obelisk in Colonel Ledyard Cemetery in Groton is this inscription: “The body of Capt. John Seeley Æ42 rests here who with his wife Cordelia Æ36 & son Mighil Æ14, drowned Oct. 23, 1856.”  After my initial thoughts of sadness for the tragic end for this family I started wondering what actually happened.  Could it have been an accident on the Thames River? Perhaps parents trying to rescue a drowning son in a swimming mishap. Did it happen in the State?  After a little digging I discovered it happened off Turks Island in a shipwreck. Captain Seeley was trading salt between New England and the islands when his ship went down in the shoals off the island.

We have also run into times where headstones and graves show up in places they’re not supposed to be. Jared Covey’s headstone rests in the basement of the library in Burlington, CT. The only problem is that Jared is supposed to be buried in the Seventh Day Baptist Cemetery in town. Covey, who died in 1804, actually helped build the Seventh Day Meeting House with his sons. He actually deeded the land for the cemetery from his private property.  So the question remains – is he actually buried where the library now stands? Or was his headstone removed from the Seventh Day Cemetery to the library?

Ed and I stumbled on another stumper when we were in Montville. We were in a remote spot in the woods on top of a hill taking pictures of what remained of the Spicer Cemetery. When Charles Hale surveyed the cemetery in the early 1930’s he noted just four burials – all named Spicer – dating from 1839-1887. The only problem is that we found the headstone of Anna Bolles lying on the ground. How did that headstone get there? Is she actually buried there or did some prankster remove her headstone from elsewhere and transport it up a 500-foot hill to a stonewall-enclosed family cemetery? Could Hale have just missed her stone 80 years ago?

Unfortunately, I have yet to unravel the mystery. There was indeed an Anna Bolles who died in 1830 listed in local obituaries in the Montville area but Hale did not register an Anna Bolles in any of the nearly 50 cemeteries in the town.

To date, the Ed Laput Cemetery project has cataloged and photographed more than 730 cemeteries. There are more than 160,000 photos and 230,000 names in the database! The Godfrey Scholar⁺ gives anyone complete access to the collection, as well as dozens of other genealogical databases, and it is growing daily. It is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to trace their family roots.

If you’d like to get involved with the Laput Cemetery Project we need people who can type information into spreadsheets, rename digital photos, and help us find the abandoned and remote burial grounds throughout the state of Connecticut. If you love history and mystery this is the volunteer project for you!"- Gene Gumbs, Godfrey Volunteer

If you want to help with this incredible endeavor call 860-346-4375  

We'd be happy to have you!  

Upcoming Event: Using Cemetery Records to Help Your Genealogy Research

Cemetery records can be a valuable resource for building your family tree.

gravestone

This gravestone, for example, includes not only the ancestor's information, but also whom she married.

So how do you locate gravestones, plot records, and other cemetery information?

Join us on June 4 at 9:30 a.m. for a Genealogy Club meeting on cemetery records. We'll discuss resources that can help you determine where your ancestor was buried and give hints about what other information, besides their gravestone, may exist.

Gene Gumbs, head of the Ed Laput CT Cemetery Project, will also speak about that project and how it can help your research.

Genealogy Club is free for Godfrey Premium Members or $10 per session for Guest Members.