No, it's not the Six Million Dollar Man!

It's actually a grave marker for Steven Austin at the Edgwater-New Smyrna Cemetery. Pretty impressive and boy does it stick out as all the memorials around it are what is now normal size. This seems more retro in many ways back to when markers were large and grand. I do like it however and wish we did have more large scale monuments in this area. There almost seems to be something lacking in the flat markers that are all so common and required at many cemeteries. Is this a lack of respect and rememberance for the dead? I guess it depends on your point of view really. Use the link below to check out 5 close ups of vaious parts of the marker. Rest in peace Steven.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=28502050

Spruce Creek Cemetery

This past weekend I got to go to the Spruce Creek Cemetery http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=cr&CRid=1964763&CScn=spruce+creek&CScntry=4&& . For those not familiar with the Daytona Beach area this cemetery is located within the Spruce Creek Fly In community. This is a gated community that has a private air strip. I had never been to SCFI so I didn't know what to expect. Some homes were very large and attractive while others were not so. Guess a gated community isn't always what it's cracked up to be. But then again where else can you have a nearly private air field and have an airplane hanger for a garage?



This is a small, nice, fairly well kept cemetery with everything from Civil War Confederates to more recent burials. There are probably a couple hundred burials in total. There are a full gamut of markers from homemade to what are no doubt top of the line stones meant either as a sign of wealth, grief, or greed.

The main reason for the visit was to photograph stones of the Metts family for a Find a Grave request. It made for a fun hour or so as we were able to photograph the entire cemetery.

Improvements at findagrave.com

I just noticed a couple of great improvements at http://www.findagrave.com/ These should be a great help to genealogists and family historians. A submitter now has the ability to easily and quickly link a parent to child. On the left hand side there is a new feature where all you have to know is the findagrave number for a memorial, then add it in the new section, findagrave does the rest. It creates an automatic link to the parents memorial. What a GREAT addition! Maybe soon they will have it go the other way as well so that you can reach a childs site from a parents memorial.

Also, editing a memorial has become easier. Once you post a memorial you can easily go back and add much more material later. Click the edit button on the top. Now you may add birth and death location and other information easily and in one place.

Kudos to Jim and his group for these great improvements. I know some members bitch and moan on the forums page about this and that but come on the site is completely FREE! I can't imagine the time and money it takes to keep this very large site going but overall they do a great job especially when you consider we don't have to pay a cent for it if we don't want to. Now if we could just figure out an easy way to stop people from creating duplicate memorials, duplicate cemeteries, putting memorials in the wrong cemetery, well if you use the site you get my drift. Well, I'm sure Jim and crew are working on it!

Sandspurs and headstones

Well Saturday was a trip to Shady Rest Cemetery in Holly Hill, FL to look for 5 headstones for a Find a Grave request and also to look for the headstone of Bolton Smallwood who was my great grand uncle. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSvcid=38582&GRid=29906671&&

Success on all fronts! It turned out to be a long afternoon. I found Bolton fairly quickly within maybe 15 minutes. The Moore and Fisher headstones were another issue however. My wife and I wanered the whole cemetery and were about to give up. We reached the last section and there they were. I received a very nice thank you email from the requestor so that was very nice. It made the hundreds of sandspurs worth the effort.

Sardis Church Cemetery

Tonight I was working my listings at http://www.findagrave.com/ . The cemetery I was working on was Sardis Cemetery in Jefferson County, Florida http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=cr&GRid=30672293&CRid=2264890& This is a cemetery that I came across with my wife when we went to Tallahassee to see a Florida State football game--GO NOLES. We were staying at a KOA outside of town and on the way we passed a small church and the cemetery was behind it.

Saturday morning before going in to town for the game we stopped to have a look around. Turns out the cemetery wasn't too big so my wife and I each took a camera and photographed the whole thing. It was already getting hot but I had a good time. There were large numbers of certain surnames including Armistead, Cooksey, Hatchett, McClellan and others. The cemetery included everything from veterans to infants to those almost 100 years old. Truely a local church cemetery.

I was so wrapped up in the cemetery portion I never did get a photo of the church. We're going to another game later this year and staying at the KOA again so I'll stop by and get a few photos of the church.

So far I haven't quite listed half of the photos I took so please check back as I will be adding more names and photos.