A spirited look at Cape County's cemeteries

Nearly 300 known cemeteries exist within Cape Girardeau County's borders, outside of Cape Girardeau and Jackson city limits, and in addition to honoring the dead who helped settle and build this county, they are rich with history and tradition.

At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson, about a decade ago, several staff and volunteers here took equipment, maps and rough descriptions from various sources and hiked into the wilds to find, catalog and clean up some of these cemeteries. Over about four years — working in the colder months to avoid snakes, ticks and underbrush — they identified more than 200, from tiny cemeteries meant for one family to churchyards with hundreds of memorials.

The team captured data, and a lot of it: Photos of headstones, latitude/longitude of each cemetery, photo of each cemetery entrance, directions to reach it and the like. They took along bug spray, water bottles, small hand shovels, brushes, gloves, straps — sometimes a stone had fallen over, and a team lift was necessary to right it. Stones weather and break over time, and while the earliest burials in the county were either unmarked or had temporary markers, some granite or limestone headstones from early on give key insight into rituals around death.

Researchers later compiled photos, words on each stone and other information into binders and grouped them by township. Those are accessible to researchers here at the Archive.

We do not have all of the records for the cemeteries in Cape Girardeau and Jackson's city limits, but we can help — each city has its own dedicated staff to manage the cemeteries. We can help direct researchers to the office that might be able to answer questions.

If you are planning to visit a cemetery, keep in mind that Missouri law allows reasonable access, but most small cemeteries are on private land, so contacting the landowner beforehand is a good idea. Cleaning stones is not generally recommended, as it can damage the finish, leading to faster erosion. Brushing away leaf litter is fine, but taking a wire brush to it is not. Even taking a rubbing of a stone can cause damage, so it's best to take a photo.

The Archive Center also has the transcribed mortuary record of Cape Girardeau city, beginning in 1882. The county's mortuary record begins in 1883, but as with many 19th century records, there are gaps. The Missouri Secretary of State's office has death certificates from 1910 to 1971 available online: https://s1.sos.mo.gov/records/Archives/ArchivesMvc/DeathCertificates.

I also send researchers to www.findagrave.com — it's far from complete and the accuracy can be iffy, but it's an excellent place to start. They're not affiliated with us and are volunteer-run, but sometimes a picture of the headstone, death certificate (if before 1971), even text of the obituary will be included. It's always worth checking.

If your relative died early in the county's history, chances are we can help find some information about them. Contact us at (573) 204-2332, archive@capecounty.us, or go to www.capecounty.us and click on Archives.