The skinny on cemeteries

For as prominent as cemeteries are, the rules around them can be tough to find. Here at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson, we hear from a lot of people who want to know more, and we love this. The county is rich in (rife with) cemeteries. Aside from those within city limits of Cape Girardeau and Jackson, more than 200 cemeteries dot the countryside. I've heard from people all over the United States, looking for more information on either the burial or the cemetery where one of their ancestors is at rest.

At the Archive, from 2007 to 2014, long before my time here, staff and volunteers took a lot of time and dedicated effort to catalog cemeteries all over the county, photographing and meticulously recording information from the markers. All of that resulting information is here, as is a list of cemeteries with directions to most of them.

So you have directions. Let's talk legalities. In Missouri, reasonable access to cemeteries is granted by law, but that's about as far as it goes. In Cape County, there is no singular authority that handles all cemeteries. The Archive has information on cemeteries, but no authority over them. In Jackson, a small crew operates City Cemetery and Russell Heights. In Cape, the Parks and Rec Department is responsible for Old Lorimier, New Lorimier and Fairmount cemeteries. Other cemeteries are maintained privately. Some cemeteries have an association or fund that pays for maintenance and upkeep of monuments, but it really is a case-by-case situation.

My point is, the onus is on the person who wants to visit the cemetery to contact the landowner and ask for permission.

Once you're at the cemetery, you might be tempted to do some cleaning. Please, I beg you, do some research first. There's a lot of bad information about how to care for grave markers. If you do an online search for the National Park Service's best practices for cleaning a grave marker, you'll find helpful tips.

Contacting a monument company for help is also a good idea, especially if the marker is broken or leaning. This could get expensive, but could be necessary.

The best practice by far is to simply take a photo of the marker and use editing techniques later to sharpen contrast so details are more prominent. Even rubbings can damage the marker's surface, so a photo really is the way to go.

A source I've mentioned before is findagrave.com, volunteer-run and free to use. This website is, like any source, not free of errors, but can be valuable in giving initial information. Full disclosure: I volunteer for the site, but I receive no compensation, monetary or otherwise -- just the satisfaction of my grandmother's birthdate being correct.

I'll leave you with this reminder: Prior to about 1850, grave markers are difficult to find, as time and elements have done their work. Remember to keep your hopes high and expectations low when searching for burial information on your ancestors.