COMPUTERIZING THE DEAD: CAPE GIRARDEAU COUNTY GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY HAS ELECTRONIC CEMETERY RECORDS

JACKSON -- "The Cemeteries of Cape Girardeau County" won't become a bestseller and won't even be published, but to genealogy researchers it will be an awfully good read.

The database being compiled by the Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society will include information about everyone known to have been buried in the county. With the number of known cemeteries at 199 and many small family cemeteries still to be discovered, the database will be a boon to genealogists.

"This could save someone five years," says Dawn Detring, president of the organization. She has been researching her own family tree for 22 years.

The information available will include the name, birth date, death date and the name of the cemetery. If available, other information might include the cause of death and facts about veteran status and participation in wars.

The legibility of the gravestone also might be noted.

The data can be browsed alphabetically, phonetically and according to the order of burial. The software, called Family Tree Maker, is compatible with other genealogy software, making it possible to download information from other sources.

These days, genealogical researchers can put a query on their Internet website and might receive an answer within a week. Previously, getting the answer probably would have required a trip.

The Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society records are stored in the Genealogy Room at Riverside Regional Library, 204 S. Union St. in Jackson. The organization has a rich trove of information because Jackson was the site of one of the territory's original land offices.

Of course, the information about the cemeteries has to be loaded into the database to begin with. Dr. Bill Eddleman, the organization's secretary, is supervising the job. He undertook a similar project when he lived in Rhode Island.

A history lover, Eddleman says genealogical research is "a way to tie history to what my family was doing. There is a party line in history books, and lots of times your family didn't get in the books."

Anyone with information about a small rural cemetery is invited to call Eddleman at 335-1507.

Diane Runnels, the organization's technology chairwoman, has compiled well over 20,000 entries in her genealogical research.

"You develop an attachment to where you came from," she says of her interest. "I believe everyone is who they are as a result of past experiences."

For Detring, genealogy is a way to create a context for the knowledge she already has about her family. "I want to put a face on an ancestor, even without a picture," she says.

She is excited about the database but says pouring over record books is not necessarily in the past for genealogists.

"Once you find it, it's still good to document it the old-fashioned way."

Part of the difficulty of genealogical research is that records simply may not exist.

"They didn't require the registry of births and deaths in Missouri until 1910," said Eddleman. "The only record that they existed may be a tombstone."

"Or the family Bible," Detring adds.

The database can help in such instances. For instance, the organization recently found out about people who were buried long ago in a cemetery located on Old Cape Road behind the McDonald's restaurant. "We can put it in the database without the gravestones," he said.

The organization also hopes to load the genealogies of its 200 members into the database. Then people searching for genealogical information will benefit from the painstaking work that already has been done.

The cemetery database should be available to the general public by the summer of 1998.