GROUP COMPILES BOOK ON STODDARD COUNTY CEMETERIES

BLOOMFIELD -- Volunteers with the Stoddard County Historical Society spent the last four years visiting the dead.

The visits were compiled into an 800-page book about the cemeteries of Stoddard County. The book should be available this fall.

More than 120 cemeteries in the county are included in the book. Volunteers collected data by starting at one corner of the cemetery and moving row by row to identify family members buried together.

"A lot of stones were broken and we pieced them together like a puzzle to get names and dates, as best we could," said Frances Moore, a historical society volunteer.

Many of the graves were unmarked until recently when people became interested in family history and finally added tombstones, Moore said.

The oldest stone found in Stoddard County was discovered at a cemetery about a mile west of Avert. However, the information was taken from the stone years ago because the cemetery no longer exists. The stone marked the grave of Margaret Taylor, the daughter of one of the county's early settlers, Abraham Taylor.