Mason County Genealogical Society P.O. Box 103 Shelton, WA 98584-0103 The Mason Log Volume 13 Issue 1 August 31, 2015 September meeting • Thursday, September 3rdth • 7:00 p.m. Start time • Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at 12th & Connection • Membership dues - single: $15.00 Couple: $20.00 • Find us on the web at http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wamcgs/ The inside scoop • Shelton Memorial Park Update • Cemeteries and the New Deal • Cursive again Shelton Memorial Park update Jody Alfiere submitted this update about the work being done at the cemetery. She’s the point person for us as we assist on this project. Several members have assisted her over the time mentioned. Good work Jody!! Mason County Genealogical Society has been working on a project at Shelton Memorial Park for a couple years now, and a lot of progress has been made so far this year. With a warm spring, members were able to get out earlier than normal and get a jump on this year’s work. That being said, our unusually hot weather this summer then slowed us down a bit. Headstones are compared to spreadsheets produced from the cemetery database of interred individuals, and differences are noted. Many headstones are quite old and small, have sunk below the surface, and are no longer visible. By many, I mean literally hundreds. Some are barely legible, and some not at all. If there’s a name listed for a particular spot, then most often there is a headstone there, and members have special “probes” to try to locate the stone. This can be tricky. Our probes resemble long ice picks, and the rocky ground can resemble long-buried headstones! Members can be heard poking around, grumbling, “there’s no stone here"; but they don’t give up, and almost always a stone is found. Lee Hatch is our contact person regarding this project, and he is always ready to hand over another section list for us to work on. After checking and perhaps updating the spreadsheet, each grave is brushed clean, sometimes growth is cut back, and a picture is taken. Mr. Hatch updates the database and is working toward a system that will attach a picture to each interred individual’s information. To date we have updated information and cleaned and taken photos of headstones of approximately 5,000 of the interred, which includes the many stones found that were presumed missing or lost. Members are still working to find more missing headstones. Knowing that family members from across the country can go on- line and find a bit of information, with a picture of the headstone attached, makes this rewarding work. Each individual has a story, and a family somewhere. I like to think that perhaps somewhere across the country someone else might be working to help me with a little bit of information on an ancestor of mine. , OCR Text: Mason County Genealogical Society P.O. Box 103 Shelton, WA 98584-0103 The Mason Log Volume 13 Issue 1 August 31, 2015 September meeting • Thursday, September 3rdth • 7:00 p.m. Start time • Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at 12th & Connection • Membership dues - single: $15.00 Couple: $20.00 • Find us on the web at http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wamcgs/ The inside scoop • Shelton Memorial Park Update • Cemeteries and the New Deal • Cursive again Shelton Memorial Park update Jody Alfiere submitted this update about the work being done at the cemetery. She’s the point person for us as we assist on this project. Several members have assisted her over the time mentioned. Good work Jody!! Mason County Genealogical Society has been working on a project at Shelton Memorial Park for a couple years now, and a lot of progress has been made so far this year. With a warm spring, members were able to get out earlier than normal and get a jump on this year’s work. That being said, our unusually hot weather this summer then slowed us down a bit. Headstones are compared to spreadsheets produced from the cemetery database of interred individuals, and differences are noted. Many headstones are quite old and small, have sunk below the surface, and are no longer visible. By many, I mean literally hundreds. Some are barely legible, and some not at all. If there’s a name listed for a particular spot, then most often there is a headstone there, and members have special “probes” to try to locate the stone. This can be tricky. Our probes resemble long ice picks, and the rocky ground can resemble long-buried headstones! Members can be heard poking around, grumbling, “there’s no stone here"; but they don’t give up, and almost always a stone is found. Lee Hatch is our contact person regarding this project, and he is always ready to hand over another section list for us to work on. After checking and perhaps updating the spreadsheet, each grave is brushed clean, sometimes growth is cut back, and a picture is taken. Mr. Hatch updates the database and is working toward a system that will attach a picture to each interred individual’s information. To date we have updated information and cleaned and taken photos of headstones of approximately 5,000 of the interred, which includes the many stones found that were presumed missing or lost. Members are still working to find more missing headstones. Knowing that family members from across the country can go on- line and find a bit of information, with a picture of the headstone attached, makes this rewarding work. Each individual has a story, and a family somewhere. I like to think that perhaps somewhere across the country someone else might be working to help me with a little bit of information on an ancestor of mine. , Mason County Genealogical Society,Mason Logs,Mason Logs,2015,V13 I1 MCGS Sep 2015 Newsletter.pdf,V13 I1 MCGS Sep 2015 Newsletter.pdf Page 1, V13 I1 MCGS Sep 2015 Newsletter.pdf Page 1