Sons of the American Revolution

Some small updates to the Engle, Zick and Bielby pages in the "Family Events" section of my homepage.

Just received notification that I was approved for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution. It's the DAR for men without the status or clout. It means I can now shop in their online store. My descent is through my mother's , Calkins, side to Joseph Calkins, 1737-1809. He's buried in Tinmouth, Vt but no one seems to know which cemetery.

Very dry winter in northern Jefferson county, so far. Not much snow or cold. I've only had to move snow once.

Virtual Cemeteries

I've open an account on findagrave.com. Please visit my homepage. It started by creating memorials for my own family and then I volunteered to take photos for others. After taking some photos of grave stones for people in other states, I started my own collection of Revolutionary War graves, then War of 1812, then Civil War,Spanish American and World War I.

Papers from this area can be searched online starting after the civil war. It adds an occasional look at what the people were like and what they, and others, were up to in the early 1800's. If I find anything about a person I add it to their memorial. All of this information is kept in a chronological event document which I have posted to my website in the Family Events section.

Really starting to get into findagrave.com. I've branched out from Revolutionary war vets to those from 1812. The virtual cemetery for the first is around 300 and the latter around 100. Many of the Rev War Vets came from New England to claim bounty land or to buy land from the speculators. The town of Rutland, Jefferson, NY got it's name from so many people coming there from the Rutland, VT area. Very hard to get much information on them and their stones tend to be hard to read.

Their children fought in 1812 and many then moved west. Their stones are in much better shape. Information on their lives is much better. The newspapers started up around 1870 and an occasional obituary can be found. I've been very lucky to link several families families together across 2 generations.

Each cemetery is an island in the landscape. Each has different maintenance standards size, types of trees, roads or no roads, some of the smaller ones are dominated by one family and the dates tell you when they owned most of the farms in the area.

Mt Adnah

We went to Mt Adnah cemetery in Fulton, NY on Sunday. A very nice trip there and back and a very well maintained and marked cemetery. The best I've seen so far, very park like. Huge trees, many squirrels and harks hunting them under the trees.

Found all the stones we were looking for and several more. Amos and Thankful , John L and Elizabeth Calkins, Dorr B and Elizabeth and Anna Belle Calkins Symour. I've created memorials on findagrave.com and uploaded pictures of their stones. Feel free to use them.

FreeFind

Still working on the Revolutionary soldiers buried in Jefferson county. The list is up to 290+ now. Some of the memorials are maintained by family members, which is nice to see.

Started working on updates to my homepage again. Started by adding the search Free Find to the first page. A bit of a struggle to get it to fit but it's finally in place. Only thing is, I have to do it on every page, 50 or more. So I started looking around to see if there was anything else I wanted to add or change on each page as long as I was making the rounds anyway.

That got me thinking about the changes I wanted to make on the style sheet and that is what I'm working on now. It never stops but at least I'm learning something new, I hope.

There are many revolutionary war veterans buried in Jefferson county. Most seem to have come from the east and settled here on land given to them for their service. Several lists exist of their names such as the one maintained by the DAR. I've been trying to find them and photograph the stones. Amazing how many still exist but many are in poor shape.

As a member of findagrave.com, I have created a virtual cemetery for the veterans. If you're interested, give it a look.

As a photo volunteer for Jefferson county, I have some contact with the people requesting photos.
Some are building family albums, others want photos to use as portraits in their family trees. I just met a group trying to amass all the Killed In Action graves. Personally, I enjoy being outside and the feeling of helping. Being in a cemetery doesn't bother me as I grew up across from one. Some are maintained like parks and are very peaceful. Others, not so much.

I've just started to upload tomb stone pictures to findagrave.com. So far I've linked together some of the Coynes and Engles. Take a look and if you want, leave some virtual flowers. We go out to the cemeteries and take pictures, crop, size and post them. Finally have a use for the digital camera. It certainly makes it easy. Amazing how many biting insects are lurking in cemeteries. Some of the stones are hard to find, let alone read.