By Sue Patterson www.findagrave.com
The Find A Grave Research Committee (citizens organization) encourages everyone who has a family member buried in Englewood to check out the information at findagrave.com. If any information is incorrect or missing, please contact Sue (806.252.3773) or Cindy (806.828.4800) and help us to have a roster with as accurate and complete information as possible.
Englewood Cemetery has a colorful and varied history for its over 100 year existence. It has been designated an historical cemetery, and it is estimated that there are over 10,000 burials. While photographing and posting individual headstones for Find a Grave, a registry for cemeteries and their interments, and for Englewood, Sue Patterson discovered that there were numerous burials that did not have markers or even a name to designate who was resting there. Through the years, some records were lost and record keeping was not a meticulous task as it is today. According to former cemetery personnel, there were even some burials that took place by family members that were never registered.
Working with the cemetery’s personnel, Sue organized a research committee to help find undocumented information. The committee has worked long hours and many months searching for information to add names, dates of births and deaths, and linking family members together for Englewood in the Find a Grave website. With a request in The Slatonite, Cindy Moore, Carolyn and Spencer Marley, Jo Ann Miller, Judy Milliken, Deirdre Trotter and Katie Kelly volunteered and were indispensible.
With such a large number of burials, only about 6,000 were identified and registered when this endeavor first began, there have been well over 1,000 names added and an estimate of over 3,000 bits of information gleaned from family members, The Slatonite and other newspapers, genealogical research web sites, State Birth and Death Indices, State Census Records, and family research records online. One great help has been that space owners in Englewood have been recorded through time which has provided a significant clue for research and often there was a burial date even if it was unknown who was buried. Cindy Moore has put in hundreds of hours sleuthing through thousands of pieces of information searching for any clue to help identify even one person while Sue has been reconstructing a new roster to include all of the new finds as well as answering the photo requests of headstones or markers. Everyone on the committee feels that each person who had finished their journey on earth was dear to a family and a gift from God. Each deserves to be identified and remembered. One of the remarkable benefits of doing the research has been to link a few family members who have lost touch with each other through the years. One person even found records of being a twin with the possibility of that twin being adopted by another family. Times were hard in early to mid-1900 due to two wars, a financial downturn and drought conditions. Sometimes families were broken up to insure all were able to have the best of care.
The Committee encourages everyone who has a family member buried in Englewood to check out the information at findagrave.com. If any information is incorrect or missing, please contact Sue (806.252.3773) or Cindy (806.828.4800) and help us to have a roster with as accurate and complete information as possible.
