More Cemetery Maps Now on our Website!

For the past year, our resident map guru, Jim Bellenger, has been working tirelessly to find lost St. Louis City and County cemeteries, acquire maps of existing cemeteries, and use Google maps to locate and georeference as many of these sites as he can. He finished his first set of maps in August 2024 and his second set in January of this year. This has been an extremely time-consuming project for Jim and his resident StLGS editor, but we are delighted that he is finished (for now) and we can share the last batch of maps with you today. If you missed the post about the first set of cemetery maps, you can read it here. The post announcing the second set is here.

Second Batch of Cemetery Maps Now Uploaded to our Website!

In August of this year, we announced that our resident map guru, Jim Bellenger, has been using his talents to superimpose old cemetery maps onto new Google maps and georeference them so that exact locations of even long-gone cemeteries are now visible. Jim has worked with dozens of people in St. Louis City and County and beyond to obtain maps of the cemeteries, get permission to use them, and link them to the cemetery pages on our website. Because this is so time-consuming, we are releasing the maps in groups of about twenty to thirty, and now, we are happy to share the next batch of maps with you. (If you missed the post about the first set, you can read it here.)

St. Louis Hospitals on the StLGS Website

Medical records in almost every state are private, and it is often frustrating knowing that an ancestor may have been in a hospital but not why or where. Unfortunately, we can't solve the "why" problem for you, but if you had an ancestor hospitalized in St. Louis City or County, we have made inroads on the "where." We have long had a page on our website for St. Louis-area hospitals with a link to a list of known hospitals. On that page, you can also find a link to information about the cholera epidemic of 1849 and links to two repositories that have microfilmed registers from the old St. Louis City Hospital for a limited number of years. We are pleased to announce that our hospital list now has been greatly enhanced by webmaster Jim Bellenger, who has also used his map magic skills on a newly designed Google Maps interface, so you can see where each hospital was (or still is).

First of Many Cemetery Maps Added to the StLGS Website AND StLGS Members: Please Vote on Amended Bylaws!

Although we have had data on many St. Louis-area cemeteries on our website for more than a decade, we have not had the ability to add maps to the pages until our resident map guru, Jim Bellenger, turned that task into his own pet project. For the past year, Jim has hunted down whatever maps exist for as many cemeteries as he could find and has used his talents to superimpose the old maps onto new Google maps and georeference them so that exact locations of even long-gone cemeteries are now visible. Jim has worked with dozens of people in St. Louis City and County and beyond to obtain the maps, get permission to use them, and link them in several ways to the cemetery pages on our site. Because this is so time-consuming, only the first batch of completed maps is now on the website, but lots more are coming!

New Additions to the StLGS Website, Part II: Cemetery Maps

Last week, we announced the first of some wonderful new additions to our StLGS website, and, as promised, this week we have more! We told you about the new Missouri Territorial Papers collection, with hundreds of names of early St. Louis residents who signed petitions concerning their governance and land ownership. If you missed that post, you can read it on our Blogspot site. This week, we have another exciting addition to the website, thanks to our resident mapping guru, Jim Bellenger. Read on for all the details . . .

Locating Your Ancestor's Land on Modern Maps

If you have been working with land records as part of your family history research, you know that it is not always easy to discover the exact location of the land your family owned. First, you have to know how “chunks” of land were divided and where your family’s part fits in. Then, you have to understand the terminology: sections, townships, and ranges. A further problem is situating the property on a modern map as opposed to what the countryside looked like a hundred or so years ago. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a website that allowed you to see where your ancestor's property was in a modern setting?