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.

Remembering Our Fallen Ancestors Who Served in the Military

Happy Memorial Day! This day has turned into the unofficial start of summer, but it was never created as a day to show off our barbecue skills or to bring our white jeans and shoes out of storage. The huge casualty toll of the Civil War was responsible for more gravesites than anyone could possibly have imagined, leading to the first "Decoration Day" on 30 May 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery. More than 5,000 people gathered to listen to future U.S. president James Garfield commending people for coming together to "pay their tribute of grateful homage" by walking through the cemetery and decorating the graves of fallen soldiers. During the next few decades, the idea of decorating soldiers' graves became widespread. By 1890, all of the former Union states had an official Decoration Day. Eventually, the name changed to Memorial Day, and by the end of World War II, soldiers from all American wars were being remembered throughout the country. In 1971, the name of the day was changed, and the fourth Monday in May became the fixed day of the holiday. Most of us have military ancestors who served and died in far-off places over hundreds of years. We certainly can't go to all of their graves to place wreaths or leave flowers, but we have an alternative for you, if you would like to remember their service.

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.)

A Thanksgiving Genealogy Gift and Another Farewell

StLGS bids farewell to another past-president with the passing on 26 October 2024 of Neil Fiala, who served in 2000–2001. Neil and his wife Barbara were active volunteers throughout the 1990s, and you can read more about them below. We also have a very special gift to all of you, courtesy of our intrepid "geospatial genealogist," Jim Bellenger, who has been working non-stop on creating maps for every cemetery on our website. This past week, we have finalized and uploaded about forty new maps, and the linked list below is a thank you for your generous donations to the society. Read on for all the details . . .

Officer Election Results, Exciting Website News, and Thank You to Our Supporters!

Thanks to all of you who voted in the election for our 2025–2026 officers. With unanimous votes, we will have co-presidents for the next two years as Kathy Franke and Jeani Ward share that position. Jim Yochim has been reelected as vice president for membership, and Debbie Benoit will take over as secretary beginning in January. We’d like to say a huge thank you to both Karen Goode and Cindy Finnegan, our current president and our society's secretary, who are ready to step down and hand the reins to our newly elected officers. Cindy has prepared board meeting notes, tackled dozens of thank you letters, scanned years' worth of old documents, and assisted at many of our events. As president for the past four years, Karen has managed to guide us successfully through one disaster after another. Her tenure began with a complete shutdown due to the pandemic, which led us to learning from scratch how to set up Zoom and hybrid meetings. After the office opened again, and we settled back into a more normal routine, it was time for a massive cleanup so we could get new carpet and a much-needed paint job. When all was finally sparkling clean and everything in place, we were faced with water damage due to a badly leaking roof, which shut us down for weeks again, and now, Karen is leading us through a complete redesign of our website. (More on that in just a bit.) Her leadership skills and her determination and perseverance in the face of one obstacle after another have kept our society on a steady course during some incredibly difficult times. We thank both Cindy and Karen for their hard work and look forward to seeing both of them enjoying some new adventures in the coming year.

And now for some exciting news about our StLGS website  . . .

November/December Genealogy Meetings and a Reminder to Vote for StLGS Officers

Happy Halloween! We are coming to the end of another busy year of genealogy meetings, classes, and special events, and our StLGS volunteers have been hard at work planning next year's exciting calendar of events for you. Since the beautiful Clark Family Branch of the St. Louis County Library opened this summer, we have been welcomed by our friends in the Emerson History and Genealogy Center to a comfortable meeting room in the new building. Our November monthly meeting will be in our main floor meeting space but will also be livestreamed for those who can't attend in person. We have our last Jewish SIG meeting in early December, and one more class remains on the fall schedule. Also, StLGS members, Thursday, 31 October, is the last day to vote in our annual election of officers! More information about everything is below.

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 . . .

Baby Gardens and Potters' Fields: Burying Babies and Poor People

With Halloween around the corner, this week seems like a good time to talk a bit about burial customs for the most vulnerable of our ancestors. In the past, we have covered several related topics, and you might want to check out some of them before we move into looking at how some infants, children, and poor people were treated at the ends of their lives.

“Did Our Ancestors Trick or Treat?” 25 October 2021

“Funeral Rituals and Traditions, Part 1” 19 April 2021

“Funeral Rituals and Traditions, Part II” 26 April 2021

“Broken Mirrors and Spilled Salt: Some of our Ancestors’ Superstitions,” 26 October 2020

New on the StLGS Website . . .

It’s been a while since we have brought you updates from the StLGS website, https://stlgs.org, so this week, we will catch you up. During the past few months, our volunteers have been working hard to add new data to our congregations project, upload new biographies, update and correct cemetery data, and add new information from donated memorabilia.

More Free Interactive Maps for Genealogy and a Big Thank You!

After almost three years of pandemic uncertainty, the one thing that St. Louis Genealogical Society can be sure of is the loyalty and generosity of our members and friends. If you have been a regular reader of our blog, you know that like many non-profits, we have struggled to stay active and vital during a very difficult time. Because we have been so limited in what we can do to raise funds, we have relied more than usual on donations, and we are just overwhelmed by how incredibly generous so many of you have been.

Learn More About Symbols on Tombstones

Are you familiar with the term "iconography"? Pronounced "eye-con-og-ra-fee," it means, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "symbolic representation, especially the conventional meanings attached to an image or images." Even if you've never heard of the word, as a genealogist, you know how important it is to understand the meaning of what we see on tombstones. Among many other things, we may learn whether an ancestor was in a fraternal order, what his/her occupation may have been, or if he/she had life cut short too soon.

Some Hints on Photographing Tombstones

Summer is the perfect time for visits to cemeteries, and this summer in particular, after being cooped up indoors for months, many of us have wanderlust. Cemeteries are peaceful, outdoors and away from crowds, and potentially, the source of much-needed information on our ancestors. Before you visit a cemetery, you will want to plan ahead and think about how you can get the very best photos.