This enhanced index of burials in Highland Cemetery at Meeker, Rio Blanco County, Colorado, is dedicated to the pioneers therein, to their personal histories and struggles, hardships, which they endured to make Rio Blanco County as it is today.
A grateful remembrance of our Veterans of Foreign Wars is hereby acknowledged by the compiler of the database, [email protected].
A further dedication must be made to Bill Zobel and his surviving family, under whose stewardship the indexing project was initiated, and the hallowed ground it represents has been maintained.
I always recall Bill's comments to me in our last conversation: "Greg, I need more accurate and complete names and dates to build the concise index. I need a better computer and savvy to run it, and I need more time . . ." We have been able to provide most of those.
Availability of obituaries published in The Meeker HERALD, from Colorado Historical Society microfilms at The Meeker Public Library, was most beneficial. As accurately as our cadre of volunteers could, these publication dates are shown in the surname line item Notes as YYYY-MM-DD. This ongoing project is goaled to scan every obituary published in The Meeker HERALD since 15 Aug 1887, and have it archived to CDROM as an uploadable image file for interested researchers, as a service of the publisher, now The Rio Blanco HERALD TIMES, The Meeker Public Library, The Highland Cemetery District, and [email protected].
Ran Cochran, present owner of the Meeker Mortuary, availed older volumes of records for preservation by scanning and archiving to CDROM. These sources appear in NOTES as MMFR with a general suffix denoting volume and page number of the record.
Father Paul Brisbane, past rector of Saint James Episcopal Church, availed Burial Records dating back to founding date of that Church in 1887, which was most useful, particularly in identifying a few burials which were made in Lookout Burial Ground under the current location of Pioneers Hospital in Meeker, and subsequently relocated to the present Highland site across the Valley. These are sourced as SJBR.
Occasional references in NOTES to Hazelist indicate BDMP found in an inventory of the original five acre Highland Cemetery compiled in 1987 by Mrs. Hazel Rosenlund, director of the Family History Center of The Meeker Ward of the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and volunteers.
Various old handwritten records were availed by the Highland Cemetery District Board of Directors for scanning and preservation to CDROM, indexing and cross referencing. These sources are generally annotated as a HIGH record.
To some extent, valuable information has been found in family biographies which appear in one of three published volumes compiled by The Rio Blanco Historical Society, called THIS IS WHAT I REMEMBER, annotated as TIWIR. Volumes I and II are out of print, Volume III is available for purchase per terms on https://sites.rootsweb.com/~coriobla/.
Occasionally, Birth, Death, Marriage, Place (BDMP) data was found in the Social Security Death Index, SSDI, which [email protected] sourced online through https://sites.rootsweb.com.
Several other Internet websites were tested for information. Surname Query Message Boards have provided links to other researchers who provided information helpful in identifying graves.
Our slate of ambitious projects include ongoing PERFECTION OF THE RECORD. Blank, white cells on The WordPerfect Table, and those given names still appearing in capital letters, beg research attention. We intend to convert this WordPerfect Table to an Excel Spreadsheet so we can call up Row Reports for walkthrough verification of BDMP.
We seek volunteers to transcribe the 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 census images to an alpha sortable Excel spreadsheet.
We seek corrections, additions. Please advise if you have documented source material or have other suggestions. CONSTRUCTIVE criticism will be entertained. Scans of some source documents may be available for upload.
We intend to place this index in looseleaf, hardcopy format at The White River Musem and Memorial Day presentation at the index gazebo at Highland Cemetery.
We intend to upload this index to the Tombstone Project category of https://sites.rootsweb.com/~coriobla/, the Rio Blanco County genealogical website.
We have no plans to photograph headstones at this time. However we will, for a contribution to the White River Museum, instant photo any particular gravesite, scan and upload or mail.
