Welcome

I happened across some old photographs of my mother and some of her teenage friends posing on tombstones in the 1920’s. It was a scene of teenagers acting silly, a model A in the background captured in time. I was curious where the photos were taken and I found the stones. I photographed those stones eighty years after the original photos.

 I had always had fascination of history and began a search of my family history, and began photographing their grave stones.  After several trips to the same cemetery I wondered how long it would take to photograph the entire cemetery. The doctor told me I needed to walk thus began a hobby of photographing cemeteries.  I have photographed over a hundred fifty cemeteries, including 99% of Lawrence County. This site contains that work.

Rather than fill this site with lists of people names, births - deaths I hope to add insight into some of those lives. Each stone represents a life, it’s the dash I hope to illuminate in this work.

The Dash, a poem written by Linda Ellis and put to music by Kirk Dearman is the theme of my research. I suggest you Google it listen to the words of this song.

Technology has changed our world. Imagine telling someone 100 years ago to “Google it “or them telling us they got a new buggy whip. Life before internet, TV, radio or electricity is hard to imagine for a lot of us. The same human frailties anger, jealousy, greed, drunkenness besiege us today that did a hundred even a thousand years ago. There are those who took lives, and those who gave their lives.  Long lives and lives cut short.

I have over 30,000 people in my database. These are not Downloaded GED’s but “Boots on the ground” research by me and from many other people. I have no plans to offer this information on the site as a whole but will respond to requests for information on individual persons and families.

During my research I would note news worthy events.  A dozen notebooks filled with the history of Lawrence and Crawford Counties will eventually fill these pages. So please check back.