The cemeteries at St. Basil the Great and the various other Catholic churches in Sullivan County
lie silent on hillsides and along country roads. There lie our ancestors, the earliest Catholics to come to
Sullivan County, primarily German and Irish in origin. In August 2010, through the agency of Bettyann Sick Goodyear
and P. Dean Homer, Sullivan County historian Bob Sweeney and his wife Lynn Franklin were introduced to
the Reverend Joseph Hornick and the other members of the rectory staff at what is now the Immaculate Conception Parish in Dushore, PA. After several discussions and review by the
hierarchy of the Diocese of Scranton, Bob and Lynn were permitted to scan and transcribe the available death and burial records for these churches.
Lynn is an expert photographer and also created the documentary listings. Bob converted the material to web format and served as the "knowledge expert" for translations of Latin and for recognizing family names where legibility
was an issue. We have marked occasional ambiguous listings or notes in red, and invite the reader to inform us where he or she can help clarify something or some name that your editors could not
determine on their own.
We are most grateful to all concerned for permitting us to preserve this remarkable historical record. It may be useful
for the reader, in preparing to examine these documents, to
reference other critical resources on this site. We particularly refer to:
(1) Early Churches
(2) Churches and Cemeteries
(3) St. Basil's Cemetery
(4) Bettyann Sick Goodyear's St. Basil's Photo Gallery
(5) St. Basil's During 100 Years (1838-1938)
(8) St. Francis Xavier Cemetery
(9) St. Francis of Assisi Cemetery
The records that we have transcribed go back to the mid-nineteenth century and continue, with one conspicuous gap, up until 1986. The gap runs from 1883 to 1921, a period for which the location
of the records are not known at this time. Since Father Xavier Kaier, the long serving parish priest for St. Basil, died in 1921, we can only surmise that, in the
period of disruption surrounding his death and funeral, the death registry for this period was either misplaced elsewhere in the rectory, or perhaps filed with the Diocese some place, or
even distributed with his personal effects to his heirs. We shall hope for the best that eventually they will surface. Meanwhile, we will deal with what we can. The missing records apply only to St. Basil,
not to the other churces in Lopez and Overton. In time, we will produce transcriptions and, for the Latin records, translations of all these documents. We begin with the English language records
for St. Basil itself from 1921-1986.
The first document that we created, the actual English language St. Basil Death Registry, lists each of the 1152
personal entries found on the fifty (50) pages in this registry from 1921 thorugh 1986. Each page has also been
photographed and appears in a Photo Gallery arranged by page number. Finally, there is an Alphabetical
Index of all entries listed with their associated page number location in the original.
St. Basil the Great Death Registry, Photo Gallery and Index: 1921-1986
Death Registry
Photo Gallery
Alphabetical Index of Deaths
The next item in this transcription project is the Latin language records for St. Basil for the period from 1858 through April 1876.
Below you will find a list of linkable resources based on these documents. In addition to the photo gallery, a cropped photograph of each document entry is linked to the
name in the Registry.
St. Basil the Great Death Registry and Photo Gallery Index: 1858-1876
Death Registry
Photo Gallery
Next, we turn to St. Francis Xavier Church, Overton, PA. The first record shown below is a transcription of
the Death Registry itself, running from 1898 thorugh 1980. The second item for St. Francis Xavier is a photo gallery of the registry pages.
St. Francis Xavier Death Registry and Photo Gallery Index: 1898-1980
Death Registry
Photo Gallery
For convenience, we also post here a copy of the St. Francis Xavier Cemetery Plot.
The third document presented here is the transcription of the Death Registry and associated photo record for St. Francis of Assisi Church in Mildred, PA.
St. Francis of Assisi Death Registry and Photo Gallery Index: 1928-1977
Death Registry
Photo Gallery
Copyright © 2011 Robert
E. Sweeney and individual Contributors. All Rights Reserved. Prior written
permission is required from Robert E. Sweeney and individual Contributors before
this material can be printed or otherwise copied, displayed or distributed
in any form. The Sullivan County Historical Society shall have exclusive permission to use or deploy this material in any non-commerical fashion
which it deems appropriate. This
is a FREE genealogy site sponsored through PAGenWeb and can be reached directly
at ~Sullivan County Genealogy Project (https://sites.rootsweb.com/~pasulliv)
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