Film Watch: ‘In Heaven, Underground’
Posted: November 23, 2011 Filed under: Genealogy | Tags: Cemeteries, Germany 2 Comments »Here’s an interesting essay from filmmaker Britta Wauer, who has made a documentary about Berlin’s Weissensee cemetery. She wonders aloud, “Who would go to the cinema to watch a cemetery film?” (She needs to read more genealogy blogs!)
Anyway, the Weissensee cemetery is Europe’s largest Jewish cemetery that is still in use (after 130 years in existence, too). Wauer’s film In Heaven, Underground aims at explaining its enduring place in Berlin’s history and culture. “I wanted the screen to be filled with people telling stories of the rich lives that were once led in Berlin,” she writes.
But where to find those stories? Wauer sent out tentative queries through a magazine sent to Berlin expatriates, expecting maybe a couple of dozen responses. Within a few weeks she had a couple of hundred, from all over the world.
The trailer for the film imparts a mood that’s beguiling, and oddly uplifting:
In Heaven, Underground (official film site)
Find-A-Grave: Notable Weissensee burials
Spiegel Online: “Renovations Begin at Europe’s Largest Jewish Graveyard” (2009)
Cemetery Database: Newark (NJ) Archdiocese
Posted: October 14, 2011 Filed under: Genealogy | Tags: Cemeteries, NJ Leave a comment »I don’t honestly know how long it’s been there, I saw a very nice thing the other day: a searchable database to several cemeteries overseen by the Archdiocese of Newark. Lots of thanks to the email listers from the Genealogical Society of New Jersey, who posted this great link.
Entries include name, burial date and detailed grave location information. Included are:
- Gate of Heaven Cemetery and Mausoleum
- Saint Gertrude Cemetery and Mausoleum
- Holy Cross Cemetery and Mausoleum
- Holy Sepulchre Cemetery
- Mount Olivet Cemetery and Mausoleum
- Christ the King Cemetery
I haven’t been able to track down any background on how complete this database is. Personally, I hit paydirt searching a surname of interest I have from Jersey City; it turned up several hits on burials from 1914 through 2009.
Poking around with a couple of searches on common surnames like King and Smith, I noticed that most of the hits seemed to be 20th-century, but there were certainly quite a few from the 1880s and 1890s, as well. The earliest entries I saw were from the 1860s, but this was just a quick exploration, so don’t assume that’s the extent of the range.
Hope this helps someone hunting for ancestors in northern New Jersey.
Good Reads: ‘This Republic of Suffering’
Posted: September 8, 2010 Filed under: Genealogy | Tags: Cemeteries, Good Reads Leave a comment »There are shelves and shelves of Civil War histories, and Lord knows there’s no shortage of riveting battle narratives and larger-than-life personalities to write about. But Drew Gilpin Faust, historian and lately Harvard’s president, takes a novel tack by focusing on the inevitable outcome of all that: the unprecedented thousands of war dead.
In This Republic of Suffering: Death And The American Civil War, Faust explains how the Civil War changed our understanding of death and mourning as surely as it changed the generals’ understanding of warfare. “We still live in the world of death the Civil War created,” writes Faust. Measures we take for granted today — the notification of next of kin, registering of graves, armies taking responsibility for soldiers’ decent burials — are really products of the Civil War. The carnage that occurred on an entirely new scale demanded entirely new systems for grappling with it.
In the chapter “Burying,” Faust recounts the evolution of burial procedures on the battlefield, and the rituals, often hastily improvised, that soldiers enacted to provide a sense of ceremony in the absence of clergy and family. “Believing and Doubting” explores the wrenching challenge to faith posed by the ever-mounting tally of losses. A surging interest in spiritualism and an outpouring of tragic popular ballads were two typical signs of the times.
What really spurred lasting change was the massive scale of deaths, and their remoteness from loved ones who desperately wanted a body to bury and a gravesite where they could mourn. Undertakers did a booming business at the battlefields for families who could afford to have bodies located, embalmed and shipped homeward. Thousands more soldiers were buried in common graves, and more than 40 percent of Union dead remained anonymous at war’s end. (The percentage was even higher for Confederate soldiers.)
The inability to account for fallen soldiers seems ridiculous to us today, but it was rather typical for its time — certainly the dead of the Mexican War fared no better. Still, by war’s end, the yearning to name and account for the dead crystallized into a national movement to create official burying grounds for them — the beginnings of the national cemeteries of today.
Books like this are valuable to the family historian, illuminating social assumptions and customs that have faded from memory, and giving us greater understanding of the ways our ancestors grappled with grief during this time of incredible upheaval. If you have a Civil War soldier in your family tree, it’s definitely worth a look.
Links, 9.06.10
Posted: September 6, 2010 Filed under: Genealogy | Tags: Cemeteries, Link Love, References Leave a comment »It’s the Labor Day edition of links!
Working it: This is a great day to review and consider resources that cover our ancestors’ working lives. “Business, Institution and Organization Records” by Kay Haviland Freilich and Ann Carter Fleming is a good overview. (It’s at Ancestry.com; subscription required.)
Immigrant stories: I’m sure there will be a lot of good stories out of this one: Ellis Island immigrant oral histories have gone online at Ancestry, part of a project begun in 1973 that encompasses 2,000 histories.
Start learning: It’s fall. The kids are back in school — what about you? I’m thinking about genealogy courses, and here are two upcoming examples. In New Jersey, the State Library is accepting registrations for seminars, both real-time and online. Some are definitely of interest to genealogy researchers: “Finding Your Ancestors” and “Sanborn Maps”. You can find the schedule by going to the link and clicking on the “Mid-Day Training” buttons at the right. If you’re interested in Pennsylvania, there’s a Crash Course in Pennsylvania Genealogy webinar coming up at the end of this month.
Illinois cemeteries: An update from the Illinois Farm Bureau a few days ago draws attention to a recent measure that apparently overhauls licensing and regulations for any cemetery that has money of any amount in a care fund (even tiny family burying grounds). I say “apparently” because the press release is not as clearly written as it could be — still, an interesting development.
Haunting: In Los Angeles, police work and genealogy are intersecting as investigators try to unravel the mystery of an old trunk containing the decades-old remains of two infants. The steamer trunk, found last month, had been abandoned in an apartment building’s basement; the ownership has been traced to a Scottish immigrant born in 1897 who worked as a nurse in Los Angeles before moving to Vancouver, where she eventually died.
Blog world: The Chicago Genealogy blog highlights a benefit to erect a memorial for the McCoy brothers, influential Chicago musicians who died within months of each other in 1950 and are buried in unmarked graves. … At Ties That Bind, a poignant reflection on holding on to family treasures — and letting them go. …. Finally, while trying to figure out the history of Labor Day, I stumbled upon Paterson Fire Journal, which blogs all about the history of fires and firefighting in Paterson, NJ. Fascinating anecdotes and pictures.
Hope you’re enjoying the holiday weekend — and here’s to a great fall.
An (anonymous) gift of remembrance
Posted: August 10, 2010 Filed under: Genealogy | Tags: Cemeteries, NY 2 Comments »I sort of pay attention to news from St. Agnes Cemetery in Menands, N.Y., mainly because it holds the records for another cemetery in Watervliet where a number of my kin are buried. Just now St. Agnes figures in this particularly haunting news story from the Albany Times-Union.
Even a century later, it has a heartbreaking immediacy: A group of kids having a blast on a late-summer outing one minute, fighting for their lives the next, while onlookers watch helplessly.
The girls were participating in a picnic on the grounds of a Victorian estate in what is now St. Agnes Cemetery, sponsored by the Catholic orphanage in which they lived. A bit of fun with a makeshift raft on a pond ended abruptly when the raft capsized, dumping its four passengers, all non-swimmers, into the water. One girl managed to cling to the raft and survived; her three companions drowned.
And being orphans with nobody to take responsibility for the arrangements, they were buried in an unmarked, pauper’s grave.
Times-Union reporter Paul Grondahl relates that St. Agnes historian Kelly Grimaldi has long been drawn to the tragedy of the orphans and did her homework uncovering many of the details. (She has also been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to locate kin of the drowning victims.)
It now appears that someone else is drawn to the long-ago tragedy — a nameless donor who has paid to have a granite marker placed upon the girls’ resting place.
It’s a terribly sad story, but at least one that ends with an unexpected gesture of caring.
Links 6.14.10
Posted: June 14, 2010 Filed under: Genealogy | Tags: Cemeteries, Link Love, Records Leave a comment »Call this the week that Wall Street noticed genealogy, I guess.
Ancestry.com in the news: Both Barron’s and the Wall Street Journal took due notice of Ancestry.com, which went public last year and recently projected higher-than-expected earnings for this year. Wall Street, of course, does not really get into the technicalities of what consumers get for their Ancestry buck, or who really owns all those family trees online. Discuss amongst yourselves.
Ownership, continued: One person who is discussing ownership and copyright issues in the genealogy universe, and discussing it in absorbing detail, is James Tanner at Genealogy’s Star. His multipart series (for example, here and here) is a must-read for anyone interested in this topic.
A genealogy love story: Now for something romantic — the story of a couple of genealogy buddies who met online, bound by their common research interests, and discovered romance amid the courthouse trips and cemetery walks. I wonder how often that happens? Maybe more often than we’d think.
Arlington fallout: Various stories are popping up in the wake of the disturbing news that personnel at Arlington National Cemetery mishandled the remains of 200 troops. For instance, USA Today reports that Arlington still uses an index-card system for its records, which might contribute to its difficulties. (Yes, card indexes are hardly unprecedented in cemetery offices, but Arlington is pretty massive.) The Washington Post asks about procedures at other national cemeteries. Arlington is one of only two national cemeteries administered directly by the Defense Department. The vast majority are overseen by the Veterans Administration, and 14 are under the direction of the National Parks Service.
Trust fund windfall: Here’s a nice bit of luck for a historic cemetery. In Allentown, Pa., volunteers at the Union and West End Cemetery were pleasantly surprised to discover that the cemetery would receive nearly $30,000 in old trust-fund money. Apparently Wachovia Bank is unloading many vintage trust-fund assets, some of which date back to the 1880s, and were originally set up to maintain gravesites. Because of this, the bank decided to send the money to the cemeteries where the original depositors were buried. $30,000 might be a drop in the bucket on Wall Street, but it’s big money to a struggling 156-year-old cemetery with a $19,000 annual budget. Congratulations, folks!
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