Their names disappear over the years.
Damp green grass and spongy moss creep over headstones. Wind and rain scour the engraved letters until they’re washed away completely.
The faded cement markers have guarded graves for generations. The people buried beneath them include civil war veterans and army widows, stillborn infants and centenarians, college coaches and small-town politicians. They were parents, grandparents, children and friends.
Somewhere, someone may be looking for them.
A group of local volunteers wants to make sure no one buried in any Snohomish County cemetery is forgotten. They’ve photographed and cataloged more than 100,000 gravesites online over the last four years. Now, they’re raising money to buy and install tombstones for thousands of poorly marked graves around the county.
They call it the Tombstone Project.
Hobbyists to historians
It started with scattered volunteers, mostly retirees with a shared hobby: strolling through cemeteries on sunny afternoons and photographing tombstones.
It’s not so odd. Volunteers around the world photograph tombstones and post the information online through websites like Find a Grave (www.findagrave.com). Their efforts have created a massive database. For professional researchers, amateur genealogists or curious family members, a photo of a tombstone can be the first solid piece in a tricky historical puzzle.
“This is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done in my entire life,” said Larry Taylor, 66, a volunteer photographer and Tombstone Project coordinator. “We’re helping people solve puzzles. And this isn’t just a word puzzle in the newspaper, this is the puzzle of a life. They’re someone’s family.”
He rallied about a dozen local volunteers into a loosely organized group several years ago after he realized they were duplicating work. He’d come home with hundreds of pictures from the Marysville Cemetery to find that someone just added those same sites to Find a Grave. Meanwhile, nearby cemeteries had rows of uncataloged headstones.
Kathy Bowman and Tami Sherrill are two of the volunteers who teamed up with Taylor, a Vietnam veteran and retired Volunteers of America administrator.
Bowman, 71, started dabbling in genealogy because she was considering taking up gardening. She wanted to know whether there were any gardeners or farmers in her family history. Instead, she found a long line of printers.
While researching, she responded to a request on Find a Grave from someone out of state who wanted a photo of a specific tombstone. Tombstones contain critical information: name spelling, date of birth, date of death and place of burial. Bowman started answering more requests and received thank-you messages from people around the country who were able to add to their family histories because of her work.
Sherrill’s grandparents were avid family historians and traveled to cemeteries halfway across the country to document their ancestors’ gravesites. Sherrill began taking photos of her family markers in local cemeteries, then started adding others to Find a Grave. One day, she stumbled upon a stretch of Evergreen Cemetery in Everett with no tombstones, though the cemetery’s records indicated people were buried there. A closer inspection revealed small cement bricks hidden under layers of grass and grime.
They were temporary markers that had never been replaced. Underground, they’re protected from the elements but invisible. Once exposed, they wear down, the letters fading into obscurity.
It was a problem other volunteers also noticed. Families can pay to replace a temporary marker with something long-lasting, but not all of them choose to or can afford it. Over time, temporary headstones become blank slates.
“What we’re finding is that if nothing’s done, we’re going to lose a lot of history in our communities,” Taylor said.
On to unmarked graves
After nearly four years of photographing tombstones in 45 local cemeteries, volunteers decided it was time for Phase Two of the Tombstone Project.
They’ve pinpointed about 15,000 graves in Snohomish County that are unmarked or are marked by temporary or unreadable stones.
Some look like smooth stepping stones wedged into the mossy ground. One headstone is sandwiched in the trunk of a tree that grew around it. Another is garnished with a spotty carpet of moss, no letters or numbers visible. The volunteers kid that Mr. Moss is buried there.
Learning the real names and stories of the Mr. Mosses out there is a daunting task. Each requires hours of research. Volunteers rely on cemetery plot maps, military records, birth and death records, letters, photographs and obituaries.
The team decided to focus on people buried before 1950, which narrows their list from 15,000 to about 5,000.
It can cost a few hundred dollars for a sturdy granite marker or several thousand for a monument-style tombstone. Some cemeteries have offered the Tombstone Project a discount for a basic granite rectangle with the person’s name and dates of birth and death.
Their average price tag for a tombstone is $289, and installation costs vary. Their goal is to raise $100,000 this year, enough to buy and install 310 tombstones: 100 at the Marysville Cemetery, 70 at Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery in Snohomish, 80 at Evergreen Cemetery in Everett, 50 at Arlington Cemetery and 10 at Freeborn Lutheran Cemetery in Stanwood.
The Stillaguamish Valley Genealogical Society recently adopted the Tombstone Project as one of its programs. By getting under the umbrella of a nonprofit, Tombstone volunteers can more easily raise money and apply for grants.
“Most of us find it a very valuable thing to put our time and energy into,” genealogical society president Ruth Caesar said. “But who has the funding for this? We have the time and energy, but funding is the issue.”
They hope to meet their $100,000 goal through grants and donations. They currently accept donations in person or by mail, and they’re working on a website.
Volunteers also coordinate with the Department of Veterans Affairs to pay for veterans’ markers. Taylor has found four veterans so far without permanent tombstones, and Sherrill found one World War II veteran whose marker was ordered but never placed.
The group’s first tombstone was installed at the Marysville Cemetery on Monday, May 11. It’s for Elizabeth Armstrong, born 1835, died 1916. She had three sons and four daughters. She was buried next to husband George and their son, Charles, who still have temporary markers.
Within a week, the genealogical society heard from Elizabeth Armstrong’s great-great-grandson Mike Simkins, who noticed the new marker when he visited the cemetery.
“Over the years I’ve tried to keep the Armstrong markers above ground and the new one was a pleasant surprise,” he said.
He emailed the society a family photo he’d scanned, yellow with age but showing Elizabeth, George and Charles standing in front of their Marysville home at the “corner of 80th and 51st,” according to a scrawl below the old photograph. Elizabeth’s hair was pulled back and she wore a simple dotted dress, a sturdy belt and a stern expression. Her husband was a tall man with a bushy white beard, and Charles seemed to have his dad’s thick mustache and his mom’s stoic visage as he stood nearby in long sleeves, long pants and suspenders.
Just as old photographs and letters become family treasures, people shouldn’t underestimate the importance of a tombstone. It’s physical evidence of a past life, Simkins said, something people who search for their ancestors can see and touch.
If families object to a permanent tombstone, they can contact the genealogical society or the cemetery where their relative is buried. The Tombstone Project is about preserving history, not dredging up family secrets.
However, some sleuthing is necessary. Taylor spent about 10 hours researching Elizabeth Armstrong before they bought the tombstone. Everything must be double- and triple-checked. The volunteers aren’t just getting tombstones. They are stringing together family histories.
“We don’t want anyone to be forgotten,” Caesar said.
Sometimes, a worn-down temporary tombstone has a clear path through cemetery records and government documents to confirm the person’s identity. Many cases are not that simple.
Bodies have been moved when cemeteries closed or new development came through.
If the original tombstones no longer were legible, bodies removed from one cemetery were re-buried at another without a name.
“We have a lot of John and Jane Does,” Sherrill said. They aim to identify as many as possible.
Grace and gratitude
Taylor got an email a couple weeks ago from parents who lost their daughter in childbirth in 1996. They’d found the page he set up for her on Find a Grave and thanked him for preserving their baby’s memory.
Sherrill heard from the great granddaughter of a woman whose headstone she’d photographed and put on Find a Grave. The woman’s family had been searching for her final resting place for 50 years. It was a mission the great-granddaughter inherited from her father.
“She said, ‘I don’t know you, but if I could, I would hug you,’” Sherrill recalled.
Those people are the living links to weathered tombstones in quiet, green cemeteries where past generations have been laid to rest. They’re the ones who’s family names — carved into cement bricks that were never meant to last — are battered by the rain, swept away by the wind and devoured by the moss.
A granite slab, engraved with a few short lines of letters and numbers, seems like a simple thing. The life represented by a grave marker is never so simple, though. At the heart of the Tombstone Project is one key truth.
Every tombstone tells a story.
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com
For more information about the Tombstone Project, email info@stillygen.org. Donations can be addressed to the Tombstone Project at PO Box 34, Arlington, WA, 98223.
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