Community's help key to cleanup, project

Sonny Poirier, sextant for the Pine Grove cemetery in Blanchard, and his wife, LaVonna, were pleased that 35 people turned out for this fall’s cleanup of the cemetery grounds. Whole families came to serve the Blanchard community.

Barbara Hornby, who’s in charge of the Blanchard community center said they could use that kind of help a few more times each year. It only took two hours with all those people working together. Vic Perkins arrived with a riding lawn mower which really sped up the job.

Future projects there will include cleaning the headstones and uploading headstone images and data to Internet sites. Two more water hydrants are also needed to help maintain the grounds and decrease the fire danger. A better fence and section markers are also projected.

A dozen people turned out for the recording of headstones at the Evergreen cemetery in Priest River. More than a thousand images were uploaded to the website.

This will be an ongoing project until all headstones are recorded. The advantage of using the “1billiongraves.com” website is that the grave “GPS” location is linked to the headstone image and transcribed data. In time, if there is deterioration of the grave site or marker, the burial place can be located by its GPS coordinates.

Two other websites are frequently used for genealogical research of deceased ancestors: findagrave.com and interment.net. Thanks to all who pitched in to help with this project.

BETTY WHALIN

Oldtown