A link to a great Cape Cod gravestone/ informational site here.

What- doesn’t everyone go to the Cape in the summer for genealogical research?? 😉

In another 10 days, Charlie and I are packing up the kids and heading down to Cape Cod for a week (with limited Wi-Fi… eeks!); the above is the view from our rented house’s front yard… so I’m going to be pretty busy for awhile and off-line.

We spent a fantastic weekend last year down there and decided to follow it up this year with our first ever real family vacation. So there will be sand castles, swimming, sailing (some of his childhood friends still live there), and generally relaxing.

For them, anyways- I’m planning on hitting every cemetery between Provincetown and Plymouth, time permitting and taking a gazillion photos of ancient ancestral headstones. There are a good dozen or more family lines of mine that lived on Cape Cod back as early as 1637, when one of my ancestors settled in Chatham.

In Bucksport ME, where some descendants of these Cape Cod ancestors settled, I have found 5 generations of the same family line of mine, beginning with my 5th great-grandfather. According to records, his father is buried in P’town.

The earliest gravestone I have ever found here in Maine is of another 6th great-grandfather, a Revolutionary War veteran. In Orleans, my 11th great-grandfather’s gravestone has been recorded; he died in 1729 at age 79.

Born in 1650- WOW.

Same as my mother and grandparents before me, I have researched not only my own lines, but those of my husband and his families. I have a database pushing 10,000 individuals and easily double that again to data-enter in my “spare time” and no idea at all how many cemeteries I have walked through or researched, be it online or in libraries.

So you can well imagine how this lifelong genealogy nut feels about the desecration of the Burr Oaks Cemetery in Chicago. I really haven’t been able to formulate the right words to convey my horror, disgust, sadness and frustration , let alone empathy for the families of those who may or may not be affected by this horrendous scandal.

The closest I can come to imagining the scope of this story is to imagine if these criminal activites had occurred at Mount Auburn in Cambridge MA or Mt Hope in Bangor.

I love cemeteries and always have- the history within, the family stories… hopefully there is eventually an outcome that somewhat eases the pain  now being felt by so many.

There is a monument at the Eldredge Public Library in Chatham that I plan on visiting- will close with its inscription, as it seems fitting today:

HE WHO HAS NO FEELINGS OF VENERATION FOR HIS PREDECESSORS SHOULD EXPECT NONE FROM THOSE WHO FOLLOW HIM