 Hello everyone. Welcome to the second of the Discovering Our Ancestors and Preserving Historic Grave Sites webinar series, Introduction to Investigating, Documenting, and Preserving Grave Sites. My name is Mary Fernandez and I am a Program Coordinator for the Preservation Services and Outreach Department of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. This second webinar in the series will introduce the first steps that are often required for beginning the process of preserving historic cemeteries. And participants will learn about the genealogical tools and resources that are available to conducting research and providing the necessary documentation for historic grave sites. The National Trust has prioritized the preservation of historic cemeteries through several initiatives and programs including through grant making, the Hope Crew, and other forms of advocacy like our work at Chaco Bottom and through America's 11 most endangered places, including the ancestral places of Southwest Utah in 2019, the Indigenous Burial Site at Rossewick in Virginia, and the West Berkeley Shell Mount and Village Site in California in 2020, Morningstar Tabernacle, number 88, Order of Moses Cemetery and Hall in Maryland in 2021, and Olivewood Cemetery in 2022. As many of you know, the needs related to preserving historic cemeteries are just immense. And the National Trust is committed to continuing to provide resources and tools that address that need, such as this webinar series and an in-person event this fall, coordinating with our annual Passport Conference in Washington, D.C. I like to say, as I said before, that everyone has a cemetery. I came to be passionate about cemeteries due to my professional background in museums and historic sites. Most recently, before joining the National Trust, I served as the Director of Special Events, Special Projects, and Volunteers at Historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia. I encourage y'all to put your name in the chat and tell us a little bit about your cemetery as well. But before we get any further, I'm going to pass it over to my co-host for this webinar, Jason Church with NCPTT. That's the National Center for Preservation, Technology, and Training. Over you, Jason. Hello, everybody. This is Jason Church, the Chief of Technical Services with NCPTT. And we're really excited to see so many of you on here today. We've got some great speakers lined up. And I know you're as excited as I am to hear what they have to say. So without further ado, we'll move forward. But we're really excited to have you today. Thank you, Jason. Now, as I said before, this is the second webinar in a three-part series on Cemetery Preservation. I encourage you to go to the Preservation Leadership Forum and check out the recording of the first webinar if you didn't have a chance to attend. And also to register for upcoming webinar in June. In case you don't know, Preservation Leadership Forum is the professional membership program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. This webinar series is made possible by members of Preservation Leadership Forum. And we sincerely thank those of you all who are with us today. Before we really jump into the presentations, just a few technical logistics, we will take questions from the audience during the webinar. Please send questions via the Q&A function directly to panelists. You're welcome to submit at any point during the webinar, but we will be waiting until the Q&A section to answer questions. You're also encouraged to communicate to all participants through the chat function. The closed captioning function is enabled for this webinar. And following the program, we'll send out a recording of today's webinar directly through the email that you used to register. And finally, all forum webinars, like the first one in this series, are archived in our forum webinar library. I encourage you again to share the recording with your colleagues working to preserve historic cemeteries and to introduce yourself and your cemetery in the chat. Please also let us know what future topics or tools you would like to see. Now our first speaker for today, if you'll change his slide, is Barbara Barksdale. Barbara Barksdale, also known as the cemetery lady, is an educator, living history historian and founder and president of the friend of historic Midland Cemetery and the founding member and chair of the Pennsylvania Hall of Grounds Project, where her experience caring for her historic cemetery can be shared with cemeteries around the state and country. The Pennsylvania Hall of Grounds Project is a need to caretakers, historians, students, anyone who is interested in caretaking and restoration of their cemetery. The project also gives important information of what is available at the state level. The historic Midland Cemetery located in Swatara Township is the resting place for enslaved people, freemen, United States color troops, buffalo soldiers, and numerous leaders of the area's African American community. Without any further ado, please take it away, Barbara. Thank you, thank you, thank you, my goodness. Listening to you introduce me, it's like, oh my god, I have done a little bit of something in this country and add to my dash of my time of being born till the time I will leave from this world, which hopefully won't be for another 25 years, if I'm lucky. But anyway, thank you so much for inviting me to be a participant for this wonderful session. And I do hope that when you are done with this session today, that you have learned something that you are invigorated and ready to, you know, just really do your thing and preserving and restoring cemeteries. Our main purpose for, let me start with the Friends of Midland, is to make sure that we are restoring and preserving and also using it as an educational basis for the community about the history that is buried in our, and I say, wonderful, beautiful historic Midlands Cemetery, as she mentioned, located in Sweater Township. And the other hat that I wear for the Pennsylvania Hall of Grounds is so that we are looking for those cemeteries that are, I'm looking at the slides, okay, so that are, holds the bodies of the United States color troops. That's what it started out for, trying to locate the cemeteries that holds the bodies of the United States color troops. And from that, it kind of expanded to, okay, what about their families? What about their history? What about everything else? So our mission is to make sure that we find these cemeteries around the state of Pennsylvania to document where they're located at and also encourage the stewards slash caretakers of those cemeteries to, you know, make sure that they are doing what they can, make sure that they are getting the help that they need to make sure that we are helping them to create that passion and that purpose and helping them to document and do everything else so that those cemeteries are not lost to the weeds and the trees. So with that being said, I'm going to go into the next slide, which is take a look at this. This is Midlands Cemetery when I started out cleaning this cemetery 32 years ago. And the reason why I started is because my own grandfather who died many, many years before I was born is buried at Midlands Cemetery. So I thought I would go into those woods and try to clean up my grandpa's grave and see if I can get a couple of trees down from around his grave. Unknown as to where he is buried at within the cemetery at the time, I decided that, well, as somebody said to me, well, you're only going to clean off your own grandfather and nobody else. Well, I said, okay, you know, I had to take this digumption of it all and say, okay, I won't even clean off my grandfather until I clean off everybody else. And that's what happened. Midlands Cemetery is now cleaned off. Can you go to the next slide, please? This is some of the stuff that we found in there. As you can see, with the very first slide that we had, it's full of trees all the way out to the corner out to the stop sign. A lot of the neighbors didn't even know that the cemetery was there. People in the area had no idea or clue. But this county, well, I shouldn't say the county, but the township that is located in, they knew that it was there. Let's say the people that worked in the coast department, not everybody in the township knew, but they had a person from the coast department go to the cemetery, actually have it condemned, and they were going to remove the bodies to another location. What I'm saying here is that not only at Midlands Cemetery, but other cemeteries around the state and around the country, they're dealing with the same issues, the same problems. If you have a cemetery that is under weeds and trees and nobody's paying attention to it, they are going to wipe them out. And you'll be seeing some of that information as we go through our session today. The next slide, please. Again, is some of the debris that we found in the cemetery. We found the markers in the cemetery markers. One that says 213 actually relates to a map that we have. The map was last updated by the people that actually was taken care of the cemetery back in 1924, somewhere in there. If you take a look at the tree stomp, there you have the Williams headstone, and that headstone was there obviously before the tree. The tree actually grew up in around the stone. As I said to one person, I said it seems like the stone was impregnated, or the tree was impregnated with the stone. So it tells you how long that the care or no care was happening at the Midlands Cemetery. Again, with the Pennsylvania hallowed grounds, it's the same situation. We're finding cemeteries around the state and also the country. As people call in and ask for advice from us that they have the same situation where there's trees, and their trees have enveloped the stones or the trees have, because of the large roots of the trees, they have pulled up headstones or bodies or collapsed into the grave site. It's caused all kinds of damage because of lack of care. And that lack of care is because in some situations, because most people, they die off obviously, but then there's also those who are the caretakers, they die off, and nobody is encouraged them to take care of their property. Let's say somebody moved away, or the whole community just got uprooted or wiped out for whatever reason. And so there's nobody there that can actually help to maintain the cemetery. Sooner or later, because of that neglect, and because you don't have the people that can actually say, oh, there's a cemetery there, somebody's going to destroy it, or for those people that find out that there's a cemetery there, they're sooner or later just going to wipe it out if nobody's looking. So what you need to do is try to get, and I'm going to say next slide please, you try to get your community involved. What can you do to get that community involved? You start getting out there and saying, well, we have a lot of wonderful history here. We have people who are buried there. Maybe they don't even have what you consider history, like in the history books, but there was somebody who had a life. We have to pull together and create an organization to have the friends of Mellon, to make sure that we have the Pennsylvania Hall of Grounds, and make sure that the individual caretakers are out there trying to organize, trying to organize a group or a friends group to say that they're going to help with maintaining the cemetery. What do we do? We have to tell them about the wonderful history that's buried there. Is it going to be the United States color troop? Is it that buffalo soldier? Or is it that person that had been enslaved at one time in the area? Or is it that person who was a freedom seeker that came here and created that community? Is it that person who started the very first church? So we try to get people involved and get them riled up, as they say, so that they can come and assist the caretakers, the organization, and the way to do that is get out there. I don't know if any of you might know Charles Bloxon from Bloxon Collections out of Temple University, but he would tell me, agitate, agitate, agitate. That meant that you needed to get out there and get the people to know about this awesome, wonderful, beautiful history that is buried at your cemetery. Can you go to the next slide, please? All right. This is what we also founded this cemetery, and you're going to find this in various cemeteries around the country. And that would be a lot of headstones. Now, are those headstones the kind that you can clean up in the future? Are those the headstones that are going to crumble in your hand if you start touching them? I had a lot of variety of stones in there that you see, and I keep referring to it as a headstone, but it's not a headstone. I have to say it's a marker, because I don't know if you can really tell, but it says, oh, no. I think this little machine has a thing of its own. It's got a little quick finger on it, doesn't it? It's the Robuck family. Maybe they don't want to be seen today. Who knows? But in either case, there's two wooden markers there actually at the bottom of my feet. I'm not standing on them. They're in front of me. And they were found after we started cutting down a lot of the trees. They actually had laid under the soil for all those years, just from the 1930s. And I can't say it was just because of all these years, but it's just the fact that they were under the soil. And we found them as we were pulling down trees and cutting tree stumps up and everything else, trying to make sure that we can expose the cemetery. Keep in mind that very first slide that you saw with all the trees, this is what was starting to come out of it. We start taking this here cemetery apart bit by bit, day by day, year by year, in order to even get to where we're going to see it in near the end of this year, of my presentation. But in either case, we start finding these wonderful hand stones. And then what do you do? I start going to the Veterans Administration here, local Veterans Administration in Harrisburg and saying, hey, we have veterans buried there. Oh, no, you don't. Yes, we do. I start taking pictures. I start documenting. I start taking names, putting names down on paper, and then sending that off to them and saying, yes, we do have veterans there. What can you do to help us out? Can we get some flags on there for Memorial Day? Can we get some more hand stones for these veterans or fix the hand stones? Can we get somebody in there to take care of these hand stones? What can happen with these hand stones? And we try to make sure that we are exposing this history tree by tree removal, weed by weed, the sumac that's out there and everything else to ensure that we are pulling this history up. We start asking the family members. And if you go to the next slide, family, Mr. Mr. Clayton Karalock, who was out there, he showed me the grave site of where his father is buried at along with his mother. And here to find out his father was a military person from World War One. So we were able to get him a hand stone that said that, hey, this man was William Karalock Sr. was a veteran of World War One. Actually, at the time when they were giving him out, it was just the name World War. It was not the one because at the time two hadn't even happened. But it was just very great to be able to pull this information out there by having this live person give me history about his family and how he was raised because he actually ended up being an orphan because both of his parents had died. And the community helped to raise this man that you see me stand there talking to, Mr. Clayton Karalock Jr. And so we had that documented. What we also did was to pull in some students from Dickinson College to go out into the community for me and grab up all the oral history that they could get and garnish and document and get it and transcribe it so that we can look at these people's stories over the years. So this is what's coming out of the cemetery. It's not just because there's a lot of dead people there, but they have a life. They had a life. They also have hopefully the most of them have descendants. So what do we do to grab that information? What's going to come out that cemetery? What is that all about as far as trying to find out who's in there? But also, more importantly, how can we make this place look like it is the hollow grounds that it should be? Can you go on to the next slide, please? All right. So my thing was to start back, as I mentioned earlier, about talking to the people about the history. But how far back did that history go when you started looking at those headstones? Everybody know a headstone? Well, everybody should know that a headstone is a book. What's happening with that dash in your life? Was it a child? Was it, again, somebody who had been enslaved? Is there a headstone for those people that were enslaved? You may find that you may not. But you go through the records, you go through oral history gathering, you go through military records, you go through almost everything newspaper.com and almost anything that's out there, like with ancestry or whatever. And start trying to dig into your area to find out all this wonderful history. That's what came out of Mellon. And this is what we're trying to encourage our caretakers and stores to also do to make sure that they are documenting every single person. And we can't say that that person got to be the Elfist Gerald, you know, the world or Nat King Cole or anybody else, or just because they have a title called United States College Room. But everybody has a story. How do we document that person's story, whether they were a child or a very senior citizen, a very ripe old person who was the founder of the church or became the very first Black councilman like Peter Sullivan Blackwell. So we find things like this and can you go to the next slide, please? We find things about the history of this cemetery. Again, my cemetery, my focus or our focus is about the cemeteries that host the United States College. We're looking for those Black cemeteries that don't necessarily have to be abandoned. We have a cemetery in Pennsylvania called Eden Cemetery located in Philadelphia region. We have cemeteries all over our state that has a lot of wonderful history and those histories because of being an African American cemetery goes all the way back to some of them back into the 1700s from when they were in or the 1600s. You know, some of the cemeteries hold this vital, vital, vital information and showing the people the progression of life here in America. We go through the enslavement, we go through the auction block like is mentioned here and we go through, can you go to the next slide, please? The travel that they made, whether it is that soldier being a Buffalo soldier or that soldier who was dealing with the Spanish-American War, you know, where did they train at? What did they do? That soldier, that's body that's laying there with the 10th Calvary or the infantry or the 24th of the Buffalo soldiers buried at these cemeteries and we need to make sure that they're being noted. I found one not too long ago of Washington, Jordan. Never did I, you can go to the next slide, please. Never did I ever think that there was a soldier out there when I started 30 years ago or even 25 years ago to say that this person was a military person until I started digging and looking for the grandson that we thought was, well, we thought it was a soldier, only to find out it wasn't him, it was the grandfather or yeah, the grandfather. And here to find out he was the United States color troops, yes, we're going to get him a headstone that will denote that. And so this history is just very vital to making these stories come to life. To add, you know, a picture to it would be wonderful if you can dig into somebody's, you know, treasure box and find a picture of these people, but to add it all together. And then when you're going to the cemetery or people are visiting the cemeteries or taking those tours to the cemetery, these are the things you can pull out and just show them that this is all about these people. This is about this child. It's about JJ Jones, who was a person who traveled from Arkansas, made his way up to Wilberforce in Ohio, and he was sent as a missionary here to good old Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And wow, what did he do? He started a church called the Mount Zion Baptist Church, which is still in existence down here on Locust Street. And when I gave a presentation to the church about their minister, they had no clue that this minister had been at one time, a person who had been enslaved until I found his documents. He's buried at Midland Cemetery. When you're starting to deal with cemeteries, whether it's black, white or indifferent, you're finding the history that goes along with these people. And not all of it is the best history or the happy rejoicing history. It is the history that makes you ponder, makes you think, and also makes you feel like, you know, what can we do to make our world a little bit better? And this here note, this here presentation piece here is showing, you know, the end of the Civil War and somebody's reading the victory notice in the newspaper because you have that person who can read, thank God, that he could tell them that they're free. That's what this picture is all about. So can you go to the next slide, please? And, you know, we talked about, you know, the United States color troops, the Buffalo soldiers, and if you get into the real digest of it is, it is how do we keep this history alive? How do we connect it beyond just the Midland Cemetery or the Pennsylvania Howard grounds? How do we connect it to other areas? As I showed you earlier, there was a map there. And as these people were immigrants of some sort, they had to come from the south to the north, or maybe it's people that was going from the north to the west, who knows, but at least this way in finding them and pulling their history together is helping us to determine their tracks. It's not the tracks in the snow, but the tracks in this here world to show that they have been progressive, that they have moved forward, they have tried to create a homestead for themselves, they've tried to create a church for themselves, a community for themselves, they have tried to have homes for themselves. Can you go to the next slide, please? And they also tried to have schools for themselves. Here you have a grouping of people that's outside of, you know, their place of living. But if you go on to the next slide, I guess I got one too many, but we'll get to that. Thank you. What you have is, you know, them building a community. And if you have a community of living people, you also have a cemetery that's usually close by. So what do we do? We have to find a place for these people to be buried at. And hopefully and prayfully is someplace that they can go and sit down and relax and have their picnic baskets with them and have a meal basically with their ancestors. Can you go to the next slide now, please? This is one of the things I'm talking about. I would look, now that the cemetery is cleaned up, and this is where I'm trying to get the rest of it and trying to encourage every, all the other stewards around the country to make sure that we are restoring and preserving the cemeteries. This is where we also pull in the schools and get them to talk about the history, American history, not necessary Black history, American history. Here I have Jeremiah Jackson. Now I don't have an actual site of where Jeremiah is buried. I just have all his records, his military records, as well as his deaf records. I have some other records, of course, in here we have a noblerary of Jeremiah Jackson. This is six months ago, Jeremiah Jackson, a Gallup member of the color troops during the rebellion and one of the first to enter Richmond. Now you know what was going on in Richmond. Richmond was a battlefield, a battle ground. He ended up going to the soldier's home in Erie, Pennsylvania, and I would love to get into their records to find out more about Jeremiah and some of that, as well as the other people there. He was a member of the AME church, which we know that's on the corner of Adams Street and Second Street here in Stilton. And it says he was interred at Midland Cemetery. This is the record that we need, this little piece of paper, this little piece of information. This helps us define the history on Jeremiah Jackson. How can we go back into his records? Where did he actually come from? He wasn't born and raised here. This is part of our history. This is part of the Midland Cemetery. And then you have right next to him, Mr. Fields, James Fields. He was a janitor for the Felton schools. The long story short on him was the fact that he was able to not only have a job, but he also was part of many different organizations. You have the Odd Fellows, you have the Grand Lodge, and he also was a member of the monumental AME church, which most of you may know already that the AME church started out of Philadelphia with Pastor Allen. So the Allen church that helped him formulate some of the churches that are throughout the entire America. Anyway, he was a very gallant man. This man was actually very much into his community. So he had a house. When I started looking for his records, he had a house. He had property. He was also instrumental in trying to help the schools to start here. That was for the color children. If you go to the next one, you'll see some of the color children that were living here in Stilton. And these are the stories that people don't seem to remember. They know about the United States color shoots. They know about the Buffalo soldiers and the Tuskegee Airmen and the Muffer Point Marines, but they failed to remember about the children. And in fact, they forget about the teachers that were there. Here we have a teacher here off to the right-hand side of the picture, as she has her kids. And some of the students actually in some of the pictures that I have, they are so old. The pictures are so old. And it's dated because of the fact that the children sitting in almost like in the same position, but they don't even have shoes or socks on. You know, they're just like scrounging up at the bottom of the picture and they're so cute. But you also start thinking, oh, my God, they have to be grandparents or great-grandparents or great-great-great-grandparents by now. And of course, most of them are now deceased, or let's say all of them are now deceased because this is from the early, as you see on the bottom of picture 1914. Some of these kids, some of these children are buried at Midlands Cemetery as well as the teacher that you see there. Because unfortunately, when I was digging through her records, it indicated that she, at the age of 27, that she passed out at her desk and died at her desk. And they had to remove her body from the school at that time. And so she is buried at Midlands Cemetery. It's amazing what you're going to find as you're starting to dig through and find the people that are buried at the cemetery. But we have, you know, a lot of people through in this entire world, everybody has a story. And it doesn't matter if they're young or they're old, it's just that, what do you do with that cemetery? And why are you taking down those trees? And why are you removing the brush and the weeds and the trees? And oh, finding those handstones and getting them above ground and cleaning them off and taking care of them. So it is very, very important that we do that so that these people are not forgotten in these wonderful hollow grounds that should be taken care of. Again, we need to make sure that we are taking care of our cemeteries, not only for the purpose of what happened yesterday, but what is going to happen tomorrow. Because tomorrow, when somebody says that, you know, why are you cleaning off the cemetery? You're cleaning the cemetery off because you want to make sure you preserve it for the kids to come. Can you take to go to the next slide, please? This is some of my reenactor friends that come in from Philadelphia every year for the memorial service, which actually it's going to happen on May 27th at one o'clock at our cemetery on a Saturday. And they come in to talk to the people, reenact, and also give more information about their troops and why they're trying to get that history out there. And they go from cemetery to cemetery and talk to the people about the wonderful history that is buried in the cemetery. Can you go to the next slide, please? All righty. This is that you saw the trees in the beginning. And this is what we have. In fact, all the trees in the background on this particular picture are now down and removed. They're called volunteer trees are out of the way. And we find them more and more histones. We have used the eagle scouts. We've had about eight eagle scouts that's gotten their badges from working at the cemetery. They put up these here fencing, the fencing around there. They've created benches for the cemetery. They have done a tremendous job over the last 30 years in getting that history unearthed. And as you see, they actually made a little memorial for our veterans. And they come out and they diligently help us to make sure that the cemetery is taken care of. And I know I'm rolling down on time, so we're going to go to the next slide. And we have more volunteers, kind of pull those volunteers in there, help them have them, teach them about the cemetery. And I don't care what color they are. If they're living and they're breathing and they have, you know, the ability to move around in the cemetery and pull weeds or scrub stones down or, you know, cut grass or whatever, get them involved, talk to them about the history. Why is so relevant to American history and that the thumbprint of each and every one of those people that are underground is now above ground. Next slide, please. Alrighty. And this is my little wrap up here for you, because I know I'm probably pushing time, but I'm a yakker and a talker. So who can you talk to about this? You talk to everybody and anybody. All right. And believe me, I have talked to, I don't know how many people over the last 30 some years, but I love telling people about my cemetery. I love telling people about the hallow grounds as far as, you know, what we can do to make America beautiful and make it look good. And as you see, there's Ruby Dee. Some of you may know Ruby Dee or she's passed on now, but awesome lady that listened to me as I was telling her all about the middle of the cemetery. I had one picture here is me talking to Susan Rose, Professor Susan Rose from Dickinson College. I was the community liaison for them for about eight years. And then also we have the famous rap Dixon who is buried there. He was a Negro League baseball player. See, there's a lot of history in these wonderful cemeteries, right? And of course, there's a snowy picture. I had to be out there in the snow to take a picture of how the cemetery looks with us covered in the lots of snow. And the wonderful beautiful woman here up in the corner that is Mary Ann Gale, Tyler Dixon. I tracked her from down south when she was enslaved all the way up to Pennsylvania and she too is resting at Midland Cemetery. And pull all this together. We do all this because we want to make sure we're saving that history, whether it's at Midland Cemetery or even the cemetery or any other cemetery around the country that we end up protecting it, preserving it and definitely using it for education. If you go to the next slide, please. Okay. The one thing that just happened for the wonderful historic beautiful Midland Cemetery is that as you see the Midland Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April the 27th, 2023. That was only a couple of weeks ago. So we did it, folks. We did it. And that's because of purpose and passion. And that's because of trying to make sure that we are educating everyone about the history and how these people in our wonderful Midland Cemetery has reached beyond the borders of Swain Island Township, beyond the borders of Pennsylvania, and has reached beyond the coastlines of the Pacific and the Atlantic and everything else because some of the people worked at the good old Bethlehem still and helped create the rails that are in this country as well as in Italy. And also when you go across the Golden Gate Bridge, think of good old Stilt Pennsylvania because all those rails came from right here. All right. Anyway, folks, thank you for having me. God bless you all. And hopefully I'll be able to talk to you again someday. Thank you so much, Barbara. And congratulations again on that huge win of getting your historic cemetery on the National Register. Just absolutely phenomenal and inspiring to see the work that you've done. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I want to go ahead and apologize to all the folks in the audience about our technical issues. We are working to fix our slideshow to make sure that it doesn't auto move forward as we speak. But in the meantime, I'd love to introduce our next speaker. This is Gail Brady. Gail Brady is an educator and museum professional who's passionate about learning genealogy and museums. She currently serves as the owner and educator at our Mammie's LLC, where she teaches families about genealogy and African American history. In her role at our Mammie's, she develops and implements hands-on history and genealogy lessons for participants using information from her own family tree. Past professional experiences include the Lower Ninth Ward Home Ownership Association, National World War II Museum, National Park Service Gene Lafitte, Gen Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, and New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park, Louisiana State Museum, and River Road African American Museum. Gail, hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and a Master of Arts degree in Museum Studies from Southern University at New Orleans. She's currently a PhD candidate at Capella University. And I just, I love a long bio. That was fantastic. Gail, I'd like to take it over. Hello everyone and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak Mary and Jason. I really love what I do and I'm going to do my very best to take everything that I would love to talk about in a one hour and turn it into something that's 15 to 20 minutes. So I want to call this my greatest overview to genealogy and grave sites and how those work together. And without those, I would not be able to teach or do what I do at our Mammie's. So just briefly, I'm going to do like the importance of grave sites and African American genealogy research, just how burial information can increase knowledge about your ancestors lives and just why we should get involved in the preservation of these burial grounds. Next slide. So if you know me, if you follow my work and if you don't, everything that I do, I dedicated to my ancestors and those who have come before me. My family has lived in Louisiana over 300 years and I'm always proud to say that. I'm always proud to say that, you know, a lot of the buildings in Poincaré Parish, my ancestors built them. So today's presentation, I'm dedicating it to my third-grade grandmother, Lizzie Riley, and my paternal second-grade grandmother, Classie or Clarissa Nixon. Next slide. So when I'm talking today, my mind is set on Grandma Lizzie, who married Dempsey. He was from the East Coast from North Carolina. He had 13 kids with Grandma Classie. Then he left her and moved to another parish and then Grandma Lizzie had two more children by Joe Riley. The cool thing that I've learned about my Grandma Lizzie as I depict her life, she was also a midwife and one of few midwives that I can find in St. Francisville, Louisiana. But I'm extremely proud to say that I know that my Grandma Lizzie was a midwife and a lot of the things that she did then to take care of the family, some of those things have been passed down to me orally. Next slide. And Grandma Lizzie's daughter, Classie Nixon, yes, she had 20 children. Grandma Classie had so many kids, she literally named one of those kids 19. Grandma Classie worked on sugarcane plantations and cotton plantations in St. Francisville until she moved to Point Copee Parish, where the family continued to grow and multiply. I'm a descendant of William Coates, Grandma Classie married three guys, Charlie, William and James. And I'm a descendant of William Coates and I just literally found that after I took a DNA test, I originally thought that my grandmother was a clipper but DNA proved that we're actually Coates. So proud to say that I have strong ties to St. Francisville and what you're looking at is a photo to the right. That photo was taken at St. Francisville at one of the railroad areas of a small town called Bayou-Sara. So that's the land where my ancestors came from, that's the land where many of them are still buried. Next slide. So as I mentioned, many of them are still buried in St. Francisville but the thing that sticks out to me the most, when it comes to the burial grounds of Grandma Lizzie, I don't know where she's buried. I would say she's somewhere between the photo on the far left and somewhere to the photo on the far right. The photo on the left is, as you can see, it's a town marker for St. Francisville and that's the railroad card that you see. The photo in the middle is the, I guess she would say more of the back of Glenwood Plantation right behind St. Mark's Baptist Church in Cemetery and then the photo on the far right is St. Mark Baptist Church Cemetery. To my understanding and just experience, I have learned so many African American burial grounds are under the sugarcane fields. They're found on the sugarcane refinery, refineries or refineries, sugarcane fields, homes. There are so many places and so many burial sites and grounds that we just don't know about and the only reason why I'm saying that I know that there's another cemetery that's on the grounds of Glenwood Plantation was because that's what I was told. So St. Mark's, the photo all the way to the right has all of the above ground burials and the markers that remain, but there are also some others that I have been told that's somewhere on that land. If you're familiar with the artist, Ernest Gaines is of the plantation where he grew up is not too far from this area. Next slide. So the thing that I want to point out to those who are doing their research depending on where you are, whether you're a beginner, whether you are somewhere in the middle is one thing that I've found over the past 10 years of teaching this versus the past 15, 16 years of doing this is that many people often overlook museums and cemeteries and churches when it comes to doing genealogy research. They also forget to look at historical sites or visit the places where their ancestors may have lived. These historical sites offer like insights to our ancestors lives and history and culture like that the reasons why we do the things that we do is because of the places where our ancestors lived. And if we want to get an in-depth study of that is we need to visit the places where they come from. Next slide. So one of the cool things about historical sites and the fact that I got to work as a park ranger at the National Park Service, we did a lot of headstone cleanings and cemetery work at the Chalmet National Cemetery. And one day while working we were doing some research on the families of Pozzanville which is a historical African-American town. I noticed there was this very old guy living in Pozzanville and I wanted to learn more about his life. While it turns out that Mr. Russell Everett, even though he was a 90 plus year old resident of Pozzanville or 80 plus years old, excuse my math, he was also a union soldier and it wasn't Dr. Libby, Neimbach, and I started digging into Mr. Everett's life. We learned that he was one of many union soldiers who were living in Pozzanville which is on the site of the National, the Chalmet National Battlefield. Mr. Everett was enslaved in Kentucky. He made his through sale or transfer or purchase. He ended up working on a plantation in Florida and he when their battle ensued between the Union and the Confederates, Mr. Everett ran away with the Union Army and somehow long story short he ended up making his way to living in Pozzanville. And his story mirrored many of the other African-American soldiers who lived in Pozzanville. So even though people tend to look at Chalmet Battlefield for just being a battlefield, there's a whole history associated with that historical site and many of the descendants of Pozzanville and of all the other men that live there, they still live in that community and that's why I say it's so important to go back and visit those sites so that you can interact with the people who still live there. Next slide. So for me, when I started thinking about my ancestors and wanting to understand where are my ancestors buried. So after cleaning thousands of handstones in Chalmet Battlefield, it made me start to think about my own ancestors burial grounds and if they're being taken care of, similar to Ms. Barbara, you know, I was being, you know, I was honestly being selfish. I really wanted to know about my ancestors at first. I spent so many, years helping to maintain the Chalmet National Cemetery. I wanted to focus on my history. So I started to look at my family history and understanding like, okay, let's see where everyone is buried and let's see how we can get involved. So if you want to find out where your ancestors are buried, there are three places where you can look. One is obituaries, the other death certificates, and then the final one, especially when it comes to some histories you have to rely upon oral history. Next slide. So obituaries are the easy ones. They're the ones that you can find online through online databases like Genealogy Bank or newspapers.com. You have families like I do that's super large. You can find them from a family historian, public libraries, church records and funeral programs. I know Dr. Antoinette Harrell has an initiative where she's trying to encourage funeral homes to donate or get scans all of those funeral home records. Like it's a treasure trove because of the people that you see and then a lot of times they come with the bios for those people. So she's trying to get those scanned and put them on file at various universities across Louisiana. So all of these are wonderful resources when it comes to finding out where your ancestors are buried in terms of obituaries. Next slide. So once you get this actual obituary in your hand, don't do what I did and hurry up and read it and go through it and then look at the burial stop, the burial information and just turn the page and go to the next one. Really take your time to highlight all of the names and dates and locations that you see and then find the internment location which is usually at the bottom of the cemetery and then pay attention to that funeral home and see if they're still in existence and if they have any records as well. For me these the obituaries as I begin to line them up I saw a pattern in some of the burials from my families that you'll see a little bit later in my presentation. Next slide. The other spot that you can look for burial information is actually on the death certificates and you can get those from the office of vital records, state archives and you also have to realize that they may not exist depending on the date of death, depending on where they died and when they died, there may not be a death certificate. Excuse me. The place of burial is going to be located at the bottom of the death certificate so if you look closely at the bottom and I'll give you a moment to see that, you'll see that the burial spot is St. Mark's. I know that as being St. Mark's Cemetery in Glen that is my second great-grandfather William Brown. Next slide. Excuse me guys. The third and most important piece that has been extremely helpful for me is to speak with any of my relatives who live during the time of my ancestors. Also talk with the neighbors who live near your ancestors. So for me, this cemetery is located directly across from my grand aunt's house. I remember being a little girl and standing on her porch and I remember her telling me about my ancestors and her telling me that, hey, all of your family history is across the street and she was speaking of St. Mark's Cemetery. Some people in the community call St. Mark's Cemetery the cemetery that's buried in Glen or the Glen cemetery or it's known as Rougon, Louisiana. Next slide. So one thing I mentioned earlier was just the pattern of the burials and it kind of like showed me how my family moved about. So at the far left, you see my dad, you see his parents and I follow along my maternal sides for each one just for the sake of Mother's Day. But as you can tell, my grandfather Kelly is buried at Providence Park in Kennel, Louisiana, along with his wife. But as you trace back Grandpa Kelly's family, you see that almost all of them are buried in St. Mark's Cemetery in Glen. Same thing with my grandmother Bernice's side, except for my great-grandmother, Masleem, all of them are buried in St. Mark's Cemetery in Glen, Louisiana. With the ones that are born in the early 1800s such as my grandma Lizzie and my grandmother Louisa, I don't know where they're buried because they do not have any above ground markers. But to my understanding, Grandma Lizzie's buried either West Phyllis Hanna or Poincarepe Parish and Grandma Louisa is somewhere in Poincarepe Parish. Next slide. So if I look at St. Mark's Cemetery and I think about where the cemetery is located, I get a greater idea of what my ancestors' lives were like. For example, St. Mark's Cemetery was located adjacent to the sugarcane fields. It's up the road from Glen Webb Plantation featured in the photo. The town was named after Martin Glen and the church cemetery is operated by the Baptist Church. So it let me knew that for one, I already knew due to census records that my ancestors pretty much worked on sugarcane plantations well up until 1947. My family was still on the plantation as sharecroppers. They didn't leave until my grandfather returned from World War II and my grandmother was pregnant with my dad. So for the most part, all of these people were sharecropping. There were all laborers on the sugarcane plantation, whether working in the field or building the houses that you see there. Next slide. And if I go to my mom's side, I see a similar pattern. My mom, Florence, still living. If I look at her mom and go all the way down Grandma Florence, Belle, Sarah, they're all buried in a cemetery in New Orleans. My mom's dad, they're all buried for the most part in the same cemetery. The only difference is my grandmother and my grandfather are both buried in rest havens. So with this, I saw similar to my paternal side, those of them who had access to money were able to get buried differently versus the ones who didn't have access to money who were just transitioning, they were buried at Hope Cemetery. Next slide. So we look at Hope Cemetery and think about where that is and how it operates. It was opened in the late 1800s in New Orleans. It was used as a coroner's burial site until the 1960s. It's owned and operated by the city of New Orleans and it also is the most affordable burial site in New Orleans. You can still pretty much get buried at Hope for under $1,000. Next slide. Hope isn't your typical cemetery. The way that it's laid out, I wanted you guys to see, on the map, you do not have clearly defined rows. The way that the markers are situated, it's not a clear row or column. But there is a system that's set up by the grave diggers that will allow you to find, or at least within a 20-feet radius of where your ancestors are buried. But remember, this is a small cemetery and it's been in operation since the late 1800s. So many, I have 25 plus relatives that are all buried in Hope Cemetery. So I know up until the time when my grandmother was working for a local hospital, this is the place where my ancestors could afford to be buried or they chose to be buried near one of their relatives. Next slide. So the last piece that I want to talk about is just why should I get involved with the preservation of burial grounds and why should I care? And I'm saying this because I do a lot of presentations for high schools and a lot of presentations for younger groups. And it's one thing for us to preserve those cemeteries in places for people like us, like those who care, but it's different to try to get the younger ones to care and understand why it's so important. Or just people that I've struggled with over the years to get them to volunteer at cemeteries. So it's kind of like, why should I get involved? Like, why does it matter? And my best answer is simply Belle London Jefferson. And that's my second great-grandmother. Mama Belle works in Louisiana for whether it was in Clinton, so the family moved to the assignment, so they moved in Uptown New Orleans. She literally sacrificed her life to take care of everybody that was around her and who lived with her and four generations after her. And I was doing a presentation on her and I met someone who she was basically the nanny to their household. So why I do what I do is because of Mama Belle. Next slide. And the reason why we should get involved in cemetery work is because of Mama Belle. Because we want to say thank you to those who served our country. Thank you to those who served in different ways, whether you were soldier, whether you were builder, whether you were someone who just took care of other families. We want to be able to remember, in my case, the cemetery is all I have that shows my ancestors were here and that they existed. The other thing is, is just to preserve what's left. Like a lot of times, especially the work that Ms. Barber was doing, she's literally trying her hardest to preserve what's left. And then finally, just to preserve history. If I wasn't doing what I was doing, I would have never received that photo that you see on that screen that was given to me by Arthur Ruiz, who my Mama Belle worked for his family. And that's her on that photo with the kids that she provided for. The whole reason why I created a company called Our Mammies is similar to the same reason why we need to preserve grave sites in other historical places. It's simply to say thank you. My ancestors, many of them were called Mammie and they had so many stereotypes associated with that. But that's not who my ancestors were. They were hardworking women and men who lived and worked in Louisiana and shaped it to be what it is. So protecting those burial sites in Mama Belle's final resting place at Hope Cemetery has become one of my lifelong passions. So I'm not at Ms. Barber's State where Ms. Barber's been working on this many years. I just tell myself, I have many years to go to be able to accomplish what she's done at her cemetery to do at my cemetery at Hope's. Next slide. So if you guys have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. If you want to learn more about what I do, I'm here. I'm always willing to answer any questions and I thank you again for the opportunity to just share my tidbit on why cemeteries are important and just why we should get involved. Thank you so much. That was fantastic to see. Next up, we are returning to Jason. Jason Church is the Chief of Technical Services at the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training with the National Park Service. Jason divides his time between conducting in-house research, organizing various training events, and teaching hands-on conservation workshops. Church is currently the conservation chair of the Association for Gaystone Studies. Jason? Hey, Amber. It's hard to follow Gaynell and Barbara. I'm very excited to be part of this. So just going to go over real quick and then we want to keep time for questions. I'm going to talk a little bit real briefly about cemetery documentation. So as we saw Barbara's picture earlier, this is sort of what she started with. And in my opinion, this is a good thing for documentation. Next slide. Because one of the things that you could have is plants as grave markers, and we rarely talk about that, but plants were very important historic grave markers. A lot of enslaved cemeteries, they couldn't have written record or physical markers, a lot of early pioneer cemeteries, and if you were really just trying to make it through the winter, you weren't thinking about carving and having elaborate markers. So a lot of times, plants were used. So if you're starting with a cemetery to do documentation, I always recommend before you start going in and cutting, bring in a horticulturalist, bring in a garden club, wait two seasons. So wait for our fall and our spring, see what comes up, mark those. This picture is a good example. I am not a play-at-person. I was working in this cemetery and had these sort of scraggly little things that we realized they were rows of tea roses. And each of these were an individual grave. And this photo just shows that because we have that funeral home marker there. Next slide. And also something we rarely talk about is unconventional grave markers. These are really important. These could have been left absolutely as a grave marker intentionally. These could have been left by the family as part of the grieving process. These are equally important as our carved marble monuments that everyone loves. These need to be documented. We need to photograph these, mark on a map where they are, and also swept graves. It's pretty common here in the south, used to be at least. We'd come back once a year, have our reunion and care for these sites, and they would be mounted up at Swept Clean. Doesn't take very long. One year, maybe two. If no one comes back to do this, rains, flooding, we lose those. And those were intentional grave markers. So really important things to document. Next, please. So lots of documentation forms out there. You don't have to make your own. There's tons available. One thing you might want to check is with your State Historic Preservation Office. If you're doing cemetery work, it's a great resource. Look up your State Historic Preservation Office, find out who in the State is involved or is in charge of cemeteries. You could have forms that are already in, that your SHPO already has. I would suggest using those, sending them to the State Historic Preservation Office when you're done. With all of this, really to me, sharing is caring. This is not something I taught to people who have documented cemeteries. They hoard the information away like, why did so much work to get it? Don't be those people. Share them. Send them to your local genealogy collection at your local library. Send it to your State Historic Preservation Office. Share that around so that you know someone else isn't going to do the same amount of work you just did. But also, these are going to be needed for preservation and for documentation and for research. Next slide. My contact information at NCPTD is already in the chat room, but we also have on our page several forms available. Next slide. The important thing is not the form you choose, is deciding what everything on there means and training everyone who's going to work on it. Now this might seem silly. Everyone on here is obviously very interested in cemeteries, and I'm sure most of you are extremely knowledgeable about cemeteries, but we run across this a lot. Next slide, please. Where you have things as simple as the difference between a headstone and a footstone. If you're bringing in volunteers, maybe we're bringing in a scout group or a fraternity or sorority. These may be foreign concepts to someone, and we might not consider that. So making a very simple instruction sheet or a PowerPoint or just a walk through the cemetery to explain the differences in these things. I've worked at a site where no one explained to a very large group that came in and documented a very large cemetery, 90 acres. They were given no instruction that people just assumed, everyone will know exactly what we're talking about. We would go to lots and go, well, it says there's 24 people buried here, but I only see 12 headstones, and we realized every time there was a footstone, they labeled it as a separate headstone, because no one explained to them. Next slide. Things and just the terminology. What is a ledger? Explaining to everyone what a ledger is, maybe going in, pointing them out. So everyone is on the same vocabulary when we're filling these out. These are really important things. Next slide, please. Another thing I am really passionate about is trying to document the funeral home markers. A funeral home plaque, if you don't know, these were put out by the funeral home. This is only supposed to be a very temporary marker. When the monument comes, company comes out to set the monument. That way it's a checks and balance. I brought a headstone for Herman. Oh, yep, this is Herman. Then that plaque was usually pulled out, thrown in the back of the truck. When they get a bunch, they take them back to the funeral home and they're reused. Unfortunately, a lot of times for economic reasons, maybe they'll last the family, who knows, this has become its permanent marker. So these become really important to document, to photograph, to put in a map, so that a mower strikes them, and Herman's marker is gone. We want to document these. Next slide, please. And one of the things that we want to talk about is how to properly transcribe. So this is the example. This is Lewis Hamilton's grave, a beautiful, homemade, vernacular, concrete marker. And this is how we would properly transcribe it. It was capitalized. We leave it capitalized. We've got our backslash to denote each of the different lines. And we put everything down, not just the genealogical information, but it tells us a lot more about Lewis Hamilton on the headstone. Next slide, please. Same here. I am totally in love with vernacular markers. I think you're super important to our history. They really make up a historic character of cemetery. This is another example. You may have mistakes. You may have misspelled words. You may have backwards letters like this one. So in transcribing, we don't want to correct those. Those are part of the beauty of those headstones. So we want to keep up like this when we transcribe it. Next, please. And I said earlier, carry a sharing. Consider hosting your things on find a grave. It's a great resource for historians and genealogists and people doing research. And again, this is a good example. This is a cemetery I'm working at right now. This is a paper marker from 1958. So it has survived in Louisiana weather since 1958. So it's super important. And as Gail said before, and just a great talk, I myself took a lot of notes. But this is a great example. We are now going to that funeral home to try to find out more about these people and who is related to them that might be buried around them. Next slide, please. Another thing for documentation is looking for painted epitaphs. So a great example, Ms. Bradley there in the center, great concrete marker. But if you notice, there's no name on it in the concrete. So it was painted. It was painted lime wash or painted white originally. And then her epitaph is painted on there by hand. That would have been done every couple of years when you came back to visit. What doesn't take very long when family doesn't come back. We lose that epitaph, that information. And that's where we get a lot of people will call and say, well, these big concrete markers, but no names on them. They had names. They were painted epitaphs. We've just lost them to history. So really important that we document that, photograph it, and note in our documentation they were painted epitaphs. So in a few years when someone comes out, they'll know there's no marker here. Oh, it was painted. Maybe it's just worn away. Next slide. Also, consider the iconography. It tells us more about the person than just their genealogical information. Great book. I recommend a field guide to cemetery symbolism and iconography, but learning that more about that person by looking at their iconography. Next slide. Photo documentation. Every volunteer you have, everyone working is going to have their phone. They're going to have a camera with them. Take lots of pictures, not only up close of all the information, but step back and get a photograph so that we know the context of that stone. Next slide. I don't care what the genealogy websites might say, don't use shaving cream, don't use chalk, don't use flour. All of these things are going to encourage biological growth, which could damage the headstone. Next slide. So just using photo reflectors, mirrors, nowadays with the cell phones, there are great filters that you can play with. So they're cool to make yourself look like a dog, things like that. But also, there's a lot of really fun filters you can play with turning the photograph in the sepia tone, flipping it into a negative, things like that can really help bring out the epitaph that you're looking for. So great way to play with the filters on your phone. Next slide. And all of this involved the community. This is a great way. Documentation is a super easy way to get people into the cemetery, get people involved, boy scout groups, girl scout groups, fraternity, sororities, veterans groups, the sky's the limit, be creative. I've worked with the National Trust for big hope projects. Now we've had 400 people show up in a single day to work in a cemetery. So you can get a lot done with a lot of people. And I always say cemetery preservation is the gateway drug into historic preservation. Everyone has an interest in cemetery. You might not can convince them that the concrete, brutalist structure in town is worth saving. But you can convince anyone that a historic cemetery is important because everyone has someone they love or care about. Or just, you know, they're in the cemetery, they're gonna want to get involved. Next slide. Other types of documentation is looking for historic photographs. Next slide. Also doing oral histories. Don't forget our elderly people who were the caretakers of cemeteries, people who've been around involved in the local church for a long time. Consider those are great, you know, wealth of information. Go out into the cemetery, talk to them, walk the cemetery with them, and really consider that oral history when doing documentation. Next slide. And I'm going to wrap up with this so we can have plenty of time for Q&A. But I'm going to throw this out at you. Also consider, as I said earlier, really love vernacular markers, these great homemade or handmade rather concrete markers. It's another aspect of documentation. Ask around before it's too late. Who made that? Anybody know who made that? Do research with them? Do oral histories with them? Go out and contact them. So wealth of information that we're losing because most of our marker makers are elderly and this is kind of, you know, the end of their time that we need to try to document them while we can. All right. And that is the end of my talk. We will see you all at the next webinar, hopefully. So look forward to talking to you again then. Thank you so much, Jason. And we will jump into the question-answer period of our session. But yeah, I just want to second how absolutely special and important those concrete markers are. They're just artifacts of such an interesting history. If all of our panelists will please turn their cameras on and then we'll, you know, please go free to unmute yourself as we go through the questions. But our first question day is for Barbara. If you can speak a little bit about your national register process and the criteria that were used for the listing. Well, it was a long, long, long process. The fortunate thing, as I had mentioned earlier, is that we, you know, you make sure that you are documenting everything that you can possibly do. Like I also mentioned that I had students from Dickinson College to help do oral history gathering. I've had various students, professionals and non-professional people help me do things as well as many, many, many hours of my own research on the people that are buried at the cemetery. And compiling all of that together was very beneficial when it was time to actually start organizing the questions and in trying to answer their questions that was on the national register document. So it was a huge process. We submitted it and I say we because it was not just myself. It was Dr. Steven Burke from, you know, Shippensburg University who was also one of our board members for the Pennsylvania Hall of Grounds. There was various students of his, you know, because he's with the history department there. And then we also had like Jeannie Glaser and Sheila Jones also giving input and everything on what we could do. So it was a collaborative effort to pull all the information together to make sure that we were answering questions before they even asked, well, what about this or what about that? You know, we were asking our own questions, you know, so that we didn't have to try to go back and revisit something. But all in all, it was like, I think we ended up with 57 pages of information. It was not only just the history, like I talked about, Mary Ann Gale Tyler Dixon who moved from, who not moved, but she was a slave at one time. We talked about her story and how she ended up here. We talked about the Negro League baseball player, some of the churches and such like that, the community. So all that information went together. We submitted it over a year ago. We started trying to put the information together several years ago. And it, as you see, we just got it just a couple of weeks ago. So it was a very arduous process. But it took a lot of collaboration in a lot of time and patience because I'm not the most patient person in the world. So I'm like, I want it wanted now, you know, it's not like a commercial. But and you know, and one of the things is I saw something when I was going back through the chat very quickly, it just because you don't feel that a person is important because they don't have a title like I mentioned earlier, the United States Colors, you were a Buffalo soldier or a council person. It doesn't mean that that person was insignificant. It means that that you you value that person's life. And even the child or we in the National Register information, we talked about the school, we talked about those children, because their lives meant a lot to somebody and actually to us, whether they got to become an adult or they died while they were, you know, in grade school or kindergarten, maybe it was because of infections or smallpox or something that was happening during that time. Maybe it's because of the pandemic that happened back in the early 1900s. Their lives still meant a lot. And so we wanted to make sure that we actually pulled that into, you know, our, our documents also. So everybody, no matter who or what they did to me and to us, they are significant. And I still try to gather those stories to did today. And beyond today, as long as a God has given me breath, I'm going to try to keep doing it and try to make sure that I note every single one of them. Can I add that to my National Register? Probably not. But will I add it to my documents? I definitely will. All right. So hopefully I answered your question. That was fantastic. Thank you. This is a question for the collective. If you are a nonprofit organization or another third party without a direct association to a burial ground in need of maintenance or preservation, what are your suggestions for respectfully establishing contact with descendants? Anyone, please feel free to unmute yourself. I did something. I think gosh, my pandemic years are all blended in together, but I think it was like last year where I hosted 123 public forums on behalf of the city of New Orleans to connect with descendant families. So we brought them together. We invited them to talk and to share their input on various topics as it released to Hope Cemetery. So from that, I'm hoping to, over the next couple of months, establish a Friends of Hope Cemetery group, but just those descendant families. A lot of times I'm connecting with them when folks learn that you're working with a specific cemetery like Ms. Barber. Everybody's going to know. Midland called Ms. Barber. So people are going to start to attach a certain individual to those cemeteries, but just sharing that information and creating some type of forum where you can bring those groups together to get their input and to involve them in all of the process. Would anyone else like to speak about working with the descendant communities and outreach? The only thing I've done is run ads in papers, like run ads in local papers to say, hey, we're doing this work. We're looking for, you know, are you related to any of the people here, but just run ads in local papers. And also contact local churches to ask that they'll run it in their bulletin to say, hey, if you're interested in talking with me, here's my number. This is what I'm trying to do. So I've had good luck with that in the past. Yeah, I'll also point out the Montpelier descendants group has a rubric for engaging descendants that was plugged into the chat that I absolutely recommend as well. So this is something that we spoke about in our first session of the webinar series, but how do you determine cemetery boundaries when the ownership is unknown or no information is available? But I think more broadly, a good question would be where can you look into some of these records about property boundaries? We're dealing with a lot of that here in Pennsylvania with the hollow grounds. And it's just really been a chore for some of the cemeteries because if they're on private land, that's one thing. But if they're not, just like with Midland Cemetery, we had to get the state involved, get the county involved, also get the local people involved. We also tried to pull up every single record. I can remember taking off from my regular job at the time and spending days of my vacation time in the archives trying to find records of every single property owner that was around the cemetery because the cemetery is so old that actually on the deed is said by the chicken house, okay, or the black oak tree. And so we had to really dig in and find everybody's property that was around the cemetery to actually create the barriers. And then with the help of people like Ginny, who was really good, she's really good with maps, she was able to help explore some of the maps and take them all the way back to the beginning of time just about to say, well, how big the land was, where was the property, you know, where was the beginning and near the end. And they're still, you know, because of erosion and movement of the earth, the way it seems, is like it could be off by a millisecond, you know. So it's one of those things. But as far as other cemeteries around the state that we're finding that their stories are having problems with, you know, making sure that they are just working on the land that is belonging to the cemetery. I don't want to say owned by these people, but belong to the cemetery. And unfortunately, people encroach upon the land, they will say, oh, well, this is my heart of my land, it's not, you know, the cemetery land. But unfortunately, there's bodies on that land, you know, that's next door. So what do we do with that? Well, we say once that body is buried, it becomes a cemetery. So you need to move. You know, you'll have to take care of it, you know, they don't want you on their land and they need to take care of it. You know, they need to document it, they need to get it into the right places at the state level, just to make sure that nobody's going to put a building on top of it or make it into a playground or a gas station or everything and anything else or just covered up and put a lake on top of it. Like I know there's one cemetery that was an old Quaker cemetery and that now has a man made lake on top of it. It was an African American cemetery. So, you know, how do you reclaim that? And unfortunately, that's very, very, very difficult. Okay. So we have a question about some of the tools that are utilized with, you know, working with unmarked graves. Does anyone have some experience with GPR or with DNA testing? They'd like to share their experiences with and if that's been utilized as a tool that you add in your work with cemeteries. I can speak to GPR. Yes. So, GPR is a very useful tool. I recommend hiring a professional to do it for you. Not, I know there are places you can rent GPR, but that's a little bit on the useless side because the interpretation is more important than the equipment where equally as one another. But definitely something it's expensive. There's mostly you're looking at archaeology companies. A lot of universities who have archaeology departments will do GPR, but you really have to know like what is it G want to know when you come out here? Is it that there are more graves? Is the boundaries larger than you thought? Because it's going to tell you if there's the possibility of someone being there. It's not going to tell you how they're related. It's not going to tell you if they're how old they are or how old the grave is. Those things can't be answered with GPR. What it can tell you is yes, there are likely burials here or hey, in this big gap between these headstones, there are burials. A lot of times we can also probe to find that to find those grave, those voids where graves were. That's an inexpensive first step, but I think GPR is worth it if you're really trying to find lost graves or how many graves are here. How big is their cemetery? I was just working last week in a cemetery in Alabama and we knew the bounds of the cemetery, but everyone said, well, we're pretty sure the cemetery goes, oh, there were rows and rows of graves. Save Alabama to GPR. At some point it was scary how many flags we were putting out. We found dozens and dozens and dozens of very obvious graves. Molly just put something in the chat rooms, a great project that the Hope Crew is doing using GPR. DNA, I'll have to let someone else take that one, but I think GPR is a good tool. You just kind of have to know what it is that you want to answer with that tool. And adding on to that, GPR is good. Actually, we're going to be having more ground penetrating radar done at Middle Cemetery this summer. But one of the things that I learned from having a portion of our ancestors' growth done several years ago is because one of the main roads actually goes down through the cemetery and because of the thickness of the macadam, the ground penetrating radar was of basically no use because it was just too thick. They would have to really just dig up the road and on earth all that so that they could find it. And unfortunately, when you have a highway, a road, a cement, a building, you're not going to be able to ever really detect it until it's actually removed and taken care of like that. As far as the DNA component of it all, yes, we can all do ancestry.com or 23MA, but how do you get that out the earth is almost impossible unless there is, I guess, there has to be a whole body down in there so that they can take it to the lab. Look, I tried to give George Washington's teeth. I wanted to know which slays were in his mouth at one time, but they said, no, we need a whole body, so it's just not going to happen. So I don't know. I have never been asked that type of question, but I just can't see it really happening. If you're talking about a dead person from 100 years ago, I just can't see it happening, but I'm learning too. And following off that question, Gaila, will you speak a little bit more about what role kind of personal DNA tests can play in the genealogical process? You said that you learned a little bit, something new about your family through that process. I mean, when you, I'll just quote my great friend, Yael, it's like, when you take those DNA tests, you just don't know what you're going to find. You can't be responsible for it. And sometimes that can affect your family's in the present, not so much in the past. Like, all of those people are gone, but it's more challenging when you find information that can completely change a family when you uncover new fathers, new grandmothers. Like, my mom is still trying to deal with the fact that the person who she thought was her grandfather wasn't her grandfather. The same thing with my dad. I had to tell him that, hey, your brother is your half-brother. And then like, Ms. Barbers, I can't go to graveyard and say, hey, grandma, I need you to test some other guys who I suspect is, you know, your potential baby daddy. Like, I can't, we can't do that. And then we also have to be mindful that some people just don't want you to know, right? Like, they took that secret to the grave for a reason. You just, whenever you're dealing with DNA testing, it's very, very important to have permission and an understanding with everyone across. Like, especially here in Louisiana, my husband and I both found out that we share a cousin and different sides, thankfully, but there are some cases where people find out that they are cousins. And what do you do when you have kids? Now, when you find out that a parent isn't your parent, that that's actually your uncle. So I would say whenever you're dealing with DNA testing, especially if your family and both your parents are from the same area, understand you have to be responsible for whatever you find. And I'll leave you with that, especially in the south. Yes, absolutely. As many historical sites have discovered, there's definitely some secrets to be found when working with genealogy and with symmetries themselves too, when people take things to the grave. They do. And it's coming out. Like, you know, when you start to research those lines and you're finding out that your family has worked on the land for many, many years and you find out the owner of your plantation is your fifth or sixth grade grandfather. And then the overseer is your great, great, great uncle. It's like, you have to prepare yourself to be able to deal with whatever you find. So just to wrap us up because we're hitting on time, there is a question in the chat for Jason. Cynthia Merer, I apologize if I'm saying that incorrectly, would like to volunteer for hands-on training experience with MCPTT. Can you speak a little bit more about what opportunities are available, Jason? Sure. I mean, we teach classes often when we can. I can try to put it. No, I don't think I can put it in the chat room. Our next event that we're doing that I'll be teaching at is the Association for Grave Studies Conference. That's coming up in June. And that's always a lot of funds when we do a hands-on training as part of that. So I did send it to the moderators so maybe they can pass that on to the chat room. So that's a good event. Go get hands-on and meet all these people who are really super into cemeteries. So you'll realize you're not the only one. You'll meet lots and lots of people who are dealing with these same things. But yeah, you can check our Instagram. We use our website. We usually post what trainings we're doing next. I was just over in Alabama for the Alabama Cemetery Preservation Alliance doing workshops. And before that, I was at Tuskegee and Selma just a few weeks before that. So lots of fun stuff going on out there. But feel free if anybody wants to drop me an email. I can tell them maybe it's not our workshops. I can recommend other people in the area who are doing workshops. There's a lot of great people out there doing hands-on work. That's the kind of thing you're interested in. And of course that is what our next webinar will cover. So we'll talk more about. So we hope to see you all in a month back here. And we'll talk more about some of the preservation work that's going on and some more hands-on skills that people can acquire, that sort of thing. Absolutely. Now everyone, please remember to register for that third webinar, which is taking place on June 21st at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. And we just want to say thank you so very much for joining us today. I know that Jason shared his contact information in his presentation. I'm sure that he'd be delighted to answer some of your questions. You can also submit them through a form online. But everyone look out for the webinar recording coming your way. And I hope you all have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much for our panelists for joining us. This was fantastic. Thank you.