photo by Robert Stewart Jane Graff (left) and Ruth Steinke of the Seward County Genealogical Society page through a cemetery survey book in the Seward Cemetery.

by Robert Stewart

    Keeping track of history and the people who populated it is an ongoing process, a process the Seward County Genealogical Society has been a part of for more than two decades.
     Housed in the basement of the Seward Civic Center, or the "catacombs" as they refer to them, the group of six to eight regular volunteer members meets every week to gather information and create abstracts of everyone who has lived or died in Seward County.
     The society is currently in the midst of the large task of updating its information on everyone buried in the 34 active and 18 abandoned cemeteries in the county as a way of tracing and making a connection to the past. According to society member Jane Graff, the information that can be found in cemeteries provides a good marker for tracing the development of the county.
     "The burials started as soon as people started arriving," she said.
     "It's always interesting to put family lines together from where they're buried," Trish Collister, librarian and treasurer for the society, said.
     The Seward County Genealogical Society first existed as a committee in the Seward County Historical Society in 1982 and soon after forming released a book containing the histories of Seward County families.
     "We're kind of an offshoot of the Historical Society," Graff said. "But they're more interested in artifacts and we're more interested in people and their stories."
     After seven years of research the society created and released its first cemetery survey book in 1989. The book documented the names, date of birth and death, cause of death if it was available and any familial information they could gather about those interred in the cemeteries. Since then, the cemetery book has grown to include seven volumes covering 15 precincts, labeled "A" through "O," in the county and the society is constantly in the process of updating them. The group is currently working on the "E" precinct book, which includes Utica cemeteries.
     "Every time a book is done we start on the next," Collister said.
     "Each one of them has gotten progressively more complete," Graff added. "Once you get it published you can start making your corrections and additions."
     Gathering the information requires that members of the society visit each cemetery and systematically walk the rows of headstones checking their data against that previously gathered and adding any new information.
     "If we don't get it right the first time, we get it right the second," Graff said.
     Members of the society go out in teams of two to three to gather information from the cemeteries. Although the teams try to go out when the weather conditions are favorable they do meet the occasional difficulty.
     "Wind is the worst," Collister said. "When it's windy it's hard to write on a paper that's halfway across the cemetery."
     Ruth Steinke, a member of the society who is currently compiling the cemetery books into a computer database for easier access and revision, said the later cemetery surveys do not require quite as much work and revision as the society had access to better facts and figures as time went on.
     "As the books progressed the information became more available so the later books had more of the information in them," she said.
     Getting information on those buried in the cemeteries is more than a simple matter of reading their name off a headstone. The society combs through church records, which are usually more complete than cemetery records, Graff said, and old newspapers to try to recreate as close as possible the story of lives long past. Headstones that have weathered beyond recognition, been buried through time and a lack of information prior to the 20th century are a few of the difficulties the society faces. Tracking down specific names can sometimes be a problem in older publications.
     "The newspapers sometimes have creative spellings," Graff said. "We try to be as thorough as possible in our research before we put it in the book. It's kind of embarrassing to have someone married to their sister."
     Gathering the information is only the first part of a long process of compilation that includes the work Steinke is doing inputting the data into the computer and a project Collister is working on that involves creating an extensive system of cross-referencing for the society's information that currently includes more than 30,000 entries. Managing that information and making it available to those seeking to trace their roots is the genealogical society's primary reason for being.
     "I've had many telephone calls from people saying, 'Where is this cemetery? I want to see this grave,'" Graff said. "We have all kinds of interesting questions come to us."
     Collister said that the society may not have all the answers, but they are usually able to put people on the right track.
     "If we don't know the answer we try to know who to refer them to," she said.
     And it is possible that the society does not yet have the information, but they have a system in place for contacting interested parties should they come across the answer to a question.
     "We keep track of all our queries," Collister said. "They're also cross-referenced by who's asking and who they're asking about."
     In the process of gathering historical information for reference materials to answer the questions of the living about those who came before them, members of the society remember that often the most interesting part of history is the people who lived it, even if they are no longer living.
     "I think some of the old children's (head)stones are the most touching because they convey the feelings of the people (who buried them)," Steinke said.
     The Seward County Genealogical Society is currently seeking information on residents of the Seward County area in the 1920's, 30's and 40's.