GRAVEYARDS & NEWSPAPERS

Graveyards and newspapers go together like mashed potatoes and gravy. I’m sure most genealogists will agree with me here. When it comes to researching family history, there’s no better place to find information than old newspaper obituaries. Of course, the information on gravestones helps considerably in getting things started.

Over the years, I’ve relied on both entities to help unlock family mysteries never told to me by my parents. If my grandparents mentioned such, I was much too young or “unorganized” to retain all of the information. When I say unorganized, I mean writing things down and putting this information in a safe place.

Just recently, I was interested in learning more about a person laid to rest in Lake Havasu Memorial Gardens. Searching and searching, I came across absolutely nothing. It isn’t unusual for families to not write an obituary, which I find as being disrespectful to the deceased, including family and friends. Was that loved one not worthy of a few simple lines?

Information on stone tablets goes back thousands of years, while paper data has been around for hundreds. These two venues are now archaic in relation to this digital age. I often wonder how digital will hold up over the ages when a simple magnet or power surge can destroy things. What will genealogists down the road find while seeking information on Cousin Eddie?

Twenty-five years ago, some friends and I came across an unmarked cemetery in the ghost town of Iditarod, Alaska. Some rotten wood grave markers were remaining, yet they were all lying flat in the tundra and unreadable. Who was laid to rest in this desolate place?

There’s an online site called gravefinder.com where a person can look up cemeteries including the folks buried in them. I’ve used it often when writing stories or compiling information on my family and my wife’s. Iditarod Cemetery is not one of those cemeteries listed.

Being allowed to contribute to gravefinder.com, and knowing how much work was about to be undertaken, I hesitantly went ahead and brought the Iditarod Cemetery online.

After many late-night and early-morning research hours poring through archived newspaper obituaries and stories, I was able to add the 23 men, women, and babies buried there. A copy of the newspaper obituary or report on each of their deaths was included, with many of them quite sad, yet interesting just the same.

It was quite a task for tired eyes, but one that I’m now thankful is complete. I believe everyone buried there is now listed, unless, of course, someone was interned and not reported which is possible after 1919. That’s the year the “Iditarod Pioneer” newspaper ceased operation.

Lake Havasu City has a unique story that’s never been told where graveyards is concerned, or at least I’ve never heard anyone mention it. Our city when researched on http://www.gravefinders.com lists four graveyards, if I can still call them that. That ghostly term seems to be going by the wayside, much like so many others in this age of political correctness.

Community Presbyterian Church Columbarium, Grace Episcopal Memorial Garden, and Lake Havasu Memorial Gardens are the three largest cemeteries, combined, containing over 5,000 remains. The fourth, called McCormies Family Cemetery holds just one body. There’s no GPS or physical location for McCormies like the others.

The man supposedly buried in this singular plot is Edwin Glen McCormies. I looked that last name up and found no such listings on the Mohave County tax rolls. A St. George, Utah, obituary showed Mr. McCormies died in St. George in 2002, at the age of 81, with him being born at Glendive, Montana, in 1920.

In my research, I uncovered a disturbing story about McCormies that I won’t discuss. For those wanting to know more, this public information is available by searching an “Oakland Tribune” newspaper dated June 17, 1964 – page 21.

If Edwin McCormies was truly laid to rest in Lake Havasu City, as findagrave.com shows, just whose backyard is he buried in? It looks like another one of those jobs for veteran reporter, Lois Lane, to get to the bottom of!