"In Memorium" section started

Dear friends,

Upon receiving the sad news of the passing last week of life-long Seward resident Ella (BOEKA) Imig, I became inspired today to begin a special "In Memorium" section on the bottom of our Seward County homepage.

Anyone who sends me a photo of a recently-deceased Seward County resident can get such a tribute posted as I did for Ella.

Ella was a very sweet person whom I had the pleasure of meeting in August 2001. She married my mother's 2nd cousin Frederick Edward Imig, Jr. Click on the small photo of Ella to see the full photo of her with her daughter Nancy Knuth. I also linked to her obituary from the Seward County Independent.

Later this spring I will probably start an "In Memorium" homepage with links to many or all recent Seward County Independent obituaries. I hope readers will send me photos to help us honor and remember our Seward folk.

Yours,
--Alice

Middle Creek photo from Germany!

Dear Friends,

I am delighted to announce that we have a new contributor of Seward County cemetery photos, Hella Albers of Hamburg, Germany!

Hella writes, "I spent a day in Seward County last September as my great-grandmother's uncle and family lived there. On that day, I just went around and took photos of any stone that sounded German, hoping to one day do some more research here. I believe that quite some people from the Kreis Stade (county) emigrated to Seward County."

She sent us her first lovely cemetery photo, now posted (second from the bottom) on our Middle Creek Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery homepage. As Hella points out, this church is also called the "Stone Church."

We look forward to posting more of Hella's photos in the near future, from Middle Creek, St. Paul's, and Pleasant Dale Cemeteries, and also to hearing the details of her Seward family.

In the future we plan to have special "immigration pages" to help us research our German and other roots.

Happy Valentine's Day,
--Alice

Salem Methodist Cemetery, 120 photos!

Hello friends,

Joan Kennel visited Salem Methodist Cemetery in "K" Precinct for us on February 4th, and heroically took photos of every stone there for our website! You can see them now linked off the new Salem Methodist Cemetery homepage.

Included are gravestones for the following Seward County surnames:
AUERECHT, BARTH, CAST, DUHNING, EBERS, EBERSPACCHER, EBERSPACHER, EICHER, ERNST, FRIEDLI, GAKE, GASSMAN, HARTMAN, HEIDBRINK, HOHN, HUGHES, KNUTH, MEYER, MIILER, NICHOLSON, OBERHAUSSER, PACKARD, PANKOKE, SCHLICHENMAIER, SCHULTZ, SIEBER, VOGT, WEBERMEIER, WURST

Many thanks to Joan and others who are helping us close the gap on the handful of cemeteries we have not yet represented in the cemeteries section of our Seward County website.

Stay tuned!
--Alice

24 New Cemeteries Started!!

Dear Seward Friends,

Sue Weaver generously sent me cemetery entrance photos for a whopping 24 new Seward cemetery homepages!!

They are linked now from the list on our Seward cemetery index page; just click on the name of the cemetery that you want to see.

That gives us 44 cemetery starter pages out of 51 known Seward County cemeteries so far, a very good representation, don't you think?

We still need the following "7 Most Wanted" cemetery entrance photos:
- A Lone Grave (in Section 33, "N" Precinct, 3 miles east and 5 miles south of Beaver Crossing)
- Dry Creek (in Section 19, "D" Precinct, 4 miles north of Utica)
- East Fairview (UPDATE: Lila will take a photo soon!)
- Locust Street (at E. Moffitt & Locust Street in Seward)
- Prairie Grove (in Section 10, "L" Precinct, 3 miles west and 3-1/2 miles south of Utica)
- Salem Methodist (in Section 36, "K" Precinct, 7 miles south and 3 miles west of Seward)
- Valley View (in Section 8, "D" Precinct, 5 miles north of Utica)

If any of you has any photos of these remaining cemeteries, please send them to me so I can get homepages started for them soon. Otherwise, in the spring Sue or someone will try to visit them with cameras.

Many thanks to Sue, Joan, Ann, and others for these wonderful cemetery photos, and to all of you who are submitting photos, biographies, obituaries, articles, and family information that I am slowly but surely processing and posting on our Seward website!

Think spring,
-- Alice
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P.S. Please join our new Seward County genealogy forum (query, discussion, and message board)! Post the surnames and places you are researching, or ask specific questions you have about early Seward County, on our Seward Forum!

3 New Cemetery Starter Pages!

Hi Friends,

Joan kindly sent me several more great cemetery entrance and grounds photos, so today I made starter pages for these 3 new cemeteries:

Blue Ridge Cemetery (abandoned), northeast of Utica, west of Staplehurst
Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery, north of Utica, west of Staplehurst
St. Patrick's Catholic Cemetery, southeast of Village of Utica

That gives us 20 cemetery homepages so far! I have been posting as many grave photos as possible, over 2,000 and counting.

Many thanks to Joan for these great photos, and to all of you who have submitted photos, articles, and family information that I am slowly but surely processing and posting on our Seward website.

Yours,
--Alice

61 more Utica Cemetery photos!

Hi Everyone,

Joan Kennel has kindly contributed 61 nice Utica Cemetery grave photos taken by her in April 2002, which I posted today on our Seward Co., NE website, linked off our Utica Cemetery homepage.


Click on the title "Utica Cemetery Album 2" to enter Joan's photo album. Then be sure to click on the thumbnail photos to go to the full size versions of the photos you want to see better.

Included in this album are graves (or at least peeks of them) for these surnames:
ANSTINE, BOON, BROWN, CALDWELL, CHAPIN, COOPER, DOREMUS, FRAZER, GOODWIN, HANNAH, HURLBURT, JONES, JUNGE, LIGGETT, MARR, McGARY, MEYER, MILLER, MONSON, O'NEAL, PETERS, ROBBINS, SHRADER, SMITH, STEFFEN, STEPHEN (unless it's part of his middle name?), WALKER

If anyone has more photos of Utica Cemetery (or any others in Seward Co.), please send them my way if you'd like to put them on our website.

Thanks, Joan, for adding to our online Utica Cemetery photos!

Best wishes,
--Alice, a grateful granddaughter of Seward County

36 Utica Cemetery photos posted!

Hi Everyone,

Susie Summers has kindly contributed 36 nice Utica Cemetery grave photos taken by her in October 2001, now posted on our Utica Cemetery homepage.

Click on the title "Utica Cemetery Album 1" to enter the photo album. Then be sure to click on the thumbnail photos to go to the full size versions of the photos you want to see better.

Included in this album are graves (or at least peeks of them) for these surnames:
ABELE, BEREUTER, BLASING, BRAKSIEK, FINTEL, FISCHER, HEIDBREDER, HINZE, IHDE, LEWIS, MALLAU, MILLER, NIEMANN, PURINTON, RABE, REILING, RICHTERS, SCHARK, SCHERER, SCHMIDT, SHIELDS, STAEHR, VOLZKE, WATSON, WHITE

If anyone has more photos of Utica Cemetery (or any others in Seward Co.), please send them my way if you'd like to put them on our website. Joan has also sent me a bunch of nice Utica ones I'll try to post later this week.

Thanks, Susie, for kicking off our online Utica Cemetery photos!

Warmest regards,
Alice

10 Pleasant Dale Cemetery photos!

Hi Everyone,

Carolyn Mowery has kindly contributed ten nice grave photos from Pleasant Dale Cemetery, now posted on our Pleasant Dale Cemetery homepage.

Click on the title "Pleasant Dale Cemetery Album 1" to enter the photo album. Then be sure to click on the thumbnail photos to go to the full size versions of the photos you want to see better.

Included in this album are graves of these surnames (there are more that I can't make out):
BEST, ENSIGN, KISER

John KISER's wife Isabel (ALLEN) may possibly be buried in the space between the two head stones (for John the father and John his son) that has a hole in the ground for a vase of flowers; Carol is trying to find out.

Pleasant Dale Cemetery is located in Section 17, Precinct I, Seward County, Nebraska. It is 2 miles north, 1 mile west of Pleasant Dale on Highway 6, and graces a lovely hill on the north side of the road.

If anyone has more photos of Pleasant Dale Cemetery, please send them my way if you'd like to put them on our website.

Thanks, Carol, for kicking off our online Pleasant Dale Cemetery photos!

Warmest regards,
--Alice, a grateful granddaughter of Seward

Anderson Cemetery: 63 photos!

Happy Saturday, Everyone,

Today I posted 63 Anderson Cemetery photos!

They are in a photo album linked off our Anderson Cemetery homepage.

My brother Brian and I took 9 of them (page 4 of Album 1) this last August 2004 when we were in Seward County for our Imig family reunion. I took the other 54 (pages 1-3 of Album 1) when Lila kindly introduced me to this delightful cemetery in August of 2002, during the worst of the drought -- notice the dramatic difference in how green the ground is in the 2004 photos, after the blessed rain returned!

Click on the title "Anderson Cemetery Album 1" to enter the photo album. Then be sure to click on the thumbnail photos to go to the full size versions of the photos you want to see better.

Included in this album are graves of these surnames:
ANDERSON, IMIG, JOHANN, ROCKER, SCHNEEBECK, SMITH, WYKOFF

Plus cemetery entrance, overview, and vista shots of the best (maybe) view in Seward County!

Anderson Cemetery sits atop the highest hill in quite a ways, I believe. You can see one of the two Seward water towers in the zoom shot (click for full-size) at the bottom of album page 3. Lincoln Creek is down in those trees in the northern shots. Deer are running around somewhere by the creeks, too; I spooked a small herd of them myself last August!

This is all I have so far for Anderson, so if anyone has more photos of Anderson Cemetery, please send them my way if you'd like to put them on our website.

Enjoy,
--Alice, a grateful granddaughter of Seward County

Comments, Anyone?

Because of reports that commenting on these posts seems to require signing up for your own blog (which you shouldn't have to do, although I'd recommend blogger.com to anyone), I rechecked the configuration. It's now set to allow anyone to comment on any post.

Here's the trick, though: when you click on "(0 or x) comments", and then "Post a Comment" you are given a choice between signing in or following a link to post anonymously. If you don't have your own blog and don't particularly want one, follow the post anonymously link. You can always leave your name in the post if you feel like it (but beware leaving your email address -- who knows what spam robot might find it).

If you have problems, let me know, and I'll look into it.

Hope to start getting some comments from Seward County researchers! ;+)
--Alice