Local woman finds passionate cause in cemetery research,
Local woman finds a passionate cause in cemetery searching
For local photographer, freelance writer and healthcare worker Katie Stone, her deeply-rooted interest in genealogy leads her to the graveyard, where she devotes her volunteer spirit.
Stone’s not digging graves, but she will find them as a volunteer for Find a Grave, the website where she and others both local and elsewhere will upload photos and information about a particular grave after a request is posted.
“For anyone looking for their lineage, researching their genealogy, things like that,” Stone said, offering the example of a woman who wanted a photograph taken of a certain grave at Hillcrest Cemetery. Anyone can claim the request and fulfill it, she explained. Once the plot is found with the help of the cemetery manager, if need be, the request can be fulfilled.
“I always take the extra time to clean, make sure the stone is readable, because you’re sending them a photo, so it’s best to make sure that is readable,” Stone said.
She keeps a brush in her car for just this purpose. The photo is then sent via the website.
“When they get those, it fulfills it. That is basically literally in stone the information they’re trying to find,” Stone said. The information will be posted for others to see when they search for information about the same person. “Now it’s there for everybody to see.”
Family can upload photos, stories and obituaries, which helps complete the picture. Through this grave site information, a person’s life story may be told.
Stone found all this through her own ancestry research she started at Ancestry.com, but also because she buys old photographs at vintage shops. They present another sort of mystery for her to solve.
“I find the owners and return them back to the original family,” Stone said. It was via that sort of research that she first found out about Findagrave.com, which led to her volunteering to find graves and fulfill someone’s request for information.
Stone’s interest in genealogy arose for a personal reason, too, because she has a little sister she’s never been able to find. Her sister was adopted, her mom giving the girl up for adoption.
“She’ll be 28 this year, and it just made me think, ‘You know what, I would love to help other people have this stuff about their family,” Stone said. Even if that person in a
photograph she buys is someone’s great-great-grandfather, there’s meaning in this knowledge, having a photo that shows what a relative looks like, she says.
She purchased a photo at a thrift shop in Magnolia, Arkansas, for 50 cents one time. Through her research, she deduced the photo was a high school senior photo from the 1970s. She reached out to people in Magnolia: did she look familiar?
“And I had her found by the next day, and it was her senior picture,” Stone said. The woman didn’t have a copy of the picture. Family in Magnolia had died, and the woman now lived in Mississippi. This is why Stone does it.
“I can’t find my own family or learn about them, so I try to help others,” Stone said.
Her grave hunting experience also taught her something sad about the final resting place for some people. “There’s quite a few people, adults even, who can’t afford a headstone, but they have some sort of metal marker there. There’s no information on it. It’s very sad to me,” she said.
When she saw an infant grave this way, where parents were unable to place a headstone at a child’s grave, it didn’t sit well with her. “Having lost a son myself, I just didn’t feel like that was OK,” Stone said.
So a couple years ago she started raising money to buy headstones for infant graves at Hillcrest, the cemetery where she’s worked the most to find graves. She’s worked with Friends for a Cause Foundation, and so far she’s raised enough to buy two headstones. She’s on the board of that group now but wasn’t when she started this project.
The infant graves were not that old. “The oldest one at Hillcrest for the infant section was 1994. That’s the next one we’re going to put on,” Stone said. “The two that we’ve already placed were from 2013 and 2011. They were infants who passed at birth.”
She saw a new one on her last visit to the cemetery: an infant grave with no headstone, just a marker. She’s grateful Hillcrest Cemetery allows her to do this. She contacts the families to get permission to place a headstone.
“I contacted the families directly.
“Everything, all the genealogy, all of it. It all stems from the same thing. I had a pretty crazy childhood growing up … I never knew who I was, where I came from, what does this mean.” —Katie Stone
It was a kind of challenge,” Stone said. In one case, it took a year to track them down. People move and change phone numbers, or they die, too, such as the mother, in one instance.
“I had to track down the grandparents, so that took a little bit longer. They thought it was really nice what I was doing,” Stone said. For another infant, the mother lived in another county but she returned with her other children. It was a powerful moment. “We did just a very small dedication because of COVID. We didn’t have a big ordeal, but I just said a few words and talked about what it meant to me that they even came. It was pretty incredible,” Stone said. “The mom, I hope, has a little bit of closure now. They always say that funerals are not for the dead. They’re for the living, and so I feel like maybe that is the last thing that could help her.”
At Hillcrest, six infant graves without headstones remain. She’d like to place headstones for each. As someone who went through the foster system and girl’s homes when she was a youngster, she has a heart for the cause.
“Everything, all the genealogy, all of it. It all stems from the same thing. I had a pretty crazy childhood growing up … I never knew who I was, where I came from, what does this mean,” Stone said. So, she started researching, and learning what she’s learned about her family and other families feels amazing to her.
“And then it just turned into what it is now. It’s part of who I am. I do something every day that has to do with genealogy or finding graves or any of that. It’s who I am now,” Stone said.