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| Camp Chase Monument |
I wanted to go to Camp Chase, the Civil War prisoner encampment cemetery, but then what? I only had 2 requests. Even if I had to search each marker, there were only 2,000 something of them, it wouldn't take that long. I know, it sounds like a lot of markers, but this is a military cemetery. All the rows are nice and straight and the graves are close together. Most of them are uniformly printed, so the soldier's last name is always in the same place. But what would I do with the rest of the day?
Green Lawn was close by, but that cemetery drove me crazy last time I was there. First of all, it's huge! Over 100,000 headstones, and over 400 photo requests. Although, I did already have much of the information about where the people were. I got that during the spring when I spent 2 full 6 hour days in the downtown library, going through their cemetery records on microfilm, A-Z!
The second thing that drives me crazy about Green Lawn is the office staff. You can get a map of the whole cemetery online, but that will not help much in tracking down the headstones. For that you need section maps. There are about 100 sections, so about 100 section maps I would think. Well, you can only request 3 or 4 section maps per visit. And even that few will get you an icy glare from the person at the front desk.
Lastly, Green Lawn is not a normal cemetery. I like order and symmetry. At Green Lawn the sections are not square, nor even rectangular. Some are round, some are oval, some are just a blob. This makes for very odd groupings of headstones; some this way, some that way...but nothing resembling normalcy. Just thinking about it makes my ADD brain hurt.
But, it was close by. And there were so many requests. And I had spare time.
The first order of business was to look at my spreadsheet from the info I got at the library. What sections had the largest concentration of photo requests (6 months ago!)? How many of the requests were still open? After checking on the FindAGrave site, I found that about 90% were still open! What? Doesn't anyone go to Green Lawn? That sealed the deal. I felt compelled to go.
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| Camp Chase Monument |
I didn't find the names I was looking for, which is sad. One of the requests even had a grave number listed for it, but that grave was missing a headstone. I don't know if the person was really buried there or not. Either way there was nothing to take a picture of. The other name, I just couldn't find. I took some pictures of the monuments anyway, just so I would have something to post here.
At Green Lawn I had about 29 names in 5 sections. Last time I was there it was for a letterboxing event and I had asked some friends to go in and get me a few maps, since I had already used up my daily allotment. So I already had several of the ones I needed, but I went in a got a few more anyway. I didn't think there was enough time to get all the pictures I wanted. Better to have too many planned than not enough right? (Kind of the same with letterboxing clues.) Somehow I managed to get them all! It wasn't nearly as hard following the section maps as it had been 3 months ago. I guess having more experience at this has given me more intuition as well , and I didn't give up as easily as I used to. I took the last picture, drove home and still had a few minutes to relax before the kids got off the bus.
Since it went so well, I like Green Lawn much more now. Requests are pretty well taken care of in my neck of the woods; only 1 or 2 requests in several cemeteries. I think I will make Green Lawn my priority for now. I'll try to get over there on my free days until the weather gets too bad. Then I can spend some time at the library researching the newer requests.
Bad news for my readers; spending so much time at the same cemetery is really going to make for a boring blog! Oh well. Maybe I'll find something interesting to write about.
