With the family deciding to restore the headstones of Friedrich and Wilhelmine Stiehm, the importance of headstones as a genealogical record is documented.
A website, Find-A-Grave, provides an opportunity to search over 22 million cemetery records in search of, or in honor of, your ancestors.
The site provides pictures of many of the headstones. As I posted the pictures of the New Headstones of Friedrich and Wilhelmine, buried at Immanuel Lutheran (Farmington) Cemetery, I discovered, for example, that there are 15 Schloesser’s buried there. I suspect that some of them may be distant cousins or uncles and aunts.
In addition, while the cemetery records of Friedrich and Wilhelmine are on line, the ancestors of the Minnesota Stiehms (Karla and Hanna) are not. While we know alot about the to brothers Stiehm and Sisters Schloesser, would we know more with the cemetery records?
An interesting project would be to collect the cemetery records from Find-A-Grave of our Stiehm ancestors. The site allows you to create a virtual cemetery. Anyone want to volunteer to head up the project?
I have started a Stiehm Family Virtual Cemetery. The project might be a fun one.
Help us out by pointing us to the link to your ancestors as comments to this post, or by using the Contact Us link on this page.