Exploring Almost Forgotten Gravesites in the Great State of Ohio

Dedicated to cemetery preservation in the great state of Ohio


"A cemetery may be considered as abandoned when all or practically all of the bodies have been Removed therefrom and no bodies have been buried therein for a great many years, and the cemetery has been so long neglected as entirely to lose its identity as such, and is no longer known, recognized and respected by the public as a cemetery. 1953 OAG 2978."

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

W.P.A. research continues by examining the "The Ohio Guide"

Over the past year or so there have been blog posts here featuring links to the Ohio W.P.A. Cemetery Plat map collections shared on "Flickr" for various counties
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These types of maps can be a "gold mine" of information for those who are researching burial locations of veterans who served from the Revolutionary War up to and including 
World War I.  
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Spotlighted also have been individual Veterans Graves Registration cards.  These records are not as difficult to find.  
Most of the time county recorder's offices in Ohio have them; or they have had them placed in a county archive. 
Either way, there may be a small charge to obtain a copy of one. 
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We have learned about the Defiance County and to a lesser extent the Champaign County Ohio Writer's Project / Historical Records Survey descriptions of cemeteries which are proving to be an even more elusive type of record produced by the W.P.A.  

It is hoped that more Ohio county W.P.A. Cemetery Plat Maps come to light and be posted on the Internet free for anyone to access.
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Now we come down to examining another W.P.A. document that is actually a comprehensive publication called "The Ohio Guide" .  

The good thing is that you can "Google it" and find dozens of references to it!  

Even better you can access it via the website.: "FamilySearch", view it there, and download it to your computer or other device.

Co-incidentally, when I started this blog post in the final days of December 2021, I happened upon an article published in the Cleveland "Plain Dealer" on December 30, 2021 in the newspaper's "Travel Section" by Robert L. Smith, special to the "Plain Dealer".: 

 "Revisiting 'The Ohio Guide', the Depression era handbook highlighting top spots in the Buckeye State." 

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"The Ohio Guide" was part of the "American Guide Series" that came under the WPA Federal Writers' Project.
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The Campbell Library at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey has an extensive history on this subject posted online

The results of conducting a word search for the word "cemetery" in the online version of "The Ohio Guide" produced 44 "hits".  An interesting one appears on Page 125 for Otis C. Pratt who was buried at the Greenwood Cemetery in Wellington, Lorain County, Ohio.:

Photograph courtesy of  Mr. Al Leiby

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So, happy hunting for "The Ohio Guide" by the Works Progress Administration - originally published by the University Press, Oxford, New York in 1940.