|
OVH graves
online
Images said to be a
boon to ancestry research.
By TOM
JACKSON
tomjackson@sanduskyregister.com
PERKINS
TWP. -
Relatives of thousands
of war veterans buried at the Ohio Veterans Home don't have to come
to the Firelands anymore to view the
tombstones.
Photographs of about
4,000 tombstones have been placed on the home's Web site,
www.ohioveteranshome.gov/sandusky.asp. Clicking "
OVH
Cemetery" at the left side of
the page opens a database of about 4,200 OVH residents buried in the
home's cemetery. Each entry includes the person's name, the date of
his or her death and the exact location of the grave. In all but 200
cases, visitors also can view a photo of the tombstone.
The 200 tombstones
that aren't included on the site yet are headstones with information
that didn't show up clearly in the photos. The tombstones will be
cleaned up and photographed again when warmer weather arrives, said
OVH spokesman Gary L. Chetwood. That effort also will help the home
figure out which headstones need to be replaced, Chetwood
said.
The veterans at the
cemetery date back to the Civil War and the home's Web site has
drawn steady attention from genealogists, Chetwood said. About three
to five times a month, a genealogist who spotted an ancestor on the
Web site writes or e-mails the home and asks for more information
about the veteran, Chetwood said.
The site eventually
wants to add a form to make such requests for information easier,
said Jim Allen, a Web developer at OVH.
"Genealogy is huge. I
had no idea until I started looking at this," Chetwood
said.
T
he home began putting
the headstones online during the fall, and has heard from Web
visitors who appreciate being able to view a relative's final
resting place, Chetwood said.
The cemetery has two
Medal of Honor winners: James Jardine, a Civil War hero who died
Dec. 9,
1922, and William L. Carr, who fought in the
Spanish-American War and died
April 4, 1921.
The Web site, which
covers the homes in
Perkins
Township and in
Georgetown
,
draws about 65,000 hits a month. That figure can reach 180,000 hits
a month around Memorial Day and Veterans Day, Allen
said.
The site will be
refreshed with a new design later this year, he said. The new design
should allow OVH staffers to update the Web site themselves without
having to get help from the computer staff, he
said.
|
