Blazing the Trail of Research

Service Learning Project

by

Allen Muir

Sara Nelson

November 29, 2001

History 2700

Dr. Mulderink

Project Title: Blazing the Trail of Research in the Cedar City Cemetery

Introduction

            The Cedar City Cemetery recorded its earliest burial in 1851, the earliest date found within the cemetery recorded on a headstone.  The first years of the cemetery were not recorded by any documents and where there is documentation it is not consistent or chronological until 1887.  The first records for the cemetery were not kept by the city and were not kept within the cemetery.  The primary record of the cemetery is called The Book of the Dead and it encompasses records for the cemetery from 1860 until 1979.  The first entries were recorded by physicians and later by morticians.  Later the book was given to the city for record keeping.  Full time sextons were not employed until 1958 so individuals who, under their own employment, dug graves for a living and acted as part time sextons usually did record keeping.

            Record keeping is a vital aspect of organization for the cemetery.  The records are for information of the individuals buried in the cemetery and the location of their graves; in addition, the records are kept for government purposes.  The Cedar City Cemetery is required to submit reports monthly to the State Health Department, who in turn will give those reports to the Federal Government.   In the past, the Book of the Dead was the primary means for record keeping for many years.  The book provides spaces for each individual’s name, next of kin, birth date, birthplace, date of death, cause of death, physician, and burial plot.  Even though the book provides space for the information it was not always completely entered.  For many individuals their information was obtained from church records.  Those recorded without major aspects of information often were not recorded with a next of kin.  In many cases the proficiency with which the information was recorded depended largely on whoever was entering the information in the book.  The preservation of the Book of the Dead and its records are vital not only for practical reasons but also for historical research.  

Project  

Through suggestions presented in class we followed an email from Ron Cardon of the Volunteer Center of Iron County to Glen Spencer who is involved in Parks and Recreation for Cedar City.  He suggested that the city cemetery was in need of volunteers to do various projects.  Glen Spencer’s office assistant gave us information about Wally Davis, the cemetery sexton, and provided us with the means to contact him.  We set up an appointment and met with Mr. Davis at the cemetery where he presented the Book of the Dead to us as well as his concerns in connection to the records it holds and its preservation.  The records within the book have many functions making it an essential historical source to preserve. 

In order to preserve the Book of the Dead and to make the information held within it more accessible, the information needed to be entered into a new database.  The original database for the city records was not sufficient for the availability of the information.   Mr. Davis has been working on comparing and updating the records from the old database to the records in the Book of the Dead for the past five years. Birth dates were left out of the records for the old database, so his main task was to take a print out from the data in the computer and write the corrections to the information, as well as their location in the Book of the Dead, on that print out.  The job has been laborious due to barriers with the clarity of information and his lack of time.  Mr. Davis gave this procedure to us for our Service Learning Project.  Our main task was to compare the information from the computer with the information in the book while providing birth dates for each individual.  The actual process of gathering and comparing information was easily accomplished when the records were legibly and completely provided in the book, but that situation was rare.  The book is entirely handwritten, providing for difficulty in deciphering words depending on the individual who entered the records and the type of writing instrument they used.  In the beginning, the use of quill and ink pens resulted in the ink running together and ruining the words.  Some of the writing is fading or has bled through to other pages. 

The presentation of the information often provided barriers by not remaining consistent with each record keeper’s style.  When birth dates were recorded they were mainly presented in month, day, year form; however, there was a certain sexton that provided the year, month, week, and day of each person’s age without simply stating the birth date.  We had to use creative methods to make this information easier to transform into the style needed for the computer forms while being efficient. 

In comparing the records of the computer to the book, there were many people who were left out of one of the sources.  We often compensated for that missing information on the computer copy by providing for a complete account.  Often, because of nicknames and various spelling for names, it was difficult to find individual information for people who were out of place in one of the sources.  The comparison of duplicate individuals provided for opportunities of further research and compilation of information.  We found that the Book of the Dead had many inconsistencies in relation to the exact people buried in the cemetery.  Many families would purchase an entire plot (eight graves) and would often bury people in their plots without notification to the cemetery, providing for missing information in the Book of the Dead.  We spent nearly twenty-five hours at the cemetery comparing and updating information from computer records and the Book of the Dead.  We were able to complete twenty years of information. 

While providing for the record of those who have died, the Book of the Dead provides glimpses into the lives of the individuals that it records.  It is not simply a “Book of the Dead” but it is more importantly, a book of those who have lived.  While updating information we became curious about certain people and the events surrounding certain deaths.    The Book of the Dead contains information that provides for a better understanding of the community that Cedar City was and shows its evolution through time. 

Our curiosities were peaked by things like causes of death, delayed burial dates, certain people, physicians, etc.  We spent fifteen hours searching for connections between information provided in the Book of the Dead and information provided by documentation of the history of the area.  In search of old records we began by contacting the public library that sent us to Special Collections of the Southern Utah University Library.  In Special Collections were helped tremendously by Susan Christopher who guided us to sources in the collection about the history of Iron County.   The Forgotten Chapters of History by William Palmer were a very helpful resource in gaining knowledge about Cedar City.[i]  The books were volumes of manuscripts for a radio show done by Palmer, a local historian, in the early 1950s.  The manuscripts provided for information about early southern utah publications and led us to find the Iron County Record on microfilm.  The Iron County Record was the second newspaper in Cedar City and has lasted from the late 1800s until now with the exception of a few name changes.  We searched for interesting death events in the newspaper that we had been introduced to in the Book of the Dead.  We found that many of the early newspapers are missing, providing for an obstacle when we searched for particular dates.  We found that the information collected in one of the sources was wrong in many cases.  We found one instance recorded in the Book of the Dead where a transient was killed by Otto Berkstrom; however, in the Iron County Record for the same date it states that a transient was killed by someone other than Mr. Berkstrom The records were either inaccurate or two transients were killed on the same day in Cedar City, and there is no living record of the incidence with Mr. Berkstrom. 

While comparing information we found that many servicemen who had died in World War II were being buried in the cemetery four to five years after their date of death.  We found that the United States Armed Forces were sending the remains of servicemen, who had been killed in battle, to their families.  We found articles for many of the servicemen with delayed burial dates in the Iron County Record.  Lieutenant Frank Hamblin Hunter was killed while on a bombing mission over Foggia, Italy on July 22, 1943.  His body returned to Cedar City in December of 1949.[ii]  Sergeant Albert Bryce Albertson was killed in action on January 4, 1945 in Wingen, France.  His body returned to Cedar City in December of 1948.[iii]  Private Leo Esplin was killed in the Phillipines in August, 1945, and his body returned to Cedar City in July of 1948.[iv] 

While searching for the first Sexton to record in the Book of the Dead, we came across a name for a physician that was predominately named throughout the beginning pages of the book.  In A History of Iron County: Community Above Self by Janet Seegmiller, we found the particular doctor, Dr. George W. Middleton, to be the first physician of Cedar City.  He went on to start the first hospital in Cedar City where the Book of the Dead was most likely kept for a few years.  His influence in the community was broadly felt because he brought modern medicine techniques to Cedar City and the surrounding areas.[v]  

Through our analysis of the Book of the Dead we began to pay attention to the causes of many people’s deaths, and began to pull out certain diseases we thought were interesting and most prominent.  In our investigation we found that many of the causes of death in the past are not as prevalent today.  The leading reasons for death of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century were related to exposure, a condition of being unprotected from the elements. Because of technological advances in daily aspects of living and health care, those fatal diseases are nearly nonexistent.  Many other prominent reasons for death were related to exposure such as: bronchitis, meningitis and pneumonia.

While searching in the Book of the Dead we wanted to connect actual people to their causes of death and found a man named, John James Pryor, who had died of exposure.  We searched for information relating to him and found his story in the Iron County Record.  The article stated that he had been found after a four or five day search and had lost his eye as a result of his “battle with the elements.”  The newspaper recorded his year of birth as 1860 but the Book of Dead records it as 1859.[vi]  The inefficiency of records was once again revealed and we were able to compare the writing style of earlier journalists to those later in the century.

            We discovered that two primary causes of death among infants were being born prematurely and teething.  Premature birth can still be a leading cause of death, but the fatality of teething is nearly gone.  Surprisingly, the numbers of children who died from teething were exceedingly high in the early 1900s, a time when better medical procedures were put into practice. 

            Many of the reasons for death in the past have been reduced due to safety precautions and procedures.  In the early pages of the Book of the Dead, many people died of head injuries or brain contusions defined as a sufficient force to bruise the brain.  In our day, that is still a cause of death and a cause of sufficient injury, but we now have precautionary safety measures to curb the amount of fatalities resulting from brain injury.[vii] 

            The result of our research provided us with an insight into the similarities and differences between the present day and the late 19^th century and the early 20^th century.  The evolution of time passing became evident through the accidents that often became fatal.  It was interesting to observe the patterns of epidemics as they surfaced, and to note the increase and decrease of particular diseases as time progressed. 

Connection to other Service Learning Projects

Our involvement in record updating and compiling will lead to connections for other historical research.  Many projects related to genealogy and extraction will be directly benefited by easier access to the cemetery records.  The availability of records provide learning opportunities for people to extract information of the dead in an effort to piece together the lives of ordinary people from the Cedar City community.  The records that we directly influenced will go on to be a resource for further statistical research.  When the information is complete in the database it will provide for the accessibility of more specific searches.  Individuals can be researched according to their specific personal information on the database.  People can be researched for their cause of death or their age as opposed to simply their name and death date.  The reports from the cemetery allow for vital statistics to be held within each state. 

The Book of the Dead as a project for the future

            There is still a large amount of work to be done with the Book of the Dead.  There are discrepancies throughout the book that will need to be researched and documented.  There will be a great deal of time involved in making sure that the discrepancies are taken care of.  There are many names that will need to be researched because of the inability to read the exact spellings present in the book. After the records are completely compared and updated to the last date of the book, they will need to be entered into the database.   Mr. Davis suggested another project for the future to include the complete layout of the Book of the Dead to be transferred into a spreadsheet format.  The layout would provide for better legibility of the information in the Book of the Dead.  Deciphering the early handwriting of the book will take a great deal of time.  The perception of what is in the book will depend entirely on what the reader assumes the handwriting to be.  There is still a great deal of work to be done with this project.

            In research of the particular individuals in the Book of the Dead it would be interesting to know the personal histories of each of those individuals.  Because the book ended in the 1970s it would be interesting to have a correlating book of the lives of the people who are recorded.  It may seem outlandish, but it would be a great asset for anyone connected to the people buried in the cemetery. 

Conclusion

There were many beneficial aspects of our project.  We had the opportunity to serve the community that has been so good to us while we have been residents.  We learned to develop a good attitude and learned to enjoy something that was imperative to be done.  Our research skills were enhanced by opportunities to analyze and evaluate the sources that we came in contact with.  We had to think critically about whether the sources were credible and which sources were more credible than others.    The credibility of the Book of the Dead largely depends upon who entered the information into the book and the time frame wherein the information was entered. We compared its credibility to that of the newspaper.

It was interesting to compare the differences in the newspaper over the space of decades.  The language within the newspaper articles and their topics of focus changed dramatically over time.  The whole layout of the newspaper said so much about daily life in the community, and the opportunity to learn about the lives of people through their death information provided a great educational experience. 

            We had the opportunity to develop our personal professional skills by interacting with various members of the community.  We had the opportunity to study the cemetery and learn of interesting points of its history from Mr. Davis and Mr. Spencer.  They were instrumental in the completion of our project. 

Our objective in beginning this project was to provide service for the community while learning about some historical aspect.  Although the work seemed simply clerical, becoming more educated in the purpose of the records provided for research to be done. It also gave us the opportunity to see the great importance of the records and their importance to anyone associated with the cemetery in any way.