Project will document 20K ‘forgotten’ Iowa headstones

CEDAR RAPIDS — For more than 200,000 Iowans who died before 1880, there may be no public record of their existence besides a headstone.

Because of this, the Cedar Rapids stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is launching the Rescuing Our Roots project to photograph and document 20,000 Iowa headstones starting Sept. 10 and finishing Memorial Day 2023.

“We think this is a great service we can provide to our community to preserve records that could potentially deteriorate or disappear,” said Joseph Miller, stake president, of Cedar Rapids.

They also hope to win a Guinness World Record, possibly for uploading the most headstone images into a single online album.

Deaths not recorded

Iowa became a state in 1846, but until 1880, did not track births or deaths. Marriages, which required a license, were recorded, but only at the county level, according to the State Historical Society of Iowa.

Legislation passed in 1880 created the Iowa Department of Public Health and required all births, deaths and marriages be recorded at the county and state levels.

Iowans who lived before this time may be documented by their descendants or in records from larger cemeteries. But some Iowans were buried in off-the-beaten-path plots now engulfed by agricultural land, woods or even residential neighborhoods.

The Kirkpatrick Cemetery consists of three visible headstones on a cul-de-sac in a development just north of Highway 30 in Cedar Rapids. Surrounding the graves on Hay Field Court SW are houses built in the late 2000s.

The primary headstones mark the grave of John Kirkpatrick, a War of 1812 veteran who was born in 1789 and died in 1860.

A family historian who talked with Dave Rasdal, a former Gazette columnist, in 2012, said Kirkpatrick moved to Iowa in 1846 with his family and bought 10 acres of land southeast of Cedar Rapids. The government gave him another 50 acres for his wartime service, Rasdal reported.

The Ely American Legion uncovered the decaying shingle headstone in the 1980s and has maintained the grave over the years.

But at least two other graves sit on the hill, which was likely the Kirkpatrick family plot. One looks like it says “Wi,” which may have said “Wife” and the other bears parts of the letters “M” and “A.” Over the years, someone has poured concrete markers over the crumbled stones, likely to preserve them.

“I’m 100 percent certain there are more graves on this site,” Miller said. “We still have some gaps in what we know about this family.”

Trying for a record

The History Center, a project partner, has pulled together resources, such as the “History of Linn County Iowa: From It’s Earliest Settlement to the Present Time,” written by Barthinius Wick and Luther Brewer in 1911. This book lists all local cemeteries at the time.

“Even then, it talks about how many cemeteries weren’t well maintained,“ said Tara Templeman, History Center curator. ”We are looking for information that is probably lost in some ways. There are things we will never find.“

For the Guinness World Record project, the church also has teamed up with BillionGraves, one of the world's largest resources for searchable GPS cemetery data, and FamilySearch, an LDS-affiliated website that provides free online resources to connect with family members.

BillionGraves has a free app that lets users find local cemeteries, sorted by size, and even search by a person’s name to see if their headstone photo is in the database.

People who want to be part of the project may visit the BillionGraves site to find Iowa cemeteries that still have undocumented headstones. Start by clicking on a cemetery and follow the instructions.

If you’ve explored the online resources and still have questions, need help, or would like to plan a large group outing, email Volunteer@BillionGraves.com. Project leaders seek to document all graves, not just those connected to the LDS church.

If you know of family burial plots or other small cemeteries not visible on the BillionGraves site, please email Susan Sims at susansims@justserve.org, to add them to the project.

“We’d like to ask our communities for help in letting us know about forgotten headstones that might be residing on their farmland or by the side of the road,” Miller said. “We don’t want any of those 200,000 to be forgotten.”

Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com