Tombstone Tuesday - Benton Lutheran, Elkhart, Indiana

Fallen headstone of Anna Margaret Rumbarger Boomershine, wife of Peter Boomershine.  Margaret was born 29 JAN 1782 in Pennsylvania and died 29 OCT 1867 in Elkhart County, Indiana.  She rests with her husband, Peter Boomershine in Benton Lutheran Cemetery, Elkhart County, Indiana.

*Photo by Mark Krugman

Elkhart County, Indiana Roots?

On November 2nd I was privileged to be the featured speaker for the day long Family History Seminar put on by the Elkhart County, Indiana Genealogy Society.  It was a great day!

I went down a day early because I had heard about the Elkhart County Historical Museum.  Having lots of "relatives" who relocated to Elkhart County from Montgomery County, Ohio, I was immediately interested in seeing what I might find in Elkhart.

So I went down to the Elkhart County Historical Museum and did some research.  The staff was helpful beyond measure, I can't say enough great things about this research library.

Check out the website, they have a listing of their holdings

Tombstone Tuesday - Exactly Who Is This Anna Boomershine?

This Boomershine headstone lies in Benton Lutheran Cemetery, Elkhart County, Indiana.

The only question is, who is she? 

If you know who this Anna Boomershine is I'd love to hear from you.

Tombstone Tuesday

The Gospel Messenger,  16 FEB 1918 -

Peoples, Henry, born in Ohio Aug. 21, 1840, died in Elkhart, Ind., Jan. 28, 1918, aged 77 years, 5 months and 7 days.  He was united in marriage to Susan Boomershine Feb. 3, 1862.  To this union were born two sons and three daughters, of whom one son and three daughters remain, together with seven grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, two brothers and two sisters.  The deceased united with the Church of the Brethren at the time of the Civil War.  Later he renewed his covenant with the Lord, and died singing and praying.  Services by the writer at the Goshen City church Feb. 1.  --  J. W. Kitson, Goshen, Ind.

Henry Peoples died 29 JAN 1918 and was buried 1 FEB 1918 in Benton Lutheran Cemetery, Goshen, Elkhart County, Indiana. 

His wife, Susannah Boomershine Peoples was born 24 OCT 1840 in Indiana and died 11 MAR 1917 Elkhart County, Indiana. 

Wordless Wednesday - SO SAD!

Above 2005
July 2009

And the winners are...

WOW! Sitting here in my hotel room this morning thinking back over yesterday I have to say the winners yesterday were Mark & I. What a great day we had at the Elkhart public library.

After leaving home around 7 or so yesterday we made a nice leisurely drive from the Detroit area down to Elkhart. For the most part a pretty drive, biggest issue was of course the traffic in the metro area.

We arrived at the Elkhart public library around 10:30 yesterday morning! To our surprise they knew we were coming - and because I am mentioning them again today, they'll probably get this again. I must admit I was impressed. I can't begin to say enough nice things about the library & staff at this library.

Friendly, accomendating and helpful -- what more can a genealogist ask for from a genealogy department in a public library? Dan & Jeanine went above & beyond the call of duty, providing us with the films & materials we needed to make our visit a success. The machine we were on worked like a charm. We never ran out of paper or films to view. The library was clean, even the other people using the library were courteous, not on cell phones, children weren't tearing the place down - it was just a really nice atmosphere to research in.

That said I did end up with 98 obituaries from their newspaper, The Elkhart Truth. I got every obituary I went there for and a few extra! After doing some research there, we went to dinner, and visited a few cemeteries. Now that's a surprise eh?

It was like emptying your halloween treat bag when you are a kid! Remember coming home from trick or treating and dumping your bag in the middle of the floor to check out all the good stuff you scored? That was sort of how it was here. The obits stacked in the middle of the bed, and me going thru them. Savoring every little detail. Many of those on these obits I did not have burial locations for, some I did not have spouses or children on. So yes, it was a good day yesterday!

Today's mission is to find the headstones of those whose obituaries we got yesterday and photograph them for our files. The desk clerk, Debbie, here at the hotel gave us a full list of all the cemeteries in this county along with the locations - so we are defintely loving the staff at this hotel as well!

Dan & Jeanine if you get this - thanks for helping start our research vacation on a very positive note!

On the road again....

Yep, we sure are! We're headed out to do some more genealogy on the road.

Today we are off to Elkhart County, Indiana. My ancestors brother, Peter Boomershine, migrated to the Elkhart County, area ca1830. He & his wife, Margaret are both buried in Benton Lutheran Cemetery, in Elkhart. Peter's stone, shown above is broken and in pieces, while Margaret's, is intact but laying on the ground, almost totally engulfed by grass. Peter dies between 1861 & 1863, and it is unclear if his death was civil war related or not. I've not found anything to indicate he served but that doesn't mean alot. Margaret dies 29 OCT 1867 in Elkhart.

Peter & Margaret were the parents of six children, Elizabeth who married Martin Shoup, John who married Susanna Felkert, Simon who married Anna Shroyer, Daniel who married Elizabeth Aherd, Catherine who never married and Rebecca who married Jesse Deardorff.

Even today there are many descendants of the Boomershine family in the Elkhart County area although many of them do not carry the Boomershine surname.

The Elkhart County public library has a wonderful obituary index on line. Although it is not all inclusive, they do have some years not covered by the index, there are enough years covered that I have quite a list of obituaries to search for. Copies are .15 each, and the newspapers are not self serve.

Tomorrow we will be chasing the headstone's of those whom we find obits on today as I do not have burial locations on most of them.

So for now, time to set the house alarm and hop in the hybrid and we're off.

On the road again....

Ready or not....

As I mentioned in past posts we are leaving for vacation in a few days, and I am so ready... or at least I think I am... hope I am?

I'm a firm believer that in order to make best use of my research time I need a plan, I need a to do list. Where am I going? That part I know. Hotels are reserved, libraries have been questioned. So those things are in place. But what about things like cemeteries & libraries? Okay so I know how to get there, the GPS is programmed and ready but am I?

For quite some time now I've been adding to my research lists for the trip. SO I thought I would give some sort of itinerary and see if YOU, my reader can think of anything I missed... ready?

First stop - Elkhart County, Indiana public library - primary research focus will be obituaries. This library has an obituary index online - if you are interested you can google Elkhart Public Library, and I'm sure you'll find it. Anyway, I've been copying & pasting from my searches on their obit index into my to do list for that library. I know that the index covers from 1921-1952, 1962 to current. I also know they have a WPA index that covers from 1882-1900. SO I may have some obits that I need to actually search the papers for. I sent them an email and I found out that the newspapers are on the second floor and that they are not self serve, so that will slow me down a bit. I also learned that they have three film copiers but seldom are they all in use so I should be okay there. Cost is .15 per, no copy card but they do have a change machine. Not taking chances, I've been saving change for a while so I have that covered.

While I am in Elkhart I need to do some cemetery work with the info I find in the obits, so the second day, Saturday, I plan on doing some headstone photographs. The weather forecast shows warm & sunny, Camera is packed and both batteries are charged. The charger for the camera will be plugged in while we are driving to assure I have plenty of charge for my headstone work. I have the locations of all the cemeteries in Elkhart County, so that is prepared.

As we head south from Elkhart County, we are traveling down the western side of Indiana, headed for Tell City. I've gone thru the counties, working with Legacy, my genealogy software, and I've determined that we have cemeteries in many counties along the way, avoiding Indianapolis. I've mapped those out and made my lists in the Legacy software of the cemeteries I want to photograph stones in along the way. Those will be printed out & bound tomorrow (Thursday).

Skip a day or two, and we are going to be researching at the Tennessee State Library & Archives. My inquiries there indicated that copies from microfilm are .25 per page. My interest in the library & archives is their newspaper collection - I can get obits from all over the state of Tennessee without having to do all that running. The other item of interest is death certificates for Tennessee from 1908-1955. At .25 each I can do alot of work here without spending the money in my gastank. The focus will be female lines. So we will be working together but seperately here, with myself working on obituaries and Mark will be after the death certifcates. Again the focus will be on the females in the line, especially those whom we have no surname for. I've been building two lists for this research facility, one for obits and one for death certificates. Those will be printed tomorrow after a quick review later today. After three days of this we will be off again.

The last leg of our research trip will be in Ohio. Specifically the Butler & Warren County area's of Ohio. Although most of my Ohio ancestors were in Montgomery, Preble & Darke there are a few that wandered off into other counties. So for the last few days of our trip I want to focus on getting obituaries and headstone photo's of them, basically cleaning up and verifying what I know. This is what I need to work on today. My to do list for this area is the final "trip prep" that I need to do.

I'm really excited about this trip and to be honest poor studmuffin, he knows me so well, this morning he warned me about wanting to leave early. He knows from past experience that I will be "chompin' at the bit" to get out of here, and that chances are I'll try my best to get him to leave Thursday night instead of Friday morning. So he's already done his mule thing, locked himself into place and declared, "not this time you're not!"... but we shall see eh?

I guess its alot like the children say when they play hide & seek.....

Ready or not......