I am a retired US Army veteran. I worked at Fort Knox for many years, so I had opportunities to visit and photograph headstones in the many old cemeteries on post, about 100, and those in Hardin County, KY. My wife and I have since retired to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

My ancestral line traces directly from John Richards (aka Jean Richard), who was Indian interpreter with the British in upstate New York during the American Revolution. Four of his great-grandsons, all brothers, immigrated to New York in the 1880s, three of them later settling in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Their many descendants are found today in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Vermont, California, Mississippi, and other states.