My mother loved genealogy and used to tell me so many stories. Sadly I didn't understand the depth of what it all meant and wish she were here other than in spirit in my journey.

She and my younger sister didn't have access to all the online records available today so she wrote letters and spent countless hours in libraries and writing letters to retrieve documents. Thankfully my younger sister understood the value of their hard work and had the space to store all of it. I continue the journey with love and passion.

Find A Grave is an invaluable tool in my journey and have become more involved mostly working my local cemetery and looking for ancestors.

Those who know me do not understand the passion all of us have for what they call are 'dead people.' They think it's morbid and think ghosts; I think of love and connections and never forgetting the contributions they made, good or bad.

Please - if you are related or want to manage it for the family I will transfer it to you. The only reason I won't transfer is if they are my family - even still we can negotiate that!

My main focus in Mountain View in Auburn, Washington. First I want to thank each of the volunteers who originally walked the rows, entered and photographed this cemetery before I came along. I also want to thank each of the volunteers who have or continue to work with me on my projects. I especially thank Linda Johnson (#47832105) who has worked with me from the beginning. Accept when one of us travels we try to get together once a week to put in cemetery time and go to the library to do research.

In 2022 and 2023, I did a complete audit of this cemetery using burial maps and online records in collaboration with the cemetery staff and several fellow volunteers we have:

• Created over 3,000 memorials, mostly for old unmarked graves
• Researched existing 2,300 memorials, and
• Added plot numbers to about 1,200 memorials (in order to locate and photograph)
• Merged duplicates
• Changed the burial location to the correct cemetery

2024/2025

Worked with the cemetery staff to identify all the records that are not visible to the public in the online lookup tool. The cause:

• a box not checked
• an individual record not created and combined with family member
• memorials only/not interned yet, and
• Unknown glitch

At the same time we touched every record again (almost 20,000)

• Adding or completing plot numbers, veteran status, missing dates to every memorial while working the above project. We have found and resolved:
• More duplicates
• Memorials with headstone photos seemingly transferred from the correct cemetery. Transferred them back.
• Missing headstone photos due to photo marked "grave" instead of "other"

Here are a few links to help locate your loved one.

https://www.auburnwa.gov/city_hall/mountain_view_cemetery

https://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/

Find A Grave serves three purposes:

• memorializing a person's life
• documenting their final disposition, and
• genealogy research.

Remember

Find A Grave is an invaluable tool for genealogy research, but we are all volunteers. While striving for accuracy we do make mistakes.

Every memorial created is indexed on the internet and family tree websites. Verify your information so the correct information can be used by others in their quest to find their ancestors. Thus, it is important to create the memorial in the correct cemetery.

Please do some research - not everybody is in a cemetery. Not everybody is buried in the town they live in.