Sunday, March 10, 2013
It is a touchy scbejut. On the one hand, you don't want to disturb the final resting places of your ancestors. That's a very sacred thing to most of us.I remember several years ago when DNA and genealogy were just starting to really come together, almost a dozen family members and I were going to a cemetery to do some cleanup of some family plots (going back 120 years or so). It was April 1st, and me being in an April fools mode, when we got there, I pulled a shovel out of my trunk and said this is a good time to get DNA samples .Nobody spoke to me for a good hour or so, even after I tried to explain that I was just making an April fools joke. You just don't mess with graves.On the flip side, put yourself in the place of the deceased.If, 150 years from now, God forbid your grave as well as the graves of others near you, are mixed up, and people aren't sure who is buried where, they just know that somebody is buried where you were buried, and somebody is buried at another location, would you want them to do what they could to identify your grave? In that instance, I wouldn't have any problems with what they are doing. There is something reassuring about knowing where somebody is buried.I expect this to become a major issue over the coming decades, as more people become interested in genealogy, and as they realize just how poorly some cemeteries and cemetery records have been maintained.
