Buried and hidden history have a defender in Nancy Thompson.
Armed with camera, probe and notebook, she has walked many of Cole County's rural, family and forgotten cemeteries. Whether they're related to her or not, she records names and stones for future researchers.
In particular, she has uploaded nearly 9,000 memorials to Find-A-Grave and more than 10,500 photos, several at the request of other users.
"This is part of preserving the history of the county, by taking pictures of these cemeteries," she said.
The first cemetery Thompson took on to record and post to Find-a-Grave was the old St. Peter's Cemetery (the second of four) behind Heisinger Bluffs Lutheran Home. Only a few stones were visible, so she surveyed to find more. Then, she cleaned, photographed and posted them, suspecting that many were riverboat transients or victims of epidemics.
"I'm not related to anyone there," Thompson said.
She does it, though, to help other genealogists looking for clues about their families.
"It's exciting when you find somebody," she said. "That's the rewarding part - when you help somebody find their family."
Thompson is one of those bewildered researchers facing a dead end looking for clues of her family before a great-grandfather. She documented his Oklahoma burial but had no luck finding a death certificate, which could have yielded his parent's names. Now, she waits and hopes someone else may post other gravestones that could help her on that trail.
The photographing is the most important part of this lengthy process.
"Genealogists want to know someone didn't make it up," she said.
Through the last few years, she has worked with other local genealogists and cemetery historians trying to chronicle many of the remote pioneer and family cemeteries.
"There's been a lot of dirt roads and asking permission for access," she said.
Often these small, old cemeteries are in farmer's fields or away from main roads. State law requires property owners to arrange access, but some are concerned about liability and others are embarrassed the cemeteries have not been kept up. The worst is when stones are piled in a heap or removed altogether.
"I don't do this for notoriety; I'm happy others can use it," Thompson said.
The cemetery preservation emphasis has come along in the last six years. But she has worked on her own family tree, which today has more than 100,000 members, off and on for her lifetime.
"Genealogy is a disease," Thompson said. "This is where everything else has brought me."
Her personal research led her to Cole County cemeteries, where she found information lacking.
"There was very little information about this very large cemetery," she said. "And so many of the city's founding fathers are buried there."
Then, she was appointed to the city Cemetery Resource Board in the fall, where she was given a copy of the 1976 listing of the two public cemeteries' occupants, compiled by the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter.
"It was a big deal when Ross Geary did this," Thompson said.
Nearly 40 years later, many of the stones still there during the nation's bicentennial were now covered with earth or worn smooth by time and elements. But the 1976 listing was not comprehensive.
After photographing, verifying and posting the visible gravestones to Find-a-Grave.com, Thompson began looking for the hidden markers and the forgotten names.
Eventually, the board will develop a method to memorialize these names.
When Thompson's finished with the Old City/Woodland register, board members already have asked for her to apply her research to the city's Longview Cemetery, where mass graves and inmate burials are thought to be.
Connecting with other genealogists through Find-a-Grave, Thompson began assembling the "giant jigsaw puzzle."
"It's fun when you work with so many other people and everybody has a piece of the puzzle," she said.
"You can't help but try to solve the puzzle."
She took on the time-consuming task of reviewing all available Cole County death certificates for burial location. Prior to 1910, the certificates were voluntary. Still, Thompson has discovered more than 700 names of individuals once buried at Old City/Woodland cemeteries but have no marker today.
Because many graves were re-interred when Riverview Cemetery opened, she is cross-checking those names with other local burial sites.
In the middle of her year-by-year research, she realized other lost cemeteries, like the Elston pauper cemetery and the Jewish Hedge Grove cemetery, needed to be recorded.
No comprehensive list of burials for these old, smaller cemeteries exists, either. So, then Thompson turned to contemporary newspaper articles and early reports by the Missouri Historical Review to find any other names.
One of her fun finds was the grave of Carrie Crittenden, daughter of a former governor, which had been covered over with grass.
But to her, the crowning discovery has been finding the grave of John B. Ruthven, whose home on Cherry Street is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
"It's like an Easter egg hunt," she said.
Correction: The original story incorrectly referred to "Find-A-Grave" as "Find-A-Grace."