Mary Dolan is curious about the Bechtal sisters whose shared gravestone at the abandoned First Methodist Cemetery in rural Seward County indicates 1-year-old Hilda died March 14, 1882, just three months before Julia’s birth.
Neither lived to see their second birthdays.
Both are among the 10 marked graves and four unmarked graves in the tiny cemetery Dolan and the David City Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution have been documenting.
DAR Chapter Regent Dolan reported to the Seward County Commissioners March 10 on the documentation and maintenance project the DAR has taken on. The chapter includes members from Seward and other counties who will help to share information about the cemeteries’ conditions and the people buried there.
The First Methodist, also known as Old Salem Cemetery, is one of 17 abandoned cemeteries across the county that Dolan and her group first offered to help the county document and set standards for in late 2024.
Her report documented 10 marked graves, nine headstones and four unmarked graves at First Methodist. The graves were dated between 1879 and 1900. Eight of the 10 graves were for small children.
The county has said all abandoned cemeteries should have a green abandoned cemetery sign with a metal sign showing the cemetery’s name next to it. If there are metal arches or other signage surviving, they should be maintained but not repaired.
Other standards set by the county include replacing or repairing fencing and assuring each cemetery has a gate, banning new plantings of trees or other plants, limiting placement of benches or statues to avoid maintenance issues, and assuring each cemetery has the equipment to hang flags on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
The DAR’s approach to the cemeteries is to first set sustainable maintenance standards for each cemetery, then to identify and digitize cemetery records, and create action plans for each cemetery that could involve repairing or replacing headstones.
A final phase would involve funding sources for each cemetery’s historic preservation.
The DAR offered a genealogical workshop at the Seward Memorial Library in February and is planning an exhibit at the Civic Center on July 4.
Dolan said they have already worked closely with the Seward County Historical Society and the Seward Genealogical Society.
Dolan and the commissioners talked about ways the DAR could work with 4-H, veterans and other groups moving forward, including workshops on how to clean gravestones and other aspects of recording and researching the graves.
“Anything we can do to help with that, we are happy to help,” she said. “Many hands make the work light.”
The grave information at First Methodist has now been recorded on the Find-A-Grave website that genealogists often look at to locate graves and, if they are lucky, learn other family information.
It is important, Dolan said, because for some of the people who are buried in Seward County, this may be the only record that they were ever here. In the 1800s when settlers were coming to or passing through this area, birth certificates, marriage certificates or death certificates were rare.
Sometimes baptismal or other church records exist, but often it is just the headstone that shows a family was here.
Genealogists are especially interested in family Bibles because they often hold documentation found nowhere else, Dolan said. Many children born at their farm homes were not recorded in any government office, and even Social Security numbers to verify individual identities were not used prior to World War II.
The project also includes 16 other abandoned cemeteries: Oak Grove, Union, Neujahr, Valley View, Dry Creek or Wildcat Hollow, Blue Ridge or Dewitt, Mt. Carmel, Evangelical Zion, Prairie Grove, Knob Hill, Leonard, Walnut Creek, Engelhaupt, One Grave, Goldhammer and West Mills.
