Welcome to the new 'Central Missouri Cemeteries', a website dedicated to locating, protecting, and preserving the long forgotten family cemeteries of the following counties of Central Missouri: Audrain, Boone, Callaway, Cole, Cooper, Gasconade, Howard, Maries, Miller, Moniteau, Monroe, Montgomery, Morgan, Osage, and Randolph. On this website we will be discussing a multitude of ways and technologies that may be employed to further this goal and provide the basis that hopefully change the attitudes and legal climate to provide restoration and protection to these hidden and forgotten family burial sites.

This is a newly established website and many of the topics covered here will be developed within the coming months. None of the information presented here is 'cast in stone' so that there is room for your ideas, discussion, and any contributions that that are related to the topics being covered here. Any ideas, discussion, or contributions that you can make to this website will be appreciated and included depending on their relevancy. We hope that this website will become a vehicle for discussing and presenting concepts for awareness and change, and that many of the technologies presented here will present examples to further cemetery efforts on the local level in other areas of the country as well as just Central Missouri.

Just below the header for each major page on this website, you will find a menu bar, that will allow you to select all of the major topics that we will be covering and readily navigate this website. On the minor pages, which will be found off of the major pages, it will be necessary to click on the 'Back' button on your browser toolbar line to return to the major page for that topic. The topics presented here are ones that come to mind readily and other topics may be added as the need arises.

The topics that we will be discussing on this website are as follows:

• Maps of the county cemeteries - These maps are derived from the user Latitude and Longitude values applied to a public domain TIGER map of the county showing enough detail that an individual will be able to determine how to navigate to it by road.
• Locating the county cemeteries - This section will go into detail about using the resources available to be able to determine the approximate locations of the county cemeteries and how to go about chasing them down.
• Use of the GPS for county cemetery locations - This section will describe how the GPS works, our system of Latitude and Longitude, the various types of Latitude and Longitude measurement, which system is better for which use, conversion from one system to another, and recommendations as to how to maintain a county cemetery tracking file.
• Photographing cemeteries and stones - This section will discuss the various technologies and techniques that can be employed to deliver high quality photographs, both digital and regular, how to maintain a file of digital images related to the individual stones in a cemetery, and software that can best be used to present them.
• Listing the burials in a cemetery - How to systematically go about providing a detailed listing of the burials in a cemetery by assigning an inventory number for each stone in a cemetery, tips on reading the stones, use of digital photography and other technologies to get burial information, recommended database software for maintaining a listing of each cemetery, and presentation of your listings.
• Mapping county cemetery locations - This section will go into detail about how to create the TIGER Map Server map representing your county, how to create the cemetery location data point file, and finally other more difficult but much more versatile maps for presenting the data associated with the cemeteries of your county.
• Endangered Cemeteries - In this section we hope to present recommended criteria for helping to define which cemeteries are endangered and the degree of endangerment, as well as to present information on the endangered cemeteries of the various counties. Out of this information we hope that there will come an awareness of the plight of the family cemeteries of Missouri and the need to protect and preserve them with proper attitudes and laws.
• Restored Cemeteries - In this section we hope to present examples of endangered cemeteries that have been restored and what steps and measures that individuals and groups have gone to so that their work will remain protected for the future. Additionally, to discuss technologies that have been employed in repairing stones and restoring them to their proper locations.
• Pioneer Cemeteries - In this section we will attempt to discuss the Pioneer Cemeteries Laws in other states and develop criteria for defining what a Missouri Pioneer Cemetery should be and whether there should be special laws to locate, restore, protect and preserve them.
• Missouri Cemetery Law - In this section we will explore the various sections of the Cemetery Laws of Missouri and the agencies responsible for promulgation of legislation and enforcement of those laws. Additionally, the laws of other states will be compared to those of Missouri with the end result of why they work or DON'T work and what should be done with those laws to assure that Pioneer Cemeteries which document our heritage and all other cemeteries receive the proper protection that they deserve.
• Articles About Missouri Cemeteries - In this section we hope to present articles written about Missouri Cemeteries, either submitted directly to this website or those appearing in local newspapers or other sources, which demonstrate the plight of Missouri family cemeteries and what measures are being taken to correct them. Your submissions to this website are welcome provided that they are related directly to Missouri Cemeteries, either pro or con. We hope that you will consider contributing.
• Major Contributors - This section covers the major contributors of data, information, and articles to this website and to cenetery work in the State of Missouri. We hope to recognize, in this section, those individuals who are outstanding in the field of Missouri Cemetery work, in any or all of the sections covered on this website.
• Downloads - On this page we will cover and make available a number of recommended downloads of databases and applications in which to store cemetery location and listing data, conversion utilities to convert from the DMS system of latitude/longitude to the DD system of latitude/longitude, and utilities to renumber/rename graphics files of your cemetery photos. In addition there will be a number of recommended downloads from other websites that may contribute to your efforts.