photography

A Public Presentation…

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Well it is that time of year. It is almost time to start collecting new sites and I look forward to new and interesting locations and photos to be able to share with you. The most exciting thing I have to share right now is that we have been invited to speak at the Dorchester County Historical Society and I finally have a date for that to share with you.

The presentation will be held on June 15th, 2016 at 12:00pm (bring your lunch!). It will be held at the Dorchester Historical Society Building at 1003 Greenway Drive, Cambridge, Maryland, 21613.

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I would like to extend an invitation to everyone who has been reading along and sending in locations, and supporting us throughout this project. I couldn’t have done this without all of the help from tips coming in through email and spotters keeping lists of sites they see while driving, and the guides for taking me to some of the more remote parts of the county. I would love to see you all there and be able to thank you in person.

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Remember to keep those tips coming in! There are just some graves that we could never find without your help!

Anyone going out now working on their own research remember, Spring has Sprung. Make sure you use bug repellent, I’ve already heard reports of ticks, chiggers, and mosquitoes. I have also seen some snakes while I was out, so be safe and make sure you keep an eye on your surroundings.

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Spring is in the Air…

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And Happy Easter Weekend to everyone. I just wanted to bring everyone up to date on what’s going on! We had a fantastic time at the TUgis Conference. The presentation went beautifully and was very well received. There was a lively Q&A and discussion afterwards and many agencies, organizations, and individuals were interested in helping out or volunteering in some way. I hope to be able to reach out to people soon with some volunteering ideas. Also the Dorchester Graves Webmap won the award for Best Student WebApp, so that is very exciting (thank you everyone who voted for us!).

I’d like to thank everyone who came to the TUgis presentation or stopped by the WebApp Hall to visit and talk. It was exciting to get to meet some of the blog readers and followers in person. Thank you all for the kind words and support!

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Also we have been invited to speak at the Dorchester County Historical Society and give a presentation on our project and its findings. It will be mostly geared towards individuals who are doing historical or genealogical research with a little section regarding the science and technology of data collection, but anyone interested in the project is more than welcome to attend. There will be more information to follow on that once we have the details nailed down.

The Salisbury University Geography Department has been kind enough to let me use the GPS device this spring even though I am no longer a student, so I hope to start collecting points again next month. If you know of a gravesite that is not currently represented on the map (click here to go to map) please email us so we can put your site on the list of places to visit.

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Additionally I have been adding the rest of the photo’s to the website. The link for every sites name, alphabetically up to letter “H”, should be in good working order. If you find a link between A-H that is broken, or just leads back to the map instead of to the correct photo page, please email me and let me know so I can fix it. I am slowly but surely plugging away at this so thank you for your patience.

I believe that is all the news I have for now. I know I haven’t been posting as frequently as usual but until collection resumes there just isn’t as much excitement to talk about. I promise once I start fieldwork again there will be more photos and more to read about. But until then please enjoy this photo of the full moon from Wednesday night that I took through my telescope!

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Happy 2016!!!

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Well after a lovely long break off to rest and recoup from my final semester I’m getting back into the swing of things.

In case anyone wanted to know, we did get an A on the mapping project from Salisbury University. I would like to thank everyone for all their help and support throughout this whole undertaking. I truly could not have gotten as far as I did without help from you and the community at large.

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Our next steps are getting the last of the photo pages posted to the website and then linking them to the corresponding points on the map. This is a time consuming process so it will take a few weeks to get them all done. I appreciate everyone’s patience.

Field collection will hopefully pick back up in the beginning of March. By then hunting season should have wrapped up and the worst of the winter weather will be behind us… hopefully.

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I have been putting together the list of all the sites people had told me about but I never had a chance to go to. Right now this comes to about 25 locations. If you don’t see your site on the map, please email us so we can be sure to get to it when we start collecting again.

Thanks again for your interest in this project; I look forward to achieving much more and to the additional discoveries to come in 2016!

Happy Hunting.

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Well… November is definitely not going to go as smoothly as September and October did.  We now have two new challenges to consider on our field collection days – Daylight Savings Time and Hunting Season.

When the clocks rolled back they severely cut into the daylight hours we have for good visibility and decent photos.  The days from here on out are only going to get shorter and shorter; not much I can do about that except go out more often, just in shorter bursts.

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Hunting Season is making things tricky. I have already completed all of the easy to reach cemeteries and graveyards so the only ones left are the more remote and hard to reach sites. Therein lies the problem. I’m not the only one mucking through the woods and marsh anymore, and I sure don’t want to become an accidental target. So I went out and bought a lovely Day-Glo orange hunting vest. I think it really brings out my eyes. We definitely stand out now…

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Better safe than sorry…

But on the plus side there are no more ticks, chiggers, or mosquitoes lurking about. Or at least I haven’t seen any. Blast. I’ve probably jinxed us now. Never mind.

I know I am SO far behind on posting new gravesite photos, I have tons downloaded from my camera, and I just haven’t had a chance to go through and sort and resize them yet. I promise to get some new ones up soon. But for now here’s where we stand.

Count as of November 1st – 175 Gravesites located in Dorchester County.

 

Thanks to everyone for following along on this adventure.

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Happy Halloween!

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I hope everyone is enjoying the lovely fall season.  It has been beautiful driving around the county doing field work this past month.  I found myself wanting to take more pictures of the landscape than of the graves sites I was looking for. Since my search has been going so well and I have had so many volunteers taking me around the county, there isn’t really much to report by way of challenges or discoveries this week.

Here is a collection of spooky shots taken from around Dorchester County.

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Some vultures surveying the area…

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A Haunted house if ever I saw one…

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A black cat crossed our path…

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A strange floating orb… sunshine… or spirit?

I would like to thank everyone who has been following our blog. Hope you are enjoying reading it as much as we enjoy writing it and here’s hoping you have a safe and fun Halloween!

Friends…. And Family

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The past two weeks collections have gone beautifully! The weather has been perfect, the tides haven’t been too high, and everyone I’ve met around the county has been so very helpful. And as serendipity would have it, a couple of the doors I knocked on turned out to be family!

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When out looking for these grave sites, as I’ve mentioned before, I always like to get the owner’s permission before heading out across their property. As a result, I’ve knocked on a lot of doors and talked to many, many people.  Sometimes those doors bring unexpected treats! This past week I got to meet my mother’s cousin, and then my grandmother’s cousin; both on the same day but on opposite sides of the county. Dorchester may be one of the largest counties in the state but it’s a small world when it comes to relatives.

Speaking of family, I have finally made it to the southern portion of the county. I’ve been able to visit my Great-Aunt’s and Uncle’s graves and been to the final resting place of my Great-Grandparents. I vaguely remember being there as a child and I was pleasantly surprised that the location looked just the same now as I remembered it.  I look forward to the drive further south and perhaps finding some more branches of the family tree. I know it may sound odd but there is a profound feeling of belonging. To know that these are my people, this is their place, and this is where I come from.

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Additionally I would like to thank my guides for the past two weeks. We have covered a lot of ground in  very little time and it’s all thanks to volunteers. They know exactly where we are going and exactly who to go to for permission. I would like to thank these people for taking time out of their day to help me with this project.  Hopefully we can keep up the momentum with collection this week.

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Make sure you subscribe to our blog to keep up with all of our new finds and pictures.

As always,  if you know where there are gravesites in the county please email us at dorchestergraves@gmail.com

Collection Continues…

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We had a short but successful collection day this week. The Trimble GPS device is fast in collecting the coordinates and very user friendly. I will have to go back and count but I believe we have already located more burial sites than are on the official county list. This is a little like comparing apples to oranges however, because the county does not track all of the small sites on private property but I wanted to emphasize that there are so many more than people realize.

One of the biggest challenges we have encountered when going out and collecting these points is to stay on task. Driving down some of the back roads of the county reminds you how truly beautiful the area is. I find myself stopping to take pictures that are completely unrelated to the project but the scenery is just so captivating.

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Exhibit A…

The second issue we have come across is that there are still many unpaved “official” county roads. That is; these are county roadways, county maintained, and yet they are still just dirt roads. The official field research vehicle for this project does not appreciate us exploring these roads, especially after a heavy rain. Apparently we are not operating an All-Terrain Camry.

And finally, For the time being all the photo pages are named either for the common name for the burial site, the road they were found on, or after any signage located on the property. The “Official” names of the burial sites are used when available, but we will have to do some more research to be sure we get these names exactly right.

Ansel Adams we are not…

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In case it has not become abundantly clear by now that this page is not maintained by professional photographers, let me set the record straight; all photography is entirely done by amateurs. I apologize. This site is more a labor of love and less an artistic endeavor.

Geographers, Possibly. Cartographers, Hopefully. Photographers, unlikely.

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Lets hope it doesn’t get this bad…

That being said, we do try to take nice pictures of the grave sites, clear pictures of interesting stones or monuments, and effective documentation of wear, damage, or vandalism to these markers or locations.

Also, since the one thing Dorchester County has an abundance of is water, occasionally I will post pictures of landscapes, in addition to big skies, and sunsets. Additionally some local points of interest or historical sites will be showcased, but as the primary purpose of this project is the burial sites, these photos will only be incidental.

The update for last weeks field collection is as follows;

Bugs.

We went to a location a local had told us might have some stones and we could not even get 10 feet into the field. The insect swarm was so thick the Deep Woods Off couldn’t even keep up. Yet another site that will be waiting until fall after the first frost.

I will leave you with the most interesting find from last weeks collection.

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Check back next week for more progress.