Highland Park Cemetery Cleveland Ohio

All Cemeteries [Back to

As the indexing and proofing progress, many little issues have cropped up that may make a difference in the way one uses the information. We'll try to share some of those here.

The records from which this index was created were typed by the Cemetery personnel. It appears that they were typed from the original records, likely in the 1930s. For this reason, much of the information was subject to interpretation of handwriting and meaning from various sources. In many cases it was obvious that the names were misspelled, especially when there were six or seven consonants in a row with no vowels for a person from England. In some cases, one could look at the interpretation and make a guess as to what it should have been. These record indexes remain true to the records from which they were typed.

Ages were rounded in some cases, and estimated ones were stated as fact for this index.

Many of the entries are actually disinterments. This was not noted in the index. Some use the same interment number for both the burial and the exhumation. Some use separate numbers.

Alger Cemetery [Back to

There are a few number difficulties in these records, but nothing that will be too bothersome to the user. It appears that page 255 is a duplicate of 253. Some of the pages were numbered with suffixes, such as 232-1 but there is no plain 232. It is possible that there was a duplicate page that was removed. Volume I page 230 is blank. Volume II page 2 is blank. Some pages were not numbered, but are otherwise in sync with the rest of the book and were numbered as though they did have numbers.

Erie Street Cemetery [Back to

Interment numbers begin with 300, and nothing is known about the first 299 interments.

The entries for children are very ambiguous for this cemetery. An entry would read Smith's John (Child). We interpreted this to mean that this was John Smith's child. The surname was assumed and put in the surname field. In some cases it was "Smith's John." If the age was a child, we assumed it was John Smith's child. In some cases the first name could actually be that of the deceased. In some cases a name was typed with the apostrophe, such as "Smith's John age 47" Here we took out the apostrophe, assuming it was there by habit and indexed it as Smiths John.

Women's names were problematic. If it was listed as Smith Mary Mrs. we indexed it as Smith Mary Mrs, assuming this feminine name to be hers. If she was listed as "Smith Mrs. J. Q., " or "Smith J. Q. Mrs." we indexed it as Smith (no first name) and the Mrs J Q was put in the terms and titles field. The assumption here was that J Q was her husband, and only the deceased's names are in name fields. It is possible that some of these may be the women's initials.

In a few cases there are letters after the interment numbers. Some of them are cemetery attempts to correct numbering errors. Some of them were added as for twins - 123 and 123A, for instance. A few were 123A and 123B. Starting on page 228 numbers were designated as -D (duplicates). Numbers were reused for a period of time, probably in error. These duplicated numbers from page 225. Perhaps they had two sets of books going, and did not realize they overlapped.

In this cemetery there are several families by the name of Child, which made the determination of noun vs. proper noun difficult. Therefore, if it was written Child, A, we indexed it as a name. If it was indexed as A Child we indexed it as an unknown youth. There are some inconsistencies in this rule, but most of them erred on the side of finding the Child family, although many of them will actually be unknown children. We did not assume the same for Man, Woman, Stranger, Unknown, etc. This was specifically because of the common occurance of the surname Child in this area of town.

Harvard Grove Cemetery [Back to

This cemetery was much more straight-forward, although some of the above items apply here as well. In volume 4, blank or statistical pages were 177, 184, 202, 232, 236, 237, 315. Page 339 is a duplicate of page 339-aa although there are some minor differences. Page 79 has interment numbering errors which we corrected from #24719 - #24722 to #24619 - #24622. The names for those are Moody, Cole, Pennington, and Langford. Page 143 numbers 7 were changed to . Names are Stimson, Stiegel and Johnson. Page 169 #27446 was changed to 27546, name Esseltine. Page 172 has interment numbering errors which we corrected from #27514 - #27520 to #27614 - #27620. The names for those are Hamley, Newell, Maskell, Davidson, Sandera, Shepherd and Sweed. On page 216, the last five names are repeated on page 217. On page 259, interment #29669 should be and was changed to #29660, name Eiselt.

There are some old burials in this cemetery that are not included in the index. They were reinterred from the extinct Axtell Street Cemetery when Harvard Grove first opened, but they were not included in the records of Harvard Grove. We have not yet found the Axtell Street records.