My wife, Laura, and I share a common, though not unique philosophy concerning genealogy on the internet. When we began a search for our 'roots' a little over a year ago we were both naive about what we might find on the worldwide web. In the past year we have found cousins and other kin, helpful souls and kind hearts. Many have gone out of their way to assist us in what has certainly become a never ending project. None of those who helped with lookups of census records, birth records, death records and even photographs of tombstones has EVER asked for anything in return. We always thank the donor profusely and offer any help we may be able to give in return. It soon became apparent that we could do even more than that to repay the kindnesses we received.
We both joined groups of lookup volunteers and began to help others with their searches in our county. The response was overwhelming and we derived great satisfaction from helping others as we had been helped. Laura was constantly at the library looking up obituaries and other notices. She became a frequent fixture at the county courthouse and even went to war with the local government in an attempt to gain ever greater access to older records; a battle that has now been won. Due to Laura's unceasing diligence, the records at the county courthouse are now available to all. The Siskiyou County Genealogical Society had undertaken this battle a few years back and had been unable to secure release of records. Laura checked the laws and worked closely with the County Auditor to secure release of birth, death and marriage records to the public. As for me, I checked historical volumes for information, took photographs of headstones at local cemeteries, did cemetery lookups and created this site.
Yet there was something missing and we are fulfilling that empty spot by indexing Siskiyou County cemeteries online. While we believe that RootsWeb is one of the most wonderful genealogical sites on the web, we found that their rules and restrictions for uploading our cemetery data to their project pages to be too restrictive for our project. We decided to create our own listing and have now started informing mailing lists and other county sites of our endeavor. This is our gift back to the genealogical community which has helped us so many times. Our belief that information should be free to all is the cornerstone of this endeavor. We don't believe ALL things should be free. There are those who must take time out of busy schedules to make copies of birth records and other records. We cannot expect them to give those things to us...BUT...information itself should be a free commodity. Our website will always be free for anyone to browse. We are always available by email when questions arise. We hope you will take advantage of these pages and wish you the best of luck in finding those elusive ghosts of the past.
One last point. If you have been helped by SKS (Some Kind Soul), pass that kindness on to others when the opportunity arises. In that way we ALL gain...
If you have questions about this site, or other comments, please feel free to email us: