About the Moon Point Cemetery Tombstone Project

	June, 2005. "I like the way you combine the photographs of the headstones with genealogical data and stories. My review of your site made it easy for me to award the "Award for Excellent Genealogy"." Aiko Timmer (webmaster Aiko Timmer's Genealogy Page)
I was quite pleased (and proud) to discover that this website was selected as a Family Tree Magazine "Site of the Week".

Dedicated to the memory of of my grandparents,
Ethel Muriel and George Arlie Armstrong.
Ethel and Arlie to many, Baba and Popo to a lucky handful.

Privacy Policy:.

I do not maintain a mailing list other than my personal email address book. I will never sell, trade, exchange, share, or otherwise divulge your email address to third parties without your permission.

I will not publish information about living persons without their express written permission.

Before submitting information to this site, please read the SUBMISSIONS section below.

Navigation:

Home is the site's first page.

Tombstone Index sends you to the family name listings. In addition to tombstone pictures you can find obituaries, family histories/genealogies and other information through this page.

History is a bit of history of the cemetery and the Reading Township area.

Cemetery Pictures is self explanatory. Photo contributions for this section would be very welcome.

Burial List is a compilation of the names of the over 400 persons known to be buried in Moon Point Cemetery. This is the third update of the original created by the late researcher and genealogist George Lloyd Irgang in the 1930s. It was updated with his permission in 1988 by Lloyd and Mary Erickson with Viola Baughman and published in The Cemeteries of Livingston County. The 2004 update was done with Mrs. Erickson's permission and is based on videotape with audio commentary recorded by the author in 2003 and 2004 and on document research done by Joan Johnson of the Streatorland Historical Society.

In The News is an article from the Streator Times-Press about the placing of British flags on the graves of British vets buried in the cemetery. If/when other newspaper articles are written about Moon Point I'll add them here.

Links is a page of links to sites and resources that may be of interest to my visitors. Please inform me if there are any sites you'd like to see added.

Navigation links are provided on each page for convenience. If you follow a link to an external site use your browser's [Back] function to return.

"Props" (in no particular order): This site truly belongs to the descendants and loved ones of those buried in Moon Point. There are far too many contributors to credit them all here. My thanks to every one that has taken the time to supply information and lore whether you are mentioned below or not.

H.E. "Bud" Woolford-- The information on his Moon Point website is an invaluable resource and I referred to it freely while doing this site.

Dr. Milton Moon-- Moon and Barrickman family information, local history.

Glenda A.-- Wultzen family information. To Glenda goes the dubious honor of being the site's first contributor.

Joan Johnson from the Streatorland Historical Society-- Hours of selfless work providing obituary transcriptions, genealogy info and other local information. Take a bow, Joanie, you've earned it.

Becky F.-- The astounding amount of information she has provided about the Burton family (accessible through the Burton surname listing). I highly recommend that anyone with ancestors and relatives in the Streator/Reading Township area take a look at it.

LtCol. George Edward "Bud" Armstrong, US Army, ret. (1920-1992)-- Armstrong genealogy, local color, and family lore.

The unknown programmer that invented copy & paste-- Bless you!

Sandra L.-- Realtime feedback and ability to conceal her boredom and exasperation.

---And a special thanks to someone who prefers to remain nameless. Without her patient indulgence this site would not have been possible.

Digital images and text from The History of Livingston County, Illinois, 1878 are from the Brookhaven Press CD and used with permission of the publisher. The CD is a complete copy of the original book, first published in 1878 by Wm. Le Baron, Jr. & Co. (Chicago).

News and Notes: Updated Dec. 25, 2005

   Website awards, like the one at the top of this page are admittedly somewhat narcissistic; in most cases one nominates their own site. They amount, essentially, to a way of getting links to increase search engine ranking. The recognition by Family Tree Magazine was a complete surprise and quite gratifying.
   Most personally gratifying, though, have been the emails from genealogy researchers expressing thanks for help my humble site has been able to give them. They're what make the effort worthwhile.

   I've updated some of the material on the Armstrong Genealogy (accessable through the A tombstone listing) and added some recently acquired photographs of "Grampa Great" Apollas Findlay Plowman and "Uncle Sherm" Plowman to their respective tombstone pages.
   My newest project is putting together some pages about the Ancona Church of Christ, expect it some time after the first of the year...
   I've put up an HTML version of the burial list, please let me know if it doesn't render properly in your browser (also let me know of errors/typos).

This site has been a labor of love and a way of carrying on a family tradition-- my family has been involved with Moon Point Cemetery in one way or another since at least 1864.
You're welcome to link here but please drop me a line if you do so I can inform you if and when pages move. As this is my first attempt at authoring a website, your comments and suggestions are both solicited and welcome. Site content is constantly evolving, please check back from time to time.

Submissions:     Some people see cemeteries as a place to mourn death. I see them as a place to celebrate life. I continue to seek any information that would help celebrate the lives of those buried in Moon Point. Obituaries, documents, pictures, genealogies, biographies, anecdotes...
    Unless otherwise instructed contributions will be attributed simply as "Received from a descendant", so please let me know how you'd like to credited when sending information.
    I'm especially seeking vintage photographs of the cemetery, pictures of the wrought iron gates removed circa 1970 would be most appreciated. I'll be happy to add links to family genealogies or sites of interest, just send me the URL.

NOTE: Submitted text may be edited, truncated, or paraphrased, pictures and graphics may be cropped, resized, enhanced, retouched, or changed in file type as necessary to fit site requirements and aesthetics.

Technical: HTML written with Netscape Composer. Vidcaps taken with a Sony 8mm camcorder and captured at a resolution of 1500 X 1125 with a "Snappy" video capture device and are displayed at 24% full size. Digital photographs from 2003 taken with a Nikon Coolpix 3100
Photographs from 2005 taken with a Canon PowerShot A510. Digital photographs are displayed at 20% full size. Full sized picture files (>700 Kb) available via email on request.

I won't apologize for picture quality issues-- I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a photographer. Most of the tombstone pictures are videocaptures, which are relatively low-resolution. Using a camcorder was the only practical way for me to photograph and document every headstone in the cemetery in the limited time I had available to do it in.
Vagaries of lighting and the technical peculiarities of converting moving video to digital still pictures can make it difficult to see writing and other detail. In those cases you'll just have to take my word for what's on the stone.
Anyone wishing to submit their own pictures of Moon Point tombstones is welcome to do so and I'll be happy to put them on the appropriate page.

I have taken reasonable care to assure the accuracy of all information. Please inform me of factual errors, misspellings, typos, or broken links and they'll be corrected in short order.

Disclaimer: This site is not sanctioned or approved by the Moon Point Cemetery board of directors.

Unless otherwise indicated, contents of this site are © 2003, 2004, 2005 by F. D. Covill, all rights reserved. Permission to copy original content for personal not-for-profit purposes is freely given.
Commercial use without permission is expressly prohibited.

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