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WPA Cemetery Records
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During the Depression (mid to late 1930s) the government started the Work Progress Administration or WPA. This allowed people the chance to work and be productive during a time when jobs were scarce. When my grandfather and uncles worked for the WPA, they fixed roads in Monroe Co., IA. WPA workers in Clinton Co., IA were responsible for building the beautiful Eagle Point Park. Other workers wrote county histories or interviewed older members of the community. In the case of many counties, one of the things the WPA was responsible for was collecting and recording the information on the tombstones in the local cemeteries. We are on a mission to transcribe those records. It must be noted that they may not have actually gone to the cemetery. They may have collected info from death record books at the courthouse or from newspaper obituaries. Combined with the facts that these were originally typed on a manual typewriter and these pages have been copied possibly hundreds of times in the past 60+ years, there are bound to be errors and some of the pages are difficult to read. Still, the WPA cemetery records remain an invaluable resource for researchers. Various sources were used. Some cemeteries were not recorded. Some listed have incorrect names or are not in the county. Some burials, especially those of young children, were omitted. Some people are NOT buried in the locations indicated. Accuracy leaves something to be desired! However, for some of our ancestors this may be the only record of their death. Thus, we present this material to you, with some reservations, exactly as originally recorded, blemishes and all. Check other sources if you can, and treat this data as a "lead" that needs further verification. Bad News/Good News: Only 71 of Iowa's 99 counties have WPA cemetery information. We have copies of all the WPA transcripts in the form of pdf files and are looking for volunteers to help transcribe this info to be compiled in a statewide soundex-searchable database for the IAGenWeb Project as well as individual county files housed here at the Archives. Once all 71 counties are transcribed, we anticipate as many as 200,000 WPA burial records on line for free access by researchers. All that is needed is that you be able to type up the info into an Excel file and email the file back to me. For an idea of how this will look and work when it is done, please visit the Van Buren county's WPA database at http://www.rootsweb.com/~iavanbur/WPA_Search.htm If you would like to help, please email me at IAGWArchives@aol.com. The following is a list of counties that I have pdf files for. From what I understand, there may be additional files available for Buchanan, Dickinson, Hancock, Harrison, Mills, Polk, Sioux (county & city) and Taylor. If you have access to any of these counties and would like to transcribe the info, that would be wonderful. The ones that have "In Progress" after them are counties that someone has volunteered to work on. If you would like to volunteer for a county that is "In Progress", I'm sure they would welcome the help. Email me and I'll hook you up.
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