German Families Buried in Ludwig Cemetery

October 5, 2007 was a fortuitous day for my study of Washington County history. I had come to Marietta, Ohio to help my mother, Lorene Sullivan Andris, celebrate her 94th birthday. Additionally, I received a call from Kurt Ludwig, introduced to me by John McClure. The three of us arranged to meet at the Washington County Genealogy Library at the corner of Washington and Fifth to discuss our family histories. Kurt called to my attention to the listing of burials in the Ludwig Cemetery from Arthur McKitrick's Cemetery Inscriptions from Washington County Ohio, 1973.

Later that evening, reflecting on this listing, I imagined a way to finally breathe some life back into these long-distant events, and this section of my genealogy website was born in my mind. The eighty one items of this listing were grouped manageably into just twenty family names, listed to the left of this page. I immediately recognized names from ancestral families of my own (Biehl, Becker, Buertel, Fickeisen, Miller, Noe and Zimmer) and the names of other ancestral families with whose living decendants I was in communication (Dauber, Lauer, Ludwig, and Schultheis). Suddenly, the prospect of putting stories, pictures, yes, even meaning on this cemetery in a reasonably short period of time seemed promising, even doable. I would write what I knew of my own familes, and I would get others I knew to fill in the details of their own families. Perhaps, even others unknown could be attracted to this task. Perhaps other similar tasks could be set for other cemeteries.

To add to the promise and excitement, I found upon checking the 1875 Atlas of Washington County which I own to contain property listings for almost all of the names in the McKitrick listing. Many of these names (more than 50%) I already knew were related directly to the burials in Ludwig Cemetery. You can take a peek at a part of the map here.

As you take the links to the left, you will encounter someone's reconstruction of the life of a family that is buried in Ludwig Cemetery. Hopefully, some of you will want to assist with the project.