Genealogy Blog 

The US Army on Friday announced an investigation into possible botched record-keeping at Arlington National Cemetery after revelations that remains were buried in a grave site already in use.

Army Secretary John McHugh said the probe by the army's inspector general would focus on the accountability of operations and allegations of poor record-keeping at the cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of military veterans and fallen soldiers from the country's wars are buried.

"As the final resting place of our nation's heroes, any questions about the integrity or accountability of its operations should be examined in a manner befitting their service and sacrifice," McHugh said in a statement.

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The city of Bellevue, Texas, USA, is looking for the vandals who defaced grave stones at the cemetery. Clay County Sheriff Kenny Lemons suspects that at least four to five people trespassed onto the cemetery grounds Nov. 8.

"These folks have family members that have lived here their whole lives," Lemons said. "These are folks they take care of - their loved ones - this is their final resting place. For somebody to do this, they have absolutely no respect for anyone here or themselves."

The culprits knocked head stones to the ground, cracking some in half. Although Lemons said this criminal mischief is not unprecedented, catching the people behind it could be difficult.

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For the first time two Australian researchers have painstakingly pieced together the stories of the dead from a French battlefield. Paola Totaro reports.

He calls her Marples and she affectionately refers to him as Sherlock. He's a determined, quiet cop with a forensic background; she's a chatty grandmother with degrees in social research and 30 years' genealogy experience.

They live vastly different lives but West Australian Sandra Playle and Victorian Tim Lycett are united by a singular passion: to give identities to the men buried in the shadow of Fromelles' tiny Pheasant Wood. These men, even boys, died on July 19-20, 1916, in what the Australian War Memorial calls Australia's ''worst 24 hours''. In a battle intended in part as a diversion to the Battle of the Somme, 80 kilometres to the south, Australians saw their first action on the Western Front; 5533 of them were killed, wounded or captured.

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Authorities have confirmed that a skull found in a former gravedigger's home belongs to a woman buried at Royal Palm Cemetery in St. Petersburg, Florida, more than 60 years ago.

Pinellas County sheriff's detectives, University of South Florida anthropologists and cemetery workers spent the morning and part of the afternoon exhuming the grave of Ruth Keaton.

The casket had deteriorated and authorities sifted through the dirt excavated from the grave to account for every bone, USF anthropology professor Erin Kimmerle said. Before the diggers reached the bones, they had sifted and collected hinges and other metal hardware from Keaton's casket.

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So you think London, population 8 million, is crowded with the living?

There are many millions more under the soil of a city that has been inhabited for 2,000 years. And London is rapidly running out of places to put them.

Now the city's largest cemetery is trying to persuade Londoners to share a grave with a stranger.

The problem is a very British one. Many other European countries regularly reuse old graves after a couple of decades. Britain does not, as a result of Victorian hygiene obsession, piecemeal regulation and national tradition. For many, an Englishman's tomb, like his home, is his castle.

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A project between the University of Maine at Presque Isle and the Fairmount Cemetery Association that is now halfway complete will link generations of the past with the future.

The project is thought to be the first large-scale, comprehensive cemetery mapping with GPS and GIS technology in Maine. The goal is to create a cemetery GIS database for historic, cultural and social research that offers access to anyone on the Internet and that will serve as a model for cataloging historic and cultural landmarks.

During the first phase of the project, students collected data at the Fairmount Cemetery, which was established in the 19th century and is one of the oldest and largest graveyards in northern Maine. The data included gravesite lot and plot numbers, names of the interred, birth and death dates, gender, military-civilian service and more from 2,200 lots and more than 10,000 plots. All the lots and plots have been mapped with GPS and GIS technologies, and all the stones have been photographed.

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Billy Lynch left Dorchester 72 years ago, and they’re pretty sure they’ve finally found him, a long way from home, deep in the ground in China.

Staff Sergeant Billy Lynch was a Marine. He grew up on Victory Road, and if you go to the corner of Victory and Neponset Avenue, you’ll see the black street sign with the gold star that commemorates William Joseph Lynch Square. It is a place of honor for a Marine who disappeared 67 years ago.

He left Neponset for the Marines in 1937, right out of high school, and never came back. He was stationed in China when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and then went to the Philippines and was there when the Japanese invaded. After the battle of Corregidor in 1942, the Japanese took him prisoner.

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The image of a drunk student urinating on a war memorial has provoked a furious backlash from relatives who had laid wreaths of poppies in tribute to their loved ones.

John Ievers, the grandson of a World War I soldier who died in 1917, branded student Philip Laing, 19, a 'drunken idiot' for desecrating the memorial in Baker's Pool, Sheffield, UK.

Mr Ievers placed the tribute - a solitary wooden cross with poppy decoration - to his grandfather on the memorial on Remembrance Day last November. Edwin Ievers was 32 when he was killed in France in October 1917.

The youth was one of 2,000 university students taking part in an organised seven-hour pub crawl in Sheffield, during which many familiar scenes of debauchery were seen.

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Archaeologists believe they have traced a mass grave of soldiers who fought in a 17th Century battle in Germany under a modern-day supermarket.

Scots - many of them Highlanders - were among the ranks of Protestant soldiers fighting Catholic forces at Lutzen, a key clash during the 30 Years War.

Culloden expert Dr Tony Pollard has been involved in an international team's investigations at Lutzen.

Protestants claimed victory at Lutzen in 1632.

Thousands died, including the triumphant army's leader, the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus.

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