The publication of the “King William Cemeteries” booklet in 1989 was a tribute to the hard work of Annie Page Russ, who had been named as the Society’s “Graveyard Chairman” fifteen years earlier.
A King William native and a graduate of the College of William and Mary, Annie Page acquired a keen interest in documenting the hundreds of burials that had taken place during the county’s long history.
She was assisted by her friend, local game warden George Meredith, in locating hard-to-find sites and was delighted in donning hip boots so that she would not be deterred by briars, poison ivy, and snakes as she probed for forgotten burial places.
Despite Annie Page’s years of work, graves are constantly “turning up,” and the booklet’s first Addendum was released in 1991. There are over 135 cemeteries identified in King William County that include thousands of memorials that can now be view online. For many years the King William County Historical
Society documented private cemeteries (plantations, churches, etc.) and in 1995 published a book titled “Old King William County Cemeteries”. J. Jarvis Taylor wrote in the Introduction of this book, “Old cemeteries are a valuable source of historical information and genealogical research. Every effort should be made to locate, restore and maintain them, and record their history for posterity. This work is incomplete … indeed, no work of this kind can possibly be completed.”
In 2011 there was an effort initiated by the society to update this book but the committee decided to take a different approach to creating a paper document that is not only costly to produce, but difficult to distribute. Bob Hubbard and Ron Parker took on the effort to move all the entries in our society’s book into an existing online system called Find-a-Grave. It is an ongoing effort to create new cemeteries as they are identified and update memorials in existing cemeteries.
Find-a-Grave allows the viewing of all cemeteries in a locality, or you can search by cemetery name (often a home place name) or by family name.
Start your search now by going to https://kingwilliamhistory.org/findagrave
